{"id":6741,"date":"2026-05-07T10:59:11","date_gmt":"2026-05-07T10:59:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/6741\/"},"modified":"2026-05-07T10:59:11","modified_gmt":"2026-05-07T10:59:11","slug":"i-feel-for-my-volunteer-pauline-hanson-tears-up-apology-to-paterson-over-poll-booth-clash-siding-with-her-volunteer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/6741\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018I feel for my volunteer\u2019: Pauline Hanson tears up apology to Paterson over poll booth clash, siding with her volunteer"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>One Nation leader Pauline Hanson has sided with her volunteer after originally apologising to Liberal Senator James Paterson over a clash at a polling booth on Wednesday.<\/p>\n<p>The clash unfolded when a One Nation volunteer appeared to grab Senator Paterson\u2019s phone during a heated exchange, <a class=\"body-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.skynews.com.au\/australia-news\/politics\/pauline-hanson-apologises-on-behalf-of-party-to-liberal-senator-james-paterson-after-alleged-assault-by-one-nation-volunteer\/news-story\/bd2ddd573c3342d262bd0eb464c6d034?preview=true\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\" target=\"_blank\" data-tgev=\"event119\" data-tgev-container=\"bodylink\" data-tgev-order=\"bd2ddd573c3342d262bd0eb464c6d034\" data-tgev-label=\"australia-news\" data-tgev-metric=\"ev\">prompting an apology from Ms Hanson<\/a> on Wednesday night.<\/p>\n<p>Hours later, however, One Nation chief of staff James Ashby accused Senator Paterson of provoking the incident.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t condone any action where things get aggressive and behaviour gets out of hand here, but James Paterson went into that rage baiting, he went looking for a blue,&#8221; the One Nation chief of staff claimed.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Speaking to journalists in Albury on Thursday afternoon, Ms Hanson said she was \u201cstanding by my volunteer in that whole scuffle\u201d, insisting she had not seen the full footage of the incident on Wednesday night.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhen I first heard about it I was just about to go on air with Chris Kenny and I didn&#8217;t get the full story,\u201d Ms Hanson said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSince then, I&#8217;ve been able to watch the full video clip of it and I feel for my volunteer.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Ms Hanson said the clash was caused by \u201cdirty politics\u201d and that she would personally shake the volunteer\u2019s hand.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWell, haven&#8217;t I seen the dirty politics come out, especially in this election. And you know what? People are fed up with it, absolutely fed up, as I am,\u201d Ms Hanson said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBecause the people who are screaming out for change, they don&#8217;t give a damn about the politicians. They really don&#8217;t. It&#8217;s about representing the people.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAnd these gutter politics that&#8217;s going on at the moment, you want people want, they want change from the Labor and the Greens and the Teals. They want the conservatives to work together.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Ms Hanson said she would not \u201cget in the gutter\u201d like other politicians, referring to the Coalition\u2019s attacks against One Nation\u2019s Farrer candidate.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe people don&#8217;t want it, they won&#8217;t get it from One Nation. But I tell you, I&#8217;m going to meet that volunteer. And I&#8217;m going to shake his hand and I am going to stand by him,\u201d Ms Hanson said.<\/p>\n<p>Mr Ashby told SkyNews.com.au that he accused Mr Paterson of provoking the confrontation after reviewing the footage.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cDavid Farley and I made contact with Senator Paterson after hearing of a scuffle involving him and a One Nation volunteer at the polling booth to make sure he was ok,\u201d Mr Ashby said.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"poster-img\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/b5f22ca58f1d225524af14f82e0bf79c.jpeg\" data-sctrack=\"op-poster-img\" alt=\"James Paterson \u2018grateful\u2019 for Pauline Hanson\u2019s apology after clash with One Nation volunteer\" fetchpriority=\"high\"\/><\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe had not seen the video footage at that stage.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOnce I was able to review the footage Senator Paterson had personally filmed and provided to TV networks, it became obvious that the Liberal Senator had deliberately provoked the response from the pensioner.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSenator Paterson should be ashamed of himself.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Senator Paterson told Sky News on Thursday that the private response he received told a different story.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWell,\u00a0I&#8217;m scratching my head because the One Nation volunteers who are on the booth\u00a0came up to me and immediately\u00a0apologised,\u201d he\u00a0said.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAbout half an hour later James Ashby called me and put David Farley on the phone and both of them apologised to me.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The shadow defence minister also revealed assurances were given about the volunteer involved.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThey assured me that the volunteer\u00a0in\u00a0question wouldn&#8217;t be appearing on the booths again,\u201d\u00a0he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"One Nation leader Pauline Hanson has sided with her volunteer after originally apologising to Liberal Senator James Paterson&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":6742,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[8171,22,21,8170,1955,8169,1926,1668],"class_list":["post-6741","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-ashby","tag-au","tag-austrlia","tag-james","tag-one-nation","tag-paterson","tag-pauline-hanson","tag-sky-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6741","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=6741"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6741\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6742"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6741"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6741"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6741"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}