Pauline Hanson (Queensland, Pauline Hanson's One Nation Party) Share this | Hansard source

I have to comment today on Senator Thorpe's remarks in this chamber with regard to the safety of this building. I first entered parliament when I was first elected as an independent, and no-one felt more alone than I did at that stage. I've been an independent woman in the lower house. The parliament is a safe place. I have no problems with it and have never had any problems with walking the halls and in this chamber.

What I find offensive is her remarks and her crocodile tears. I'm not going to defend Senator Van because I don't know the circumstances. But I do know that this is coming from a person who is the most abusive woman, in one case to a respectable Aboriginal elder, Aunty Geraldine Atkinson, who had to receive medical attention. There was her abuse of Senator Hollie Hughes, and there were cases of abuse involving other senators here—'All the war; this is war.' The fact is that to lay yourself in front of a Mardi Gras truck or you stand on the streets of Melbourne, in a criminal space with a lot of criminality, and abuse men there at three o'clock in the early hours of a Sunday morning. I made a comment to a woman of this chamber and I got a reply: 'Fuck off.'