One Nation leader Pauline Hanson doubles down on Robert Irwin satire video during Bunbury anti-wind farm rally

One Nation Leader Pauline Hanson has stood by a video depicting Robert Irwin despite legal threats from his lawyers and claimed Mr Irwin’s famous father Steve wouldn’t have been offended. Ms Hanson made the comments while speaking to media after attending a protest in Bunbury over a contentious offshore wind farm zone proposal off the South West coast where she was a guest speaker. The Senator said she would not be taking the video down and that Robert Irwin shouldn’t be offended by it. “He (Robert Irwin) is a Queenslander, I’m a Queenslander, instead of getting precious about it just lighten up,” she said. “Robert, lighten up mate, your father was an iconic picture in Australia, he was a larrikin, he would actually laugh it off.” The video in question was part of Ms Hanson’s satirical Please Explain series where in this episode Mr Irwin shows cartoon character Bluey around Queensland as part of an ad campaign. It depicts housing, youth crime and land rights issues in the State and ends by Mr Irwin exclaiming, “I can’t believe this is the state of Queensland” followed by the One Nation logo. Ms Hanson did not directly answer when asked whether she would fight a defamation case if it came about but simply said “the cartoon is not coming down”. Mr Irwin’s lawyers said the video caused “significant harm to our client’s brand and image” to their client and could lead to people thinking he was affiliated with the party. Ms Hanson rejects the latter claim and said she’d never met him before. Earlier in the day, Ms Hanson spoke to the Bunbury crowd about the wind farm proposal and said renewable energy projects lacked direction while refuting climate change is man made. “Let’s get fair dinkum about this, I’m not gonna talk about the science behind it, Martine can tell you those sort of things,” she said. “The facts are they are an absolute eyesore, the facts are that what are they going to do with these wind turbines and the solar panels when they’re finished with it?” Ms Hanson was met with cheers from the more than a hundred people who attended the Bunbury event, with a mixture of South West locals and others who had made the trip from elsewhere in the State. Also speaking at the event was Save Our Beloved Geographe Bay campaign coordinator Martine Shepherd who said locals would not stand for the proposal. “If you can join the dots, you’ll see we’ve got industrialisation of our oceans happening that’s going to destroy commercial fishing, it’s going to destroy rec fishing and you enjoying your beaches,” she said. “Your tourist towns are going to be completely degraded to something other than a coastal mining zone, “If this is what you want, that’s great, rollover but if you don’t, it’s time to stand and unite for Australia.” Recently independent South West MLC Sophia Moermond also took to the stage and said while she did support reducing human carbon print, wind farms were not the way to go. Her speech also veered away from turbines a number of times as the Upper House member lambasted the live sheep trade export ban, the potential to be eating insects and perceived threats from gender ideology.