‘She’s straight down the barrel’: Joyce defends Pauline Hanson as polls show support for One Nation slipping

One Nation MP Barnaby Joyce has defended Pauline Hanson’s blunt approach to politics after One Nation’s support slumped in the latest Resolve poll.

The latest polling showed One Nation’s primary vote fell three percentage points, while the Coalition gained three points.

WATCH THE VIDEO ABOVE: One Nation support plummets after monoculture debate

Senator Hanson also recorded an eight-point drop as preferred prime minister compared to last month.

Pollsters said women and migrants were the two biggest groups to abandon One Nation, raising questions about whether the party’s recent positions on multiculturalism, abortion and paid parental leave had contributed to the decline.

Senator Hanson sparked widespread debate last month after calling for Australia to abandon multiculturalism in favour of a single national culture, proposing the abolition of paid parental leave and suggesting she did not believe there were any good Muslims, comments that drew criticism from political opponents and community leaders.

Despite the result, Joyce backed Senator Hanson, telling Sunrise on Monday her willingness to speak plainly was one of her defining qualities.

“She doesn’t try and gild the lily,” Joyce said.

“She’s straight down the barrel.”

Joyce defended Senator Hanson’s views on Australian culture, arguing there should be clear expectations for those who choose to live in Australia.

“We can have multiculturalism, which means you’re accepting of a whole range of things which may be anathema for the Australian people, or you can have an Australian culture which has to work within guardrails,” Joyce said.

“Guardrails that clearly say you must work in a form that respects other people’s liberties and views and if you want to have views outside the guardrails then its untenible for Australia,” he said.

He argued Senator Hanson’s focus was on preventing future acts of violence and maintaining social cohesion while ensuring “the issues, especially what we saw tragically at Bondi, are not repeated”.

He said that required “a substantive statement”.

“You’ve got to be brave enough to make it, if you don’t want to make it you accept that it will happen again and again and again and each time we’ll say oh that’s terrible,” he said.

“That’s not good enough. We have to have a clear statement about what is appropriate in being an Australian citizen and being part of this nation, that you have to respect other people,” he said.

“It’s not a statement about people’s colour, or their creed or their religion, it’s a statement about how people act,” he said.

Community Independent MP Allegra Spender rejected the suggestion Australia had to choose between multiculturalism and a shared national identity.

“We were immigrants; my mum was Italian, stepped off the boat with no English, made a huge contribution to the country,” Spender said.

“We grew up in a culture where we had the best of Italian culture, but we knew every single day that we were Australian. We don’t need to have this fight of monoculturalism or multiculturalism.”

Spender said she was not surprised some voters had turned away from One Nation, pointing to Senator Hanson’s proposal to scrap paid parental leave.

“Families are really hurting,” she said.

Spender also accused Senator Hanson of unfairly targeting Muslims, warning such rhetoric was “really damaging” and “quite dangerous” for Australia.

“If you’ve got politicians like Pauline Hanson saying that she doesn’t think there are any good Muslims, then it is about faiths. It is about saying some people don’t belong here, and I think that is actually really damaging and actually quite dangerous for our country.”

“I want to fight extremism, there is extremism in this country, it has no place. Violent extremism of any creed has no place but having a go of people just on the basis of religion, that’s not Australian either,” she said.

Joyce argued Australia should not be embarrassed about having its own national culture.

“If you live in Saudi Arabia, you must be part of an Islamic culture. If you live in Thailand, you’re part of a Buddhist culture. There’s a Shinto culture in Japan. We have an Australian culture, and I don’t think we should be embarrassed about it,” he said.

Spender agreed that Australia does have it’s own cuture saying that Australian values were founded on tolerance of others.

She said those values also included democratic institutions and being “a peaceful nation” of people who are peaceful with each other.