Labor accuses One Nation of stoking violence with cartoons showing attacks on Penny Wong
Labor has accused Pauline Hanson's One Nation of stoking division and violence through cartoons that show attacks on Foreign Affairs Minister Penny Wong, according to The Guardian.
The cartoons come from Hanson's Please Explain series and a film, Hanson's Super Progressive Movie, released in February. A 2022 Please Explain episode depicts Wong being killed by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese. In it, she lies slumped face-down over a desk covered in blood, with a knife in her back. The movie depicts Albanese beheading Wong with an axe while believing he is killing Hanson.
Wong said it tells everything about One Nation that the party is happy to keep depicting this kind of violence. The Australian Federal Police (AFP) Commissioner, Krissy Barrett, urged politicians to use respectful and cautious language. Barrett linked overheated political rhetoric, including the Hanson cartoons, to a rise in violent threats against politicians.
Hanson said the Please Explain cartoons had nothing to do with the attack on Helen Haines and would not be going anywhere. She said Liberal and Labor politicians wanted One Nation cartoons censored because they did not like scrutiny.
One Nation's Victorian leader, Warren Pickering, defended the Please Explain cartoons. He likened them to the Wile E. Coyote and Road Runner cartoons and said they had absolutely not contributed to a deterioration in political discourse.
The cartoons' creator, Mark Nicholson, refused to apologise for an episode that made light of the health conditions of Tasmanian senator Jacqui Lambie. Nicholson is a One Nation candidate at the upcoming Victorian state election. Hanson has apologised for a different cartoon, one depicting Lambie saying she could not laugh because of a prolapsed vagina.
The dispute has a earlier chapter. In April 2022, the Australian Electoral Commission, which runs federal elections, warned One Nation over a false voter fraud video. Hanson refused to take down a cartoon depicting Wong and Albanese discussing voter fraud. The commission later ordered Hanson to remove her satirical political videos from social media, according to The Australian.
