Hanson risks accusations she is exploiting security threats for political gain
Translated from English and summarized by DistantNews. Read the original for the full story.
At a glance
Analysis
Named sources
Context piece
- Pauline Hanson accused Prime Minister Anthony Albanese of provoking threats against her after he criticized hard-right populists as dangerous and dishonest.
- Hanson said she now requires federal police protection, while critics noted that she has long used similarly combative language against political opponents.
- The dispute echoes a controversy from nearly three decades ago, when Hanson blamed opponents after a video about her possible assassination was leaked.
Pauline Hanson once recorded a message to be released if she were assassinated. Nearly 30 years later, the One Nation leader is again warning that political language is putting her life at risk, this time blaming Prime Minister Anthony Albanese.
"Fellow Australians, if you are seeing me now, it means I have been murdered," Hanson said in the 12-minute video recorded soon after she founded One Nation. The message eventually leaked, and Hanson told Parliament she was "disgusted with a lot of members in the house who have actually incited the violence of people in Australia against me". The episode was condemned as a calculated and macabre attempt to weaponize serious security threats for political purposes.
Fellow Australians, if you are seeing me now, it means I have been murdered.
Hanson revived that argument this week after Albanese told a Queensland Labor conference that hard-right populists were advancing worldwide and promoting politics that was "dangerous, divisive, and downright dishonest". Hanson said the prime minister had placed her in danger through his words.
He's put me in such a position by this violence and this talk that's coming out of him.
"He's put me in such a position by this violence and this talk that's coming out of him," she told ABC radio in Perth. "What he's doing is putting me in a position of threats against me now that I have to have federal police protection whenever I'm out here, meeting people. It's a shame. He's caused this."
The criticism has drawn pushback because Albanese has used the same language against political opponents across the spectrum. He has described Peter Dutton's nuclear policy and the Coalition's climate and industrial relations positions as dangerous or dishonest. He has also used those terms for the Greens during debates over Israel and Gaza.
What he's doing is putting me in a position of threats against me now that I have to have federal police protection whenever I'm out here, meeting people. It's a shame. He's caused this.
Hanson herself frequently calls Albanese a liar and earlier this year described him as Australia's most divisive leader. Liberal MP Garth Hamilton argued that she had built her career on language harsher than the prime minister's. The dispute has therefore exposed threats against a politician while also reviving questions about whether familiar political insults can fairly be blamed for violent behavior.
Across the world hard-right populists are on the march. Peddling politics that is dangerous, divisive, and downright dishonest. We simply must defeat them. We owe it to history.
About this summary
Originally published by ABC Australia in English. Translated, summarized, and contextualized automatically by DistantNews, with a note on how the source frames the story. Not individually reviewed before publishing. How this works.
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