Nationals senator Matt Canavan has attacked Pauline Hanson for suggesting there are no “good” Muslims as the Coalition’s new leadership tries to walk the line between wooing back One Nation voters and celebrating Australia’s multiculturalism.
Hanson unleashed during a Sky News appearance late on Monday while discussing the IS brides and children seeking repatriation to Australia, making comments even her star recruit, Barnaby Joyce, would not clearly endorse on Tuesday.
“Their religion concerns me because what it says in the Koran … they hate Westerners,” Hanson said.
“You say, oh, well, there’s good Muslims out there. Well, I’m sorry, how can you tell me there are good Muslims?”
Hanson defended herself against backlash on Tuesday in a post on X, saying media were not used to “hearing a politician tell the truth without worrying about political correctness”.
Hanson’s anti-Muslim rhetoric is consistent: she said during her 2016 maiden speech to the Senate that lives would be destroyed while waiting to distinguish between “good” and “bad” Muslims. But a decade later, the minor party leader has a bigger platform as One Nation surges in the polls and gains traction with its anti-immigration agenda.
Hanson’s attempt to lump all Muslims in with extremists has marked battlelines on the conservative flank of Australian politics heading into the next election.
Canavan, who will go up against Hanson in the Queensland Senate race at the next election, questioned Hanson’s ability to credibly take on the Coalition and Labor.
“It is these kinds of ill-disciplined comments that make people worry that Pauline just doesn’t have what it takes to lead a major party,” he said on Tuesday. Canavan pointed to Ahmed al-Ahmed, the man who tackled one of the Bondi gunmen during the attack in December.
“He is an Australian hero – and Muslim,” the Nationals senator said.
“Our focus must be on rooting out radical Islam, which the vast majority of Australian Muslims do not espouse.”
Late on Tuesday night, Australia’s special envoy to combat Islamophobia, Aftab Malik, invited Hanson to share an Iftar dinner with him, saying he would answer any of her questions.
In an Instagram post, Malik said the Koran challenges Muslims to “respond to those individuals who might be overwhelmed by the weight of their convictions” with peace, before noting that “Ms Hanson is welcome to ask questions directly”.
One Nation MP Barnaby Joyce appeared to equivocate over his leader’s comments on Tuesday morning.
“Well, that’s – I believe that there are people who are of the Islamic faith who obviously I know. So I’m not going to say that I don’t have people who are friends of Islamic faith. I do, but I’m not going to say because of that, I’m going to put so many people at risk,” he told Today.
Joyce went on to say he agreed “100 per cent with Pauline” that people were coming to Australia with values “generationally at odds with what Australia is”.
The former National MP and deputy prime minister has boasted of the credibility he has brought to One Nation since defecting from the Nationals in December.
But he has been forced to distance himself from Hanson’s burqa stunt after she donned the religious garment in the Senate just weeks before he joined her party. Joyce told Four Corners on Monday that that behaviour “does not work for me”.
Opposition Leader Angus Taylor, still marking out the party’s direction after ousting Sussan Ley late last week, was on Tuesday trying to toe the line between drawing back disaffected voters drifting to One Nation while celebrating diverse Australians.
In a long and wide-ranging interview on the Kyle and Jackie O Show, Taylor appealed directly to voters fleeing the Coalition, saying the opposition could protect their way of life “the right way” while also offering a better standard of living.
“Whoever is thinking of voting for One Nation, we respect why. We understand why you’re saying that the Liberal Party has to be better,” Taylor said on Tuesday, having taken a hard line on immigration in his first press conference as Liberal leader on Friday.
“We want you to support us and restore confidence in us because we believe we can offer not only protecting your way of life, [Hanson] makes a big deal of that. I think we can do this the right way, but we can also focus on restoring your standard of living, getting back to home ownership, being part of the Australian dream.”
Taylor, who has said he was confident the Coalition could also appeal to the inner-city seats lost to independents, touted his appreciation for diverse cultures, saying he would visit Melbourne this weekend to celebrate Chinese New Year.
“I actually celebrate the incredible multicultural communities,” Taylor said.
“I find that people who have come to this country, first generation, they love this country more than almost anyone else because they know the change between what they came from and what we are. I find that really exhilarating. I love it.”
Cut through the noise of federal politics with news, views and expert analysis. Subscribers can sign up to our weekly Inside Politics newsletter.
Brittany Busch is a federal politics reporter for The Age and Sydney Morning Herald.Connect via email.