One Nation founder Pauline Hanson fought back tears on live television over the disordered state of her political party, giving a highly unusual interview to Sky News in which her voice repeatedly broke as she accused One Nation Senator Brian Burston of stabbing her in the back.
Hanson was referring to Burston’s decision to support the government’s $35.6 billion corporate tax proposal, which became public on Thursday after The Australian reported that Burston had decided not to back Hanson in refusing to support the tax cuts.
But Hanson went further on Sky News’ The Bolt Report program on Thursday night, claiming that Burston was guilty of a double betrayal, by approaching the New South Wales Shooters, Fishers and Farmers party in a bid to defect from One Nation and join the Shooters party. Burston later told Sky News that Hanson’s claims he’d tried to defect was “totally and absolutely false”, but Shooters party MP Robert Borsack told The Australian that Burston had indeed approached the party and that the party had rejected his overtures.
Speaking on Sky News about the falling out with Burston, Hanson said that being stabbed in the back by the senator, whom she’s known for more than 20 years, “hurts deeply”. Repeatedly pausing as she struggled to speak, Hanson poured out her dismay over the latest blow to her party.
“It means so much for me what I’m trying to do and for him to turn around and do this to me Ben, it’s hard,” she told Sky News’ Ben Fordham as she fought back tears and repeated raised her voice. “But I’m going to keep going and I’m going to get good people in that parliament beside me because it means so much to me to help the people that need help, that feel like no one’s listening to them, they’re sick of politicians because they don’t do anything.”
Hanson went on to refer to the many candidate losses One Nation had suffered over recent times. Former senator Rod Culleton quit One Nation at the end of 2016 and was later judged to be ineligible to run for parliament over an undischarged bankruptcy, while Malcolm Roberts was declared ineligible to run for parliament over citizenship issues in November and is currently running as a One Nation senate candidate. Senator Fraser Anning, whom Hanson parachuted in to replace Roberts, quit One Nation on his first day in the new position to sit as an independent.
But the One Nation leader and Queensland senator also name-checked the people she considered loyal to her party, including Roberts, Queensland One Nation leader Steve Dickson and candidate Matthew Stephen, who is contesting the seat of Longman in Queensland in a by-election on July 28.
“I’ve been able to achieved so much in such a short period of time and I’m not finished and if you think I’m going to let Brian Burton or anyone else to finish me … They will not just sit on those seats and do absolutely nothing and think they can have a cosy ride and take the taxpayers’ funds and not have to work for it,” Hanson said of the people she considered traitors to her party.
“I work myself to the bone because I believe in what I’m doing. I know that Malcolm Roberts has the same feelings as I do, so does Steve Dixon, Matthew Stevens does, the guys in Western Australia are exactly the same.
“I’m sorry to the Australian people that this has happened again. But it’s the same as with Rob Culleton, the same with Fraser Anning. They haven’t got the intestinal fortitude, it’s all about them, self-serving. Well, I don’t want people like that. Yes, there’s going to be mistakes and I’ve made mistakes but I tell you what, at the end of the day, I will win.”
Burston had previously told The Australian that he was blindsided by Hanson’s decision to dump her support for the ruling coalition’s company tax cuts, saying that he only learned about the change when reading about it in the newspaper last week. He said that he was a ‘very principled person” who would honour the deal the party had cut with Finance Minister Mathias Cormann in order to get the tax package passed.