One Nation Reps Say They Only Wanted To Sell Out To The NRA Because They Were Drunk
Oh, I guess that's fine then.
Pauline Hanson’s One Nation has come in for heavy criticism after a massive undercover investigation by Al Jazeera revealed the party has been courting the US gun lobby, and had hoped to solicit as much as $20 million in political donations from the National Rifle Association (NRA). But now Pauline Hanson’s chief of staff James Ashby has defended himself and the party’s Queensland leader Steve Dickson by insisting they were both drunk when those conversations took place. So yeah, I guess it’s… fine?
“The conversations that have been recorded where there is talk of $10 and $20 million, I’ll be the first to admit, we’d arrived in America, we got on the sauce, we’d had a few drinks and that’s where those discussions took place,” Ashby told reporters in Brisbane on Tuesday afternoon.
Fair cop to them. Who among us hasn’t had a few frothies and then tried to sell-out our country to one of the most despicable organisations on the planet?
Ashby went on to claim that the conversation about money was between himself, Dickson and Rodger Muller, and not with any “potential donors”.
Muller, an undercover journalist, was the one who set up the meeting between One Nation and the NRA while posing as the head of Gun Rights Australia, a phoney gun-rights organisation. Ashby and Dickson described him in their press conference as a “secret agent” working for “a Middle Eastern country”.
“Rodger Muller had organised these meetings,” said Ashby. “This was a deliberate set-up by the Qatari government under Al Jazeera.”
“This is skulduggery at its worst. This is the very first time Australia has witnessed political interference from a foreign government.”
“I never, ever, ever suspected in my wildest dreams that this guy was employed by a Middle Eastern country, by Al Jazeera, as an Australian spy to interfere in Australian politics,” added Dickson.
Dickson also said he had initially trusted Muller because he “wore the Akubra hat”. Makes sense!
Don’t drag Akubra into your treason One Nation. #auspol
— 🅹🅺 (@theUNCLEdaily) March 26, 2019
Prime Minister Scott Morrison has slammed One Nation, accusing them of trying to “sell Australia’s gun laws to the highest bidders”.
“When John Howard put those laws in under a Coalition government, they were put in to protect Australians,” he said. “No law should be up to the highest bidder as some part of foreign interference.”
Morrison would not, however, pledge to preference One Nation last at the upcoming federal election, despite growing calls for the Coalition to do so.
Ashby was banned from entering parliament earlier this year after getting into a physical altercation with former One Nation senator Brian Burston.