One Nation distances from senator’s Covid claim
One Nation is cleaning up another controversy involving past comments of a veteran senator as Pauline Hanson’s party tries to present itself as credible.
Source: X
One Nation MPs have again been forced to distance themselves from the views of veteran senator Malcolm Roberts after video surfaced of him claiming deaths during the COVID-19 pandemic were “staged”.
In a video interview published in 2025, Senator Roberts questioned the extent of deaths during the early days of the pandemic.
“Major news broadcasters had these videos of people dying in their droves in makeshift morgues in the streets of New York, the streets of Beijing, the streets of Italy,” he told a forum hosted by podcaster Sam Hope.
“We thought it is pretty serious from what we’ve seen. We didn’t realise until fairly recently that those were all staged. They’re bulls–t.”
Malcolm Roberts is a long-term political colleague of Pauline Hanson. Photo: AAP
One Nation MP Barnaby Joyce on Wednesday distanced himself from the comments, while adding he didn’t want to throw his colleague “under a bus”.
“Malcolm’s a great guy, he’s so smart, but on that issue I don’t concur with his view,” he told Sky News.
“He’s entitled to have it and I’m entitled to have mine.”
Joyce also apologised for his bizarre outburst during an interview with ABC’s 7.30 on Monday night, during which he yelled at his dog to sit down midway through a sentence.
“You couldn’t hear it, but I could. And it was under my skin,” he said.
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“It was under the floor, under the deck and it was just barking incessantly.”
In the resurfaced interview, Roberts also questioned the severity of Covid, saying people were “conned” about its impact.
“The chief medical officer who was involved in staging a lot of the lies we were told by the bureaucracy … the chief medical officer’s graphs showed low to moderate severity,” he said.
The senator added he wrote to then-prime minister Scott Morrison and then-Queensland premier Annastacia Palaszczuk requesting “evidence” but didn’t receive a reply.
The One Nation senator has previously been accused of promoting conspiracy theories and anti-Semitic tropes.
He has not directly addressed the criticisms in recent days, although he took to social media to accuse mainstream media outlets of “selective cherry picking and dishonest distortions … on behalf of their uniparty mates”.
One Nation has faced increasing scrutiny as it rises in the polls, soaring above both the coalition and Labor in some surveys.
However, a Roy Morgan poll published on Tuesday showed the anti-immigration party’s primary vote dipped more than five percentage points to 22.5 per cent in the space of a week.
The poll, conducted during One Nation leader Pauline Hanson’s widely publicised trip to Europe, showed coalition support rising to 23 per cent and Labor unchanged on 27.5 per cent.
Hanson has been under fire since returning from the UK, where she conducted an interview with anti-immigration activist and convicted criminal Tommy Robinson and told a conservative conference Australia had been “flooded” with migrants. She also visited Italy with billionaire benefactor Gina Rinehart.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese accused the One Nation leader of using the trip to engage with fringe people and to talk Australia down.
Speaking to reporters at the weekend, he said Roberts had “a history of promoting conspiracy theories”.
“His views are not worthy of being a senator,” Albanese said.
Candidate defends drugs past
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Hanson has her eye on another seat in a state byelection, backing in a former cocaine user despite the party cracking down on crime.
She is backing gym owner Luke Herdegen in the Western Australian seat of Secret Harbour, an electorate south of Perth.
A coach and fitness manager, Herdegen vows to be tough on crime, aligning with the views of WA One Nation leader Rod Caddies.
“Crime is up in the suburbs with the electorate, as is homelessness. Traffic for morning commuters is getting worse,” Caddies wrote in a social media post.
Herdegen has brushed off criticism of his past, including a 2019 social media post where he admitted to heavily using cocaine before turning his life around.
“That’s a story I put out there to try and help inspire people to live happier and healthier lives,” Herdegen said on Tuesday.
“When I’m in the streets of Secret Harbour, they’re not asking me about a blog post from 10 years ago.
“I deactivated my social media to protect my family from people like [journalists].”
When Hanson was asked about the cocaine use, she said she knew nothing of it.
“I have been out of the country and I just briefly met Luke yesterday,” she said, referring to her European trip.
Just days earlier, Caddies had backed the party’s candidate-vetting process.
“I am very satisfied,” Caddies told The West Australian.
“We used a system which checks everything – adverse media, email screening, phone screening, banned or disqualified persons’ screening, court screening.”
Hanson has vowed to put Labor and the Greens last in preferencing at the August 29 byelection.
One Nation is also using AI-generated social media posts that claim the Labor state government has neglected the seat.
At a Seven West Media event in Perth on Tuesday, Hanson said she hoped to work with the Liberals and Nationals to kick Labor out of Secret Harbour.
Labor won 46 per cent of first preferences in the seat at the 2025 election.
One Nation was fourth, just behind the Greens. At 8.4 per cent of first preferences, it got more than double the party’s statewide average.
—with AAP
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