Sydney- Right-wing rabble-rouser Pauline Hanson looked set for a big compensation payout Sunday after an Australian newspaper admitted nude photographs it published purporting to be of her were of another woman.

"I've said all week I'd be the first person in Australia to apologise to Pauline Hanson if it were proven the photographs were not of her," Sunday Telegraph editor Neil Breen said. "We've proven it ourselves so, Pauline, I'm sorry."

The apology will be cold comfort to Hanson, who on Saturday lost her latest bid to revive her political career. She contested Saturday's Queensland election but failed to win a seat in the state parliament.

The photographs claimed to show a 19-year-old Hanson posing naked in the 1970s. Hanson said she would sue for compensation, claiming she had been defamed and her electoral chances damaged.

Hanson earned international notoriety in 1996 by winning a seat in the federal parliament after a campaign laced with racism and xenophobia.

In her maiden speech to the Canberra parliament the former fish 'n' chip shop proprietor warned that Australia was in danger of being "swamped by Asians."

She lost her seat in 1998 and has lost every election she has contested since 1996. Hanson was jailed in 2003 for electoral fraud but the conviction was later overturned. (dpa)