One Nation leader Pauline Hanson says the convention of acknowledging traditional owners should be scrapped, arguing that it is cumbersome to say “I acknowledge Gina Rinehart, the traditional owner of Pauline Hanson, and pay my respect to billionaire donors past, present and emerging” before every official speech.
Hanson has long been against the traditional welcome, but only now has admitted that it’s because she doesn’t want to draw attention to the fact that her everyday Aussie battler persona is funded by an elite billionaire mining heiress.
“It’s ridiculous; it’s woke,” Hanson said after arriving at a media conference in Gina Rinehart’s private plane. “I think we all just want to go back to a simpler time, when I just pretended that I’m not a billionaire-funded career politician, and I’m just an ordinary Aussie who understands the cost-of-living pressures facing families”.
Hanson said it was true that her traditional owners had a rich history stretching back generations. “It’s very rich. It stretches back a long way. I just don’t think we need to connect it to me – it stuffs up the image I’m trying to project”.
