The media’s reaction to One Nation’s anti-democratic outbursts has been supine, a shameful abrogation of the obligation to defend the freedom of the press
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The day before the Farrer byelection on 9 May in which Pauline Hanson’s One Nation party delivered a seismic shock to the Australian political landscape, her party apparatchiks banned the ABC from attending its election-eve press conference.
Thirteen days later, another party apparatchik told a journalist from Guardian Australia to “shut up” during a press conference in Adelaide about the party’s policy on oil and gas. Hanson was later heard describing the journalist as a “nasty bitch”.