One Nation leader Pauline Hanson is being accused of double standards for refusing to remove a satirical video of Robert Irwin and the popular Australian cartoon character, Bluey, from her YouTube channel.
The video — part of Hanson’s series Please Explain — has been viewed more than 276,000 times in four days.
WATCH THE VIDEO ABOVE: Robert Irwin silent on legal threat to Pauline Hanson.
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It mocks a Queensland government tourism campaign, using cartoon depictions of Irwin and Bluey to make jokes about social and political issues in the state.
Irwin’s lawyers issued Hanson with a take-down order, accusing the video’s producers of “unauthorised and deceptive use” of Irwin, who is the son of Australian icon Steve Irwin.
They argued the video “tarnished” Irwin’s image and “misled the public, causing significant harm” to his brand and image.
But Hanson and her team refused to comply and instead doubled down on her position, saying she would not take it down.
“I will not be removing the latest episode of Pauline Hanson’s Please Explain,” she said on X.
“I look forward to the day when Robert and I can have a good laugh over this and turn our focus to making Queensland a better state.”
Despite Hanson telling Irwin to “lighten up”, during the 1990s the One Nation senator famously took legal action to stop Triple J playing a satirical song about her created by Simon Hunt, also known as Pauline Pantsdown.
Her response has been labelled a double standard by Hunt whose song Backdoor Man, which used samples of Hanson’s voice, was met by legal action from the politician in the 1990s.
Hunt called Hanson a “flip-flop queen” on X and said she needed to “make up her mind” about satire.
He said Hanson’s case against Triple J was based on the argument that people would assume it was her on the song and therefore everything would be taken literally.
Hunt said if taken to court, the One Nation leader would “have to argue exactly the opposite of what she argued in my case”.
“Pauline wants it both ways,” Hunt told Crikey.
Hunt also referenced another issue over which Hanson famously backflipped — corporate tax cuts proposed by the Coalition in 2018.
One Nation initially supported company tax cuts, then two months later said it would oppose it.
The party withdrawing its support meant the legislation was killed, leaving former Coalition Finance Minister Mathias Cormann reportedly devastated.
There have been other instances where Hanson publicly backflipped on her political views.
When a ban on climbing Uluru in Central Australia was proposed, Hanson initially protested the new rules, then changed her mind after climbing the site before the ban, saying it made sense because of safety reasons.
She also backflipped on changes to the Jobmaker scheme in 2020 that meant businesses could be given a subsidy to hire young workers to reduce youth unemployment.
Hanson initially agreed protections for older workers were necessary, then abandoned her support when the party was presented with unemployment data.