Mr Roberts-Smith was not at the event, whose organisers had invited Senator Hanson to speak.\u00a0<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The former SAS corporal previously lost a bid to challenge the result of his high-stakes defamation case against Nine. (AAP: Bianca de Marchi)<\/p>\n
The former SAS corporal faces five counts of the war crime of murder in Afghanistan. He has yet to enter pleas but has categorically denied the allegations.<\/p>\n
\u00a0“I\u2019ve been in Ben Roberts-Smiths’ shoes, as far as facing a criminal trial. I\u2019ve been there, and it\u2019s a distressing time, and especially when you know you\u2019re innocent and I think Ben needs to know that people are supportive of him,” Ms Hanson, speaking at a barbecue organised by Mr Roberts-Smith’s supporters in Brisbane on Sunday, said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“In some ways, I know exactly what he’s going through.”<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Pauline Hanson addressed several dozen attendees at the Brisbane event.\u00a0 (ABC News: William Murray)<\/p>\n
Senator Hanson has been a vocal supporter of the former soldier.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Asked about rumours she may ask Mr Roberts-Smith to run for One Nation, she said “I don\u2019t think it would be fair to Ben to put that pressure on him. He\u2019s going through a hell of a thing at the moment”, and that she had not spoken to him about it.\u00a0<\/p>\n
She said she had met Mr Roberts-Smith several times and spoken to his parents.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Senator Hanson said the crimes he’s accused of, alleged to have occurred during tours in Afghanistan between 2009 and 2012, were “a long time ago”.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“I\u2019m not going to judge him, I can\u2019t, that\u2019s up to the courts now,” she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Senator Hanson, whose party has surged in popularity the past 12 months, was asked if she would move to the lower house so she could become prime minister if One Nation formed government.\u00a0<\/p>\n
She said it was “convention” that prime ministers must come from the lower house, not a rule.\u00a0<\/p>\n
But she said she was considering a move.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0“A lot of discussion will be had, and I won’t be indicating at this time where I’m standing,” she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Pauline Hanson says she has “walked in the shoes” of accused war criminal Ben Roberts-Smith but it wouldn’t…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":26331,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[14768,22,21,7148,1955,1926,211,212,24526,24528,24527],"class_list":["post-26330","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-afghanistan","tag-au","tag-austrlia","tag-ben-roberts-smith","tag-one-nation","tag-pauline-hanson","tag-qld","tag-queensland","tag-roberts-smith","tag-war-crime-murder","tag-war-crimes"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26330","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26330"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26330\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26331"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26330"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26330"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26330"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}