‘Legitimising them’: Hanson slams ABC host Patricia Karvelas for One Nation election night comment

ABC host Patricia Karvelas has come under fire after suggesting One Nation’s win in Farrer would be ‘legitimising them’ in the eyes of voters.

ABC host Patricia Karvelas has come under fire from One Nation leader Pauline Hanson after suggesting Saturday’s win in Farrer would be “legitimising” the party in the eyes of voters.

Speaking on the national broadcaster’s election night coverage as polls closed and the right-wing party appeared on the cusp of a historic win in the NSW seat, the veteran journalist was discussing the Coalition’s “contentious” decision to preference One Nation over independent Michelle Milthorpe.

“It was actually people like Ron Boswell who was a vey well known National who campaigned to put One Nation last, so that’s the history, that you’ve got the most conservative people who believed it was a big and dangerous mistake to legitimise One Nation and to embolden One Nation,” Karvelas told co-host David Speers.

“Here we’ve had (Opposition Leader) Angus Taylor make a deliberate decision to preference One Nation above the independent, which tonight could really be one of the reasons they get across the line.

“We’ll see how the votes come through but that will be key, and that will legitimise them. I used the term earlier on in the broadcast the permission structure — if they are able to win their first lower house seat, that begins the process of legitimising them, and in other electorates where they may run, voters thinking well it’s happened before, it’s normal now, you start normalising something and in fact the decision itself might put them further away from power so they actually could have just shot themselves in the foot by making this decision.”

David Speers and Patricia Karvelas. Picture: ABC

One Nation’s David Farley defeated fellow frontrunner Ms Milthorpe and Coalition candidates Raissa Butkowski and Brad Robertson to clinch the seat in Saturday’s by-election, triggered by the exit of former opposition leader and long-time Farrer MP Sussan Ley.

Mr Farley held a double-digit lead within two hours of polls closing.

One Nation’s win breaks the Coalition’s 77-year hold on Farrer, a sprawling rural seat which stretches along the Victorian border in southwestern NSW, taking in Albury, Griffith, Leeton, Deniliquin and Wentworth.

The commanding win gives the rising populist party its first federal lower house seat, and comes after a similar outperformance in the South Australia state election in March saw One Nation pick up four lower house and three upper house seats.

Senator Hanson blasted Karvelas’ comments.

“One Nation won the seat of Farrer with close to 60 per cent of the two-party-preferred vote in a democratic election,” she wrote on X on Sunday.

Pauline Hanson and David Farley. Picture: Jesse Thompson/Getty Images

“Last night the ABC, our $1 billion-a-year taxpayer-funded national broadcaster, implied that One Nation was an illegitimate political party.

“This morning on Insiders the ABC allowed commentators to declare One Nation was ‘at its core’ ‘a racist and bigoted’ party.

“The ‘impartial’ ABC failed to challenge or even debate the claim.

“Other supposedly ‘impartial’ media outlets have published similar articles, dismissing and demonising the millions of Australians who have said they would vote for One Nation.

“These people don’t get it. We live in a democracy.

“Labor, Liberal, the media, the academics and the lobbyists don’t get to decide who represents Australian people.

“No one except the people of Australia get to decide who is ‘legitimate’ and worthy of representing them in Parliament.

“On Saturday, the people of Farrer chose One Nation.”

One Nation supporters celebrate. Picture: Jesse Thompson/Getty Images

Speaking to Sky News, Ms Hanson said she “can’t believe it”.

“This is what I’m saying, it’s the sheer arrogance,” she said.

“Like we don’t have any right to be on the political scene. Well, what the hell? Isn’t this a democracy? Don’t you put your policies forward and what you want to do for the country?

“Isn’t it up to the people or are we a third-world country, we have no right to go out there and express what we want to do for the country?

“This way they’ll lose. I’m telling you, this sheer arrogance from both sides, that’s why they’ll lose. People want down-to-earth, commonsense people who are really there to fight for them. That’s what it’s about.”

An ABC spokeswoman said Karvelas’ quote “was edited and misrepresented the point she was making”. “Patricia Karvelas’ comments in full were referring to the historical debate inside the Liberal and National parties about preferencing One Nation,” she said.

“These were not Patricia Karvelas’ own views.”

Karvelas, in an op-ed on the ABC website on Monday, argued One Nation’s win “could not have come with more ominous timing”.

“While One Nation was humiliating the Liberal and National parties, back in the mother country, Nigel Farage’s Reform UK was smashing the Labour Party,” she wrote.

“For years, Pauline Hanson has had her eyes on the prize of a lower house seat in the federal parliament.

“When she recruited former Nationals leader and deputy PM Barnaby Joyce to her ranks, it gave her a psychological edge that has proved to be a political game-changer.

“Drafting Joyce created a permission structure that has allowed conservative or swing voters to support and, it turns out, vote for One Nation.”

Opposition leader Angus Taylor. Picture: Simon Dallinger/NewsWire

Speaking to supporters at the official watch party in Albury after claiming victory, Mr Farley said One Nation had “reached the end of its beginning”.

“We’re going through the ceiling,” he said, calling the win his “biggest achievement” and the “most euphoric experience” he has had.

He went on to name water, health and immigration as his other key concerns.

“We’re not going to implode any of our industries that are reliant on good quality, assimilating migrants into the country,” he said.

“But we’re not going to entertain people to come here and live off our balance sheet, our purse and give us nothing.”

Ms Ley, who held the seat for 25 years and quit after being rolled as Liberal Party leader earlier this year, urged the party she used to lead to “accept this result with humility”.

She hastily left federal politics after her ousting and has kept out of the public eye, despite pumping $250,000 into the Liberal candidate’s campaign.

“The seat of Farrer was created in 1949,” Ms Ley said in a statement.

Liberal candidate Raissa Butkowski casts her ballot. Picture: Simon Dallinger/NewsWire

“Until tonight, at every one of the 30 elections since, through different and challenging circumstances, it has been held without exception by the Liberal and National parties.

“It would be an error to reduce both the scale and significance of tonight’s defeat to a Coalition split which occurred months ago, or to misattribute it to the date the vote was held.

“I urge the Liberal leadership to accept this result with humility because the voters never get it wrong.

“On the day the leadership spilled in February, the new leader said the Liberal Party needed to ‘change or die’.

“Three months later, the result in Farrer demonstrates that statement to be far truer today than it ever was then.”

Her successor conceded “this is tough” but refused to say One Nation posed a threat to the Coalition.

Mr Taylor told Sky News the Coalition had focused too much on the “politics of convenience” rather than “conviction”.

“And we’ve got to get that trust back,” he said.

“And that means … being honest with the Australian people that mass migration has not worked for this country.

“Being honest that the net zero ideology is driving up energy bills and sending industry offshore.

“Being honest that big government and too much spending is driving up inflation and interest rates and making Australian poorer.”

Labor responded to Saturday’s result by declaring it “catastrophic” for Mr Taylor’s leadership.

“After knifing their first ever female leader in Sussan Ley, voters in her old seat have sent a clear message to Angus Taylor that under him, the Liberals are no better,” Cabinet minister Murray Watt said in a statement.

“The Liberal Party has held Farrer for around 60 of the 86 years that the seat has existed. Tonight they look like finishing a distant third, or even fourth.

“Even worse, by directing preferences to One Nation, they have delivered this extreme, chaotic party its first ever win for a lower house seat.”

— with NewsWire