{"id":492524,"date":"2026-02-20T14:04:08","date_gmt":"2026-02-20T14:04:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/492524\/"},"modified":"2026-02-20T14:04:08","modified_gmt":"2026-02-20T14:04:08","slug":"police-receive-reports-of-crime-in-relation-to-pauline-hanson-interview","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/492524\/","title":{"rendered":"Police receive ‘reports of crime’ in relation to Pauline Hanson interview"},"content":{"rendered":"

One Nation senator Pauline Hanson has accused the government of trying to put her “back in jail” after police received reports of a crime in relation to the senator’s inflammatory comments about Muslims during a media interview.<\/p>\n

Senator Hanson was speaking on Sky News when she made the remarks, drawing widespread condemnation from politicians and community leaders.<\/p>\n

She later offered a partial apology.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In a statement, the Australian Federal Police said it was aware of the interview and further comment would be made “at an appropriate time”.<\/p>\n

In a post on social media, Senator Hanson said the government was trying to use its new hate speech laws<\/a>, which were legislated in response to the Bondi terror attack, to put her “back in jail.”\u00a0<\/p>\n

Ms Hanson spent a brief time in prison in 2003 for election fraud before the Queensland Court of Appeal quashed the conviction.<\/p>\n

“Stop gaslighting the Australian public,” she wrote.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“If Australia doesn’t speak up now our nation will fall victim to the same issues being experienced across Europe, the UK, Canada and other western societies.”<\/p>\n

In 2024, the Federal Court found Senator Hanson had a tendency to make anti-Muslim comments and that she had breached the Racial Discrimination Act over a social media post directed at Greens senator Mehreen Faruqi.\u00a0<\/p>\n

One Nation MP Barnaby Joyce told the ABC on Friday, before Senator Hanson released her statement, that he had not seen the AFP’s comment.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“I don’t know anything about. I need to know who, what, where?” he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Mr Joyce said he believed Australia was “not a multicultural nation, it is an Australian culture”.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Comments seek to divide, says PM<\/p>\n

On Friday, Canterbury-Bankstown Mayor Bilal El-Hayek called for the senator to be charged under the new hate speech laws, which prohibit the public incitement of hatred, discrimination or violence against protected groups.<\/p>\n

“Clearly, her target was clearly the Muslim people. And I have no doubt that her remarks will incite someone,” he said.<\/p>\n

Lakemba Mosque, the largest mosque in Australia, has reported three threatening letters since the start of the year.<\/p>\n

Community leaders said people had been asking them if it was safe to attend prayers.<\/p>\n

Calls for more security after third threatening letter to Sydney mosque<\/a><\/p>\n

Another threatening letter has been sent to Lakemba Mosque in Sydney’s west, the third in recent weeks just hours before the start of Ramadan on Wednesday.<\/p>\n

Ms Hanson’s comments have been condemned by both sides of politics.<\/p>\n

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said Ms Hanson had made a “career out of dividing Australians” in an interview with the Guardian published before the AFP confirmed it was considering the case.<\/p>\n

“This is someone who doesn’t ever look for unity. She looks to blame people who she regards as not being like her,” he said.<\/p>\n

Liberal leader Angus Taylor distanced himself from the comments and insisted the Coalition was focused on “core values” rather than race or religion in regards to its immigration policy.<\/p>\n

“I will always distance myself from people who think this is about anything other than protecting our way of life, focusing on our core values,” Mr Taylor said.<\/p>\n

“I don’t see that focusing on race and religion is the answer to that. I see us focusing on values and what we believe in as the priority here.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"One Nation senator Pauline Hanson has accused the government of trying to put her “back in jail” after…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":492525,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[64,63,29622,16386,5315,74115,44,14754],"class_list":{"0":"post-492524","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-australia","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-australian-federal-police","11":"tag-comments","12":"tag-investigation","13":"tag-muslim","14":"tag-news","15":"tag-pauline-hanson"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/492524","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=492524"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/492524\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/492525"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=492524"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=492524"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=492524"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}