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Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has condemned Pauline Hanson’s personal attack on his late mother after the minor party leader criticised her in a podcast this year for living in public housing for decades.
Hanson also drew the ire of Liberal frontbencher Andrew Hastie, who is waging his own campaign against the senator for branding him a traitor and described the comments on Albanese’s mother as out of line.
Albanese said at a press conference in Sydney on Sunday that he was stunned by the remarks, in the latest rebuke of Hanson’s personal attacks on MPs that have drawn condemnation from across the political spectrum in the past week.
Hanson singled out Albanese’s mother on The Karl Stefanovic Show this year as she said Australians should not live in housing commission homes for decades.
“Sorry, that is not on to me. It should be limited time. You have been given a hand-up, move it on to the next ones coming through,” she said, in comments that were resurfaced by The Australian on Friday.
On Sunday Albanese paid tribute to his mother, Maryanne Ellery, for maintaining her kindness despite having a tough life as a single mother and disability pensioner.
He cast “nastiness and spitefulness” as weakness, and slammed Hanson for attacking a woman who died more than two decades ago, aged 65, following numerous health battles.
“If Pauline Hanson wants to criticise me, then that’s fine. But my mother was way out of Pauline Hanson’s league – way out of it,” an emotional Albanese said in remarks at Sydney’s Admiralty House after announcing television presenter Melissa Doyle would chair the National Australia Day Council.
“I’m proud to be a ‘houso’, and I’m proud of the community in which I grew up. I’m also proud about my mother.”
Hastie said earlier on Sunday that Hanson was wrong to target the prime minister’s mother.
“I don’t think you should be talking about the late mother of anyone in this game, and certainly not reflecting on circumstances over which she [Hanson] had no understanding,” he told News24. “I remember in the schoolyard, if anyone said anything about your mum, mate, it was on. So let’s leave mums out of it.”
Special Minister of State Don Farrell said he had spent an hour with Hanson last week discussing her concerns but that the “appalling” comments about Albanese’s mother did the minor party leader no favours.
“She wants dignity and respect from her fellow parliamentarians. Attacking the prime minister’s mother like this is not a way to get respect and dignity from your colleagues,” Farrell told News24 on Sunday.
Farrell, who would not say whether he discussed allocating more staff to the minor party as its ranks grew, called for Hanson to withdraw the remark.
In his lengthy interview on News24, Hastie also said he had warned One Nation MP Barnaby Joyce that his own assault on One Nation was just beginning.
“As I said to Barnaby in text, I will continue. Consider last week a demonstration. They haven’t seen anything yet. I’ll go all the way with One Nation if they want,” Hastie said. “Weakness is provocative … these guys thought I was weak.”
Hastie suggested Joyce and One Nation’s latest federal recruit, Farrer MP David Farley, had buyer’s remorse.
“I’ll say this about Barnaby Joyce. I feel sorry for the bloke,” he said. “He left a party that made him deputy prime minister twice to jump in with this rabble. There’s no principles; they’re all over the shop, and he’s out there every week cleaning up after them.”
Joyce said he was being cast as the bad guy in a Hollywood-style political duel.
“I feel I have just got the villain’s part in a sequel to the western Tombstone,” Joyce said, referencing a 1993 film starring Val Kilmer and Kurt Russell.
In a swipe at Hastie, he said: “Politics is not a beauty pageant nor a reality TV show, and we yet seem to be hearing more and more of that.”
Insisting he was chiefly worried Australia was tumbling into an economic and strategic hole, he said he feared “that the Coalition tread water rather than find land, and lack the strength to make the difficult decisions”.
Joyce did not respond to this masthead’s questions about Hanson’s remarks about the prime minister’s mother, but told The Australian he wondered if Albanese used the story of his childhood as a political tactic.
“We hear the story once, that’s great I understand it, when you hear it repeatedly, what is the purpose behind this narrative? Is it to draw empathy or to explain policy?” Joyce said.
He added that he did not think Hanson was calling Albanese’s mother a bad person.
Hastie launched a scathing attack on Hanson last week after being labelled a traitor in her cartoon, Please Explain, for his testimony in accused war criminal Ben Roberts-Smith’s failed defamation action against this masthead. Hastie branded Hanson a “lying coward” after she denied using the term.
Hanson dug in and insisted it was just satire, splitting with her star recruit Joyce, who apologised to Hastie. The RSL decried the cartoon as a slur on veterans, while One Nation’s own WA leader distanced himself from the accusation.
Hanson refused to scrub the cartoon from her social media, but quietly unpinned it from the top of her X feed at the weekend.
Hastie dismissed as ridiculous Hanson’s accusation that he was fighting her to bolster his leadership prospects.
“Angus Taylor is the [Coalition] leader. I’ve supported him. Judge me by my actions, and I’ve shown loyalty to Angus since he became leader.”
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Brittany Busch is a federal politics reporter for The Age and Sydney Morning Herald.Connect via email.From our partners
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