Hanson cash call fires up leaders
AUSTRALIA’S major party leaders are deeply concerned by reports Pauline Hanson’s One Nation asked powerful US lobby groups for $US20 million ($28 million) in funding, in part to help it roll back gun control Down Under.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison has stressed Australia’s gun laws are not being weakened after the claims emerged through an undercover investigation.
“Australia’s gun laws are world’s best thanks to (former prime minister) John Howard and we will not be changing them,” he posted on Twitter.
Labor’s Bill Shorten said he was horrified to see the Al Jazeera report that One Nation’s Queensland party leader Steve Dickson and Senator Hanson’s chief of staff James Ashby made the case for funding in meetings with pro-gun groups in the US.
The groups included the National Rifle Association of America and Koch Industries – America’s second-largest privately held company, which has donated hundreds of millions of dollars to conservative political causes. One Nation has referred the news report to police and intelligence services, saying it is concerned about foreign interference in Australian politics ahead of the imminent federal election.
“Al Jazeera are a stateowned propaganda arm of the Qatari Government that supports Islamic extremist groups and are not a legitimate media organisation,” the party said. The party insists it “strongly supports the rights of lawful gun ownership” and claims Al Jazeera targeted it because of its policies on restricting immigration.
The investigation, broadcast overnight yesterday, features a recording of a meeting in Washington DC last September, captured by an undercover journalist. In it, Mr Dickson tells NRA officials that for the world to look to Australia as a model for gun control would be “poison”.
“If we don’t change things, people are going to be looking at Australia and go: ‘Well, it’s OK for them to go down the path of not having guns, it’s OK for them to go down that politically correct path’,” he says. “It will poison us all unless we stop it.”
Mr Ashby is also heard saying that $US20 million in donations to One Nation would give the party parliamentary influence in Australia.
“If you had 20 [$US20 million], you would own the Lower House and the Upper House,” he says.
Mr Shorten says the incident is not only horrifying, but a betrayal of the Australian political system.
Cabinet minister Simon Birmingham said the idea of rolling back Australia’s gun laws seemed remarkable in the aftermath of the Christchurch massacre, in which a lone shooter killed 50 people at two mosques.