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Liberal senator Dave Sharma said Tasmanian senator Jacqui Lambie’s attack on Pauline Hanson was “entirely deserved” as pressure mounts on the One Nation leader to remove a cartoon labelling Liberal MP and former SAS veteran Andrew Hastie a “traitor”.

“Andrew Hastie, anyone who served in uniform deserves the respect of our nation, and for Pauline Hanson and Barnaby Joyce and One Nation to denigrate his service in a cartoon, I think is just beyond the pale,” Sharma told Nine’s Today show.

Yesterday, Lambie, who served in the army for more than a decade, called Hanson a “bloody maggot” for her attack on a veteran.

“What [Hanson’s] doing in those cartoons is absolutely disgusting. They are full of bloody violence. I mean, how people can watch that rubbish is beyond me,” she said.

“That woman is nothing less than a bloody coward. She always has been, and she always will be. She wouldn’t last one day in that goddamn uniform. Leave our veterans alone.”