Updated ,first published
One Nation leader Pauline Hanson has accused Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and the Australian education system of deliberately inciting violence against her, after the Labor leader used a speech on the weekend to attack the party for sowing division.
Hanson’s comments come just days after her party’s first successful foray into Labor heartland outside Queensland – winning the West Australian state byelection in Secret Harbour – and a Victorian campaign event where she drove a nail into, and later buried, a coffin labelled “net zero”.
“The incitement that is happening is through our educational system and a prime minister who should know better than that,” Hanson said on Monday at a press conference in Gippsland, east of Melbourne, before demanding Albanese take “full responsibility” for threats made against her.
“I think he’s a pathetic prime minister. He’s not the leader of this nation. You don’t go out saying those things, and they’re all scared. They’re scared because now we’ve won a safe Labor seat, and this is worrying them.”
Speaking on Sunday at Labor’s Queensland state conference, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said Hanson sought “to divide Australians” and “talks Australia down both here and overseas”.
“Parties like One Nation have no serious answers to our problems,” Albanese said. “Their own divisions and disagreements are now showing through. They think Australians are lazy and overpaid. That people working from home are bludging. That domestic violence is sometimes a woman’s fault. That we should, somehow, become a monoculture.”
Taking to social media on Monday morning, Hanson said Albanese’s speech had crossed a line, arguing his rhetoric had become “increasingly desperate”.
“No matter how worried Jim and Albanese are about losing their jobs, telling Australians that their democratically elected opponents are ‘dangerous’ and a ‘threat to our country’ invites people to treat them as a threat. Words have consequences. That is how political violence is incited,” Hanson wrote.
Hanson cited the death of conservative British politician Ann Widdecombe as a warning over the danger of violent political rhetoric. Widdecombe was found dead in her home in July, having suffered a serious injury to her head. A man has been charged with her murder and is expected to face trial next year.
Threats against MPs have been steadily escalating recently. There are about 20 ongoing court matters across the country in which people are accused of making violent threats against Albanese. Nearly 40 people have been charged with Commonwealth crimes since September last year for threatening MPs and other high office holders.
One of the threatened MPs, Liberal frontbencher Andrew Hastie, has been afforded additional security. Sources told this masthead Hastie believed the decision was driven by an orchestrated campaign against him online that had been fuelled by One Nation and its supporters over the Ben Roberts-Smith saga.
On August 20, Perth man Anton Raymond Illich, 47, appeared in court charged with threatening to kill Hanson. He is alleged to have threatened her on Facebook, including a claim he said he would “hunt her down”.
He is scheduled to appear again in October.
Appearing on News24, formerly Sky News, on Monday morning, One Nation MP Barnaby Joyce would not say whether Albanese had incited violence against One Nation representatives, instead pointing out he thought the prime minister was a liar.
“I just don’t believe them. It’s like listening to a crazy man in a park. What’s the point? You know, when people have proved themselves to be liars and they don’t basically ask for forgiveness on that, you just dispense with them and say everything they say is irrelevant,” Joyce said.
One Nation won the West Australian state byelection in the previously safe Labor seat of Secret Harbour on Saturday, with an enormous swing towards new MP Luke Herdegen.
However, the day’s success was hampered by a report that new MP David Farley was “poised” to quit the party and sit as an independent as published in The Saturday Paper. The One Nation MP was elected in May at the Farrer byelection, the first time the party had won a seat in the House of Representatives.
Asked about the reports during an appearance on ABC radio on Monday, Joyce said: “I had a conversation with him nearly a day or so ago, and that was completely the opposite of what he said to me.
“He’s incredibly competent … he’s an asset to the party. Of course, the media have a lot of fun with people if they can smell blood on the waters.”
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Nick Newling is a federal politics reporter for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.Connect via X or email.From our partners
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