One Nation leader Pauline Hanson and Barnaby Joyce are touring Tasmania this week, meeting businesses and industries the party says are struggling under state and federal policy.
Pauline Hanson weighed into the row over Trevallyn Primary School’s Christmas event upon entering the state, saying Christmas should be celebrated in schools and those offended were “in the wrong country”.
Joyce, a former deputy prime minister turned One Nation MP who is travelling with Hanson, said Australia was built on a “Judeo-Christian tradition” and would not be bullied into becoming an atheistic country.
In an exclusive interview with Pulse, Pauline Hanson, Barnaby Joyce and One Nation Tasmanian State President Lee Hanson outlined their plans for the visit.
Lee Hanson said the visit was about “speaking to the community” and businesses “having to get bailouts both state and federally”.
The group has met the Housing Industry Association and Greyhounds Australasia and plans to visit the Bell Bay aluminium smelter and recently-sold Rushy Lagoon farm in the north-east.
Lee Hanson said they would also meet several business and industry representatives and visit “agricultural and cider houses”.
Pauline Hanson said two business people had approached her on the flight down to voice their concerns.
“They said … local, federal and state [governments] are destroying their businesses and they don’t know who to turn to,” she said.
Joyce said governments would not need “so many rescue packages if we didn’t have a federal policy and a state policy that was doing its very best to smash industry”.
He said the idea “that someone in a room in Canberra can change the weather has not changed anything but has made people very poor and has deindustrialised Australia”.
“How about we just change the policies in such a form as these industries can survive? Because that is actually the long-term benefit,” he said.
“Otherwise, you have this ridiculous concept where you send people broke, but you give them money so they can just buy the bread and the milk.”
Pauline Hanson said the Bell Bay smelter, which recently received a federal government bailout, was “necessary”.
“We have to keep this smelter because the byproduct … it’s used in the steel manufacturing,” she said.
The visit comes after Australian Bureau of Statistics figures released last week showed Tasmania’s trend unemployment rate held at 5.2% in September, the highest in the nation.
The national rate was 4.6%.
One Nation is registered to contest Tasmanian state elections. The latest DemosAU poll, conducted in September, put the party on 21%, behind the Liberals on 28% and Labor on 22%.
