Liberal frontbencher and leadership aspirant Andrew Hastie has launched an extraordinary attack on One Nation’s Pauline Hanson and Barnaby Joyce, calling them “lying cowards”.
Hastie said Hanson and Joyce “are trashing my service record, they called me a traitor to my own country”.
One of Hanson’s Please Explain animated cartoons, from July and titled “Don’t be Hastie”, is at the centre of Hastie’s latest attack on One Nation, which has been targeting him and his seat of Canning in Western Australia. One Nation recently won a state seat, Secret Harbour, that is largely within Canning.
In the cartoon characters make references to Hastie as a “traitor”.
For instance the cartoon character Chalmers asks the character Hastie: “Why are they calling you a traitor?”
The character Hastie replies: “I don’t know. All I did was testify against Ben Roberts-Smith and support your evil hate speech legislation after promising not to.” To which the character Chalmers replies: “Yeah, right, that is pretty traitorous, actually”.
Hastie, who has repeatedly urged the Liberals to stand up more strongly against One Nation, wrote in a long Facebook post on Tuesday, “I won’t take any more from One Nation. Not after they called me a traitor.”
On Wednesday Hastie, armed with a copy of Hanson’s tweet of the cartoon, told reporters:
Yesterday I said that Pauline Hanson and One Nation had called me a traitor to my own country, and today Barnaby Joyce and Pauline Hanson both denied it. Today I’m calling them lying cowards.
I have the receipts. Here on the 23rd of July, Pauline Hanson posted and pinned to her X account a cartoon which eight times calls me a traitor. I’m proud of my service to this country, in uniform and in this parliament. It’s a slur on me, it’s a slur on other veterans who have given, under oath, evidence to Federal Court.
“I’m calling on Pauline Hanson and Barnaby Joyce to either own this – don’t be weak, don’t be cowards – own it and explain why I’m a traitor and why other veterans are traitors, or delete it. Your choice.”
On News24 he said: “Pauline Hanson and Barnaby Joyce, who never ever served a day in our uniform overseas on operations, they don’t get to define Anzac Day or Anzac or the values that underpin our Defence Force”.
Joyce said he’d “never said a bad word” about Hastie, and Hanson had told him she hadn’t called Hastie a traitor. He said the cartoon had now come to his attention. “I had not seen it – nor was i made aware of it.”
In a combative late Wednesday interview on News24 with presenter Chris Kenny, Hanson said Hastie had “his knickers in a knot”. She said she would not delete the cartoon, and would encourage people to look at it and make up their own minds.
“I’m not calling him a traitor to his country,” she said. “I never said that.”
“It is a satirical cartoon for Christ’s sake. Barnaby Joyce was classified as a beetroot, He’s now part of the party. Did he jump up and down about it? So stop making a mountain out of a molehill.”
Pressed on whether she respected Hastie as a veteran, Hanson said, “Of course I do. I don’t think he is a traitor, and I’ve never called him a traitor. And I have the highest regard for people in the Defence Force and who’ve fought for, and are prepared to put their lives on the line for, this country.”
She claimed Hastie’s behaviour might be about a leadership challenge. Hastie was possibly “trying to get a bit of courage” to take on Liberal leader Angus Taylor.
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