Career
Hanna has been active in Bahamian politics since the 1950s. During this time, Hanna assumed a number of important cabinet posts, including Deputy Prime Minister of the Bahamas from 1967 to 1984. In 1984, Hanna resigned his post as Deputy to Prime Minister Lynden Pindling in protest at the retention by Pindling of cabinet colleague who were heavily criticised by a Royal Commission of Enquiry of that same year.
The Commission was established to investigate claims of high-level corruption allegedly linked to the flourishing drugs trade of the 1980s.
His resignation came within a week of the firing from the Cabinet of Hubert Ingraham and Perry Christie, who also were said to have taken a strong stand against the presence in the cabinet of ministers tarnished by the commission and who both later served successive terms as Prime Minister. On 1 February 2006, Hanna was appointed Governor General of the Bahamas by Elizabeth II, Queen of the Bahamas, on the advice of Prime Minister Perry Christie.
He retired on 14 April 2010 and was succeeded by Sir Arthur Foulkes. In 2014, the first Legend-class patrol boat of the Royal Bahamas Defence Force was commissioned as HMBS Arthur Dion Hanna.