View from The Hill: Albanese lashes Hanson over attack on his mother

Anthony Albanese has hit back angrily and emotionally at Pauline Hanson for saying his late mother should not have lived in public housing for decades.

By implication labelling Hanson’s attack

nasty and spiteful, Albanese told a Sunday news conference: “My mother was way out of Pauline Hanson’s league”.

For the second time in days, Hanson is on the back foot for making a personal attack. Last week her senior colleague Barnaby Joyce distanced himself from One Nation’s animated cartoon, authorised by Hanson, in which Liberal frontbencher and war veteran Andrew Hastie was called a “traitor” multiple times.

Her comments about Maryanne Albanese, who died in 2002, were made in a podcast with Karl Stefanovic in February but only reported at the weekend, by The Australian.

In a mocking gesture on the podcast, Hanson wiped her eyes exaggeratedly, as she described as “pathetic” Albanese referring to growing up in public housing.

Hanson said:“I actually grew up in a street where we had housing commission houses there. It was a helping hand to those people, but they had jobs. And they worked.

"Housing commission houses should not be there for people to live in them for 30, 40 [years], and he said his mother lived in the same one she was born in for 65 years.”

Albanese was very close to his mother and his early life with her has been a constant theme of his personal story. In his 2022 victory speech he said: “It says a lot about our great country that a son of a single mum who was a disability pensioner, who grew up in public housing” could become prime minister.

Albanese said on Sunday: “I’m proud to be a houso, and I’m proud of the community in which I grew up. I’m also proud about my mother. She was someone who had a tough life. She didn’t associate with billionaires.

She was compassionate, not uncaring. She was generous, not mean. And she was kind, not nasty. She was a person of great character. She’s someone, after I was born, worked cleaning offices overnight in the city in order to get an income, and then caring for me, her new baby during the day.

She suffered from rheumatoid arthritis and was crippled up.

She was a battler, and for Pauline Hanson to attack someone and their character who died in 2002, some 24 years ago, at age just 65, because she did have such a tough life with her health from an early age.

She was generous and she was kind. I said to you in the last campaign, kindness isn’t a weakness. Tell you what’s weakness – it’s nastiness. Nastiness. And spitefulness.

I am stunned at these comments. But I will make this point – if Pauline Hanson wants to criticise me, then that’s fine. But my mother was way out of Pauline Hanson’s league. Way out of it.”

Asked for a comment about Hanson’s remarks, Joyce told The Conversation: “I am in One Nation because I am deeply concerned that the political status quo became lazy and then weak. It is now going a little Hollywood. All log cabin stories and ‘step outside you dirty rat’”.

Hastie says Hanson’s ‘still a lying coward’

Meanwhile Hastie continued his verbal assault on Hanson, not retreating from his description of her as a “lying coward”.

“She’s still a lying coward. I’m not backing down,” he told News24. “I put the challenge to her – she could have accepted that she’d got it wrong and pulled [the cartoon] down, but she refused to do so and she’s doubled down.”

He said in earlier times he had had a good relationship with Hanson. “And then she came for me, and I started to see that this is not the person I thought she was. Now she’s my political opponent, and she has started a fight, and I inteb=nd to win it.”

Last week Hastie accepted Joyce’s apology over the cartoon, of which Joyce had not previously been aware.

A central element in the conflict between Hanson and Hastie is the strong support she and her backer Gina Rinehart are giving Ben Roberts-Smith who is facing a trial for alleged war crimes.

Hastie testified against Roberts-Smith in the latter’s failed defamation case.

Hastie now believes he is unlikely to be called to give evidence in Robert-Smith’s trial. That might stop the animosity against him becoming even more inflamed.

“There was a no-publication order made which protected the identities of the witnesses involved in the proceedings. I’m not on that list,” he said.

Hastie also condemned Hanson over her attack on Albanese’s mother.

“I think this is another indicator to the Australian people that she’s not fit to be prime minister. I don’t think you should be talking about the late mother of anyone in this game, and certainly not reflecting on circumstances over which she had no understanding.

"I reckon mums, you leave out of politics. I remember in the schoolyard, if anyone said anything about your mum, mate, it was on.”

Michelle Grattan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.