Pauline Hanson has taken a step that may have caught both Anthony Albanese and Andrew Hastie off guard.
Her apology on Thursday was reluctant and carefully hedged, delivered only after a fierce public response. It was far from a full-throated expression of remorse.
Even so, Hanson’s decision to voice regret may blunt the most potent criticism of her growing political influence: not objections to One Nation’s platform, but doubts that its outspoken leader has the temperament to govern Australia.
That was the message at the heart of Albanese’s emotional reaction after Hanson attacked the years his late mother spent in public housing.
“Kindness isn’t weakness,” the Prime Minister said. “Tell you what’s weak: nastiness and spitefulness.” Hastie echoed that assessment, saying Hanson was not fit to serve as prime minister.
But Hanson is no longer operating solely as the figurehead of a protest movement. With One Nation attracting record levels of support, the party is positioning itself as a credible challenger to Australia’s increasingly fractured two-party system.
As the prospect of power becomes less remote, however, it is harder to dismiss every controversy as simply another case of Pauline being Pauline.
There is no doubt Hanson has spent decades being reflexively demonised. Issues she championed — including high immigration, failures in Indigenous policy, government spending and an out-of-touch political establishment — were often treated as unacceptable before the major parties eventually embraced softer versions of many of the same concerns.
Pauline Hanson’s apology was qualified and came only after an intense public backlash, rather than as an unreserved show of contrition. But by expressing regret, she has sought to counter the central argument against her political rise: that her abrasive style makes her unsuitable for higher office.
That past helps explain why her supporters close ranks whenever journalists uncover another old recording. At times, the backlash is indeed unfair. Yet previous mistreatment does not automatically mean Hanson is right in the present moment.
Her comments about Albo’s mother were a classic example of a defensible policy argument being undermined by a badly chosen target.
Hanson’s broader point was that public housing should provide a hand up to people in need, rather than automatically becoming a home for life. She’s not wrong. With long waiting lists and Australians sleeping in cars, it is entirely reasonable to debate whether tenancies should be periodically reassessed so scarce homes go to those who need them most.
But Maryanne Albanese was the wrong person to target. She was a single mother with severe rheumatoid arthritis who relied on a disability pension much of her life. She wasn’t a politician and, having died in 2002, couldn’t answer back.
Whatever anyone thinks of the PM’s repeated references to his housing commission upbringing, Hanson using his late mother was unnecessary. Albo was entitled to defend her, and Hastie was right to say mothers should be left out of political combat, even if they get strategically deployed by a PM building a narrative.
Albo’s declaration that he’s ‘proud to be a houso’ was theatrical. Nobody should be ashamed of needing public housing, but needing it is not, in itself, a virtue. Presumably he meant he was proud of the community that raised him and what he overcame.
Fair enough, it’s not a bad story. But it doesn’t answer the question Hanson clumsily raised about whether public housing should invariably amount to lifetime tenure. In a sense the way she worded her point helped him get around it.
Hanson’s response: ‘if he’s taken offence to that, well, I’m sorry’, was hardly a full throated apology.
It was similar to Albo’s apology for saying he’d like to shag Kylie Minogue. If offence was caused, he’s sorry, and now so is Pauline.
Her remarks about Indigenous Australians left less room for sympathy. Calling them the ‘most primitive race on Earth’ and saying they had ‘achieved nothing’ wasn’t plain speaking. It was unnecessarily cruel and dismissive.
Hanson’s explanation is that she was comparing Indigenous societies at the time of British settlement with the industrial and technological development of Europe, rather than describing Aboriginal Australians today.
Indigenous Australians survived and adapted across a harsh continent, developing systems of kinship, land management, navigation and culture. To reduce all of that to ‘nothing’ is plainly wrong.
The Prime Minister with his mother, Maryanne Albanese
There was a legitimate argument Hanson could have made. Decades of spending haven’t eliminated appalling disadvantage in remote communities. Governments should be held accountable, and questions about school attendance, violence, incarceration, welfare dependency and whether assistance should be allocated according to race or need shouldn’t be declared off limits.
Many Australians support Hanson precisely because she refuses to look away from realities more polished politicians discuss in euphemisms. But that’s no excuse for what she said this time. Serious arguments lose their force when wrapped in contempt.
Jacinta Nampijinpa Price proves that it’s possible to challenge the Indigenous policy establishment fiercely without dismissing an entire people and their history. Price described Hanson’s remarks as a display of ‘wilful ignorance’. That’s a criticism that can’t be dismissed as left wing political correctness.
Hanson now says she regrets the words used because she didn’t intend to hurt people, adding that she apologises if her language caused offence. Despite the caveat, it’s better than continuing to double down, but the problem was the sweeping judgement behind her words.
And it wasn’t an isolated lapse. One Nation’s recent cartoon branding Hastie a ‘traitor’ for giving evidence under subpoena was another example of combativeness tipping into something uglier. Satire isn’t a magic word that makes every accusation acceptable.
Barnaby Joyce recognised the mistake and apologised. Hanson should have done the same.
Her political opponents will naturally overplay these controversies. Labor and the Coalition have an obvious interest in turning the contest with One Nation into a referendum on Hanson’s character rather than their own failures. An offensive remark (or three) doesn’t invalidate every argument the One Nation leader makes about immigration, housing or Indigenous policy. Nor does it make her millions of supporters awful people.
Hanson’s lack of polish is central to her authenticity, and Australians will forgive an imperfect phrase from someone they believe speaks honestly. But there are limits. What they won’t forgive indefinitely is an inability to distinguish toughness from cruelty, or conviction from a refusal to admit mistakes.
While it must understandably grate Hanson that her critics are allowed limitless scope to label and attack her, she can’t become a version of what they say she is.
If One Nation merely wants to collect protest votes, Hanson can continue bulldozing through every controversy. If it genuinely wants to displace one (or both) of the major parties and reshape Australian politics, its leader must meet a higher standard.
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