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One Nation leader Pauline Hanson says she has ambitions to lead Australia as Prime Minister, as the far-right politician confirms she is weighing up a run for the lower house in the next federal election.
Senator Hanson told Sky News Sunday Agenda she believed she had the “ability” to take on the top job.
“I won’t knock the job … I’m not going to underestimate myself or say ‘No, I can’t do it’, because you know, have a look at what we’ve got now … and that’s why we’re in a mess,” she said.
“I don’t know if I will ever take the position, but … it’s not about Pauline Hanson … wanting to go and be Prime Minister, it’s getting the right person into position to drive this country.”
She earlier told the same program a lower house run was “in the mix”.
“But I’m not making a decision now, and I’m not going to tell anyone what I’m doing at this moment, because I haven’t clearly made up my mind,” she said.
The Prime Minister is elected from the lower house as the leader of the party that wins the most seats in the House of Representatives.
Last week, polling by Redbridge Group and Accent Research found One Nation could clinch up to 59 seats if an election were held in May, unseating the Coalition in every state except NSW, Victoria and the NT.
The figures predicted Opposition Leader Angus Taylor had a 98 per cent chance of losing his seat of Hume to a One Nation candidate, while the Nationals would be cleared out of the lower house entirely with zero MPs left.
The Liberals would only retain seven seats, the modelling shows, meaning One Nation would become the federal opposition.
The results, alongside the far right party’s landslide win in the Farrer by-election, was a sign it had tapped into an “undercurrent” of discontent among Australian voters, Senator Hanson said.
“People are fed up and they want change,” she said.
“It’s not just about Coalition, it’s about Labor, it’s about the Greens, it’s about everyone. (Australians) are hurting so much. They want truth.”
Asked in the same interview about her controversial “no good Muslisms” remarks, Senator Hanson said she would “stick with what I said”.
She subsequently did not rule out clamping down on Muslim immigration.
“I want to ban the burqa, right? So if you’ve got people coming from these countries that are radical Islamists and their ideology is not compatible with our country, (then) yes, I do,” she said.
As of 2021, Australian Muslims made up about 3.2 per cent of the national population, according to census data.
Senator Hanson went as far as to endorse a ban on immigration from “certain countries” in a move that echoed the so-called “Muslim ban” enacted by US President Donald Trump.
“There’s certain countries I probably would ban them coming into Australia,” she said.
Her “no good Muslims” remark, made during a February Sky News appearance, was met with severe backlash from the community, as well as parliamentarians of all political leanings, including Anthony Albanese, who said her rhetoric “legitimises (Muslim hatred)”.
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