Environment Minister Murray Watt says One Nation leader Pauline Hanson is acting like a “career politician” for televising political ads during the State of Origin game.
The One Nation leader delivered a lengthy address to the Press Club yesterday, where she pledged to end multiculturalism and laid out a vision for a monocultural Australia.
Hanson also took aim at Muslim immigration, transgender Australians and people who speak a second language at home.
She criticised a Guardian journalist for being “trashy” after she was asked a question about her daughter’s employment with One Nation, saying the reporter would be banned from future events.
Speaking to ABC News Breakfast, Watt says Hanson and One Nation are “becoming like every other political party” despite Hanson presenting herself as an “outsider”.
“She’s now very clearly showing that she’s a career politician. She’s been in parliament, or politics, for 30 years, and now she’s carrying on like a political party,” Watt says.
“What we saw from Pauline Hanson yesterday is that she only wants a fair go for some of us. That’s not the Australian way.”
Hanson’s speech at the Press Club was interrupted by a protest banner that unfurled while the Queensland senator was speaking.
Asked for his reaction, Watt says he didn’t support that protest.
“I don’t think it’s a healthy thing in our democracy to have that kind of thing happen,” he says.
