The Guardian’s ‘Earth-Shattering’ Scoop Falls Flat on the Facts

Hold the front page: a political staffer is, astonishingly, doing her job remotely from Tasmania.

That is the headline revelation Guardian Australia has used to introduce its new podcast series examining One Nation.

Lee Hanson, Pauline Hanson’s daughter, is employed as a senior adviser to NSW One Nation senator Sean Bell. Since she works from Tasmania, her arrangement required approval from the Special Minister of State. The required form, however, was not completed.

And that, apparently, is the full extent of the alleged controversy. Hand over the Walkley Award.

The Guardian itself acknowledges that the Department of Finance handled her contract and reclassified her position. Sources have described the absent approval as a departmental “stuff-up”. There is no suggestion she was improperly placed on the public payroll, while Finance guidelines explicitly allow remote work. Nor is there any indication the application would have been rejected had the paperwork been lodged.

In an effort to give the administrative error greater weight, the report highlights Hanson’s salary range of $150,000 to $180,000. But that figure is the publicly available standard pay bracket for a position of this kind. She is not employed by her mother, either, but by a separate senator — an arrangement that breaches no rules.

With a missing form unlikely to provide much drama, the Guardian then turns to her social media activity, pointing to One Nation events she attended during what it describes as “working hours”.

Political staffers, however, do not operate on a conventional factory-style roster. Their work regularly extends into evenings and weekends, and they can build up time off in lieu. The Guardian concedes it does not know whether Hanson was on leave at the times in question. There are no timesheets presented — only an apparent push to construct a more dramatic narrative.

Using that same logic, I have a scoop of my own.

I once saw a Guardian political reporter using the Westpac ATM at Parliament House during ordinary working hours. Was personal banking conducted on Guardian time? Were private bills paid while subscribers footed the bill? Had the reporter taken leave? I have no timesheets or banking records. All I have is an observation and a handful of insinuations.

But apparently, that’s enough for a scoop.

The supposed smoking gun against Hanson is just as pathetic. She sent an email at 2.20 pm on a Tuesday about staff appointments in another office. Yet the article concedes she oversees the party’s human resources. An HR adviser sent an email about HR. Call a royal commission.

The Guardian also conveniently ignores the systemic strangulation of One Nation’s resources. The Greens have 11 parliamentarians and 17 personal advisers. One Nation has six parliamentarians and just four advisers, without the extra higher paid versions the Greens have been gifted. 

Anthony Albanese has personally decreed that a rapidly growing political opponent gets less than half the support of his Greens allies. Labor starves One Nation of staff, and when one of those scarce employees misses a remote work form, it’s repackaged as corruption.

The hypocrisy gets richer. The minister whose signature was supposedly indispensable is Don Farrell, Labor’s factional godfather. Farrell’s wife, Nimfa, spent years working (quite legitimately to be clear) for other Labor parliamentarians. Political offices hire people they trust. 

But if Lee Hanson’s surname warrants a forensic audit of her daily movements, where is the Guardian podcast on Labor’s sprawling network of spouses and factional hacks feeding at the public trough?

Speaking of podcasts, the Guardian’s own recent history would make a thrilling investigative series of its own.

Katharine Murphy spent a decade at the masthead before waltzing directly from the political editor’s desk into Albanese’s office as a senior spin doctor. Surely a supposedly independent editor jumping straight into the Prime Minister’s inner circle warrants a fraction of the scrutiny applied to Lee Hanson?

Murphy’s replacement, Karen Middleton, lasted barely a year before vanishing on extended leave amid a messy internal HR dispute, leaving staff in the dark while prominent journalists fled the masthead. The Guardian demands transparency from everyone but itself.

Then there’s Amy Remeikis, whose reporting always carried enough ideological heat to warm a Canberra winter. She finally dropped the pretence, leaving to become an advocate for a progressive think tank. Perhaps a future podcast could investigate whether Guardian readers are paying for dispassionate journalism or just funding an extended audition for the activist sector.

If Hanson actually defrauded taxpayers, throw the book at her. But spare us the faux moral panic over a remote work form from a media outlet that routinely shrugs at actual, systemic rorting. This is the same ecosystem where Labor funnelled 73 per cent of a $560 million infrastructure fund into its own seats, and where Albo’s beloved Marrickville Golf Club pocketed $6 million as the only club invited to apply.

Against a backdrop of nine-figure pork barrelling, the Guardian deployed its investigative might to uncover an unsubmitted HR form instead.

The real motive is barely concealed in the copy: these ‘revelations’ anchor the first episode of its new podcast, The Populist. The Guardian needed a scandal to market its series, went hunting for a crime, found a clerical error and padded it with salary figures, family connections and unproven insinuations.