Pauline Hanson has answered the Sydney Morning Herald's fake news story about the empty $900 a night London hotel room with paperwork. One Nation HQ has provided copies of Expedia invoices to News.com.au's Samantha Maiden. The party says those records kill the claim at the centre of the story: the rooms weren't left sitting empty for five nights while Hanson was in Italy, because the booking was changed. And the party has opened its books on the rest. Party funds paid for the flights and accommodation, drawn, the party says, from the interest its war chest, a fundraising pool of nearly $20 million, earns. The Fire the Liar donations never left the bank.
It's worth knowing who's asking you to believe the original version. The Herald and The Age are owned by Nine Entertainment, which collected $16,126,110 in taxpayer funded wage subsidies from the Albanese government's $67.6 million Journalism Assistance Fund, a scheme One News broke the story on. Nobody who took that money has to tell readers about it while publishing stories about somebody else's donors. This is what it buys.
Hanson's statement, posted this morning, left nothing open to interpretation, and called out Paul Sakkal, one of the two Herald journalists behind the story, by name.
"When mainstream media publish lies, it only diminishes their trust with the Australian public. Expedia invoices prove that allegations made in the SMH are false. One Nation HQ have provided copies of those invoices to Samantha Maiden from News.com.au who I trust will correct the false story published in Nine owned newspapers.
"I can also confirm that Fire the Liar funds have been quarantined to fight Labor at the next election. Spotlight have been shady from day one. Original travel plans for the Spotlight episode were to be paid by channel Seven. They pulled out forcing One Nation to cover all travel costs. I can confirm that while I was in Italy, accommodation in London was cancelled.
"Sources who lie should be outed, Paul Sakkal. They only make you look sloppy."
Within hours the records were public. News.com.au reported the receipts put a different account on the record: the five empty nights claim doesn't survive them, because the itinerary moved. On the party's telling, the only unused nights were bookends. One night was booked before anyone landed because the Conrad had no early check in, and the last went unused when Hanson and James Ashby flew out early to make a Perth business breakfast put on by The West Australian. One Nation confirmed the flights and accommodation were paid from party funds, and News.com.au understands the party's war chest across its fundraising now runs to nearly $20 million, with the trip paid out of the interest it earns rather than the donations themselves.
The Herald's own story concedes there's no allegation a rule was broken
Read past the headline and the Herald's own copy starts giving the game away. "There is no allegation Hanson has breached political spending or disclosure rules," the story concedes, several hundred words below a headline about party funds.
The disclosures that do exist are Hanson's own. She updated her parliamentary register of interests on Tuesday, declaring that Gina Rinehart paid for her flights from London to Sicily between 11 and 16 July, inside the Senate's rules. Her register entry says she personally covered her own costs in Italy, the hotel, the meals and the day to day expenses. And she has said throughout that taxpayers didn't pay "one cent" towards the trip.
Then the admissions stack up. "It is unclear how many nights she stayed at the hotel," the paper wrote, beneath a story claiming rooms were paid for and left vacant for five nights. Staff at the Conrad London St James declined to comment when the Herald came asking, citing privacy. The only funding documents cited anywhere in the story are the ones Hanson lodged herself.
The Herald's 'insider' knew where Hanson slept, not who paid the bill
Strip the hit piece down to its evidence and the five star scandal turns out to be a rumour with room service.
Source one is described as "an insider with knowledge of Hanson's UK booking schedule". A booking schedule shows where someone is booked, and nothing about who paid or from which account.
Source two told the Herald that party insiders "were led to believe" the party's general funds would carry the Hanson and Ashby costs. On that narrow point the party now agrees, with the detail the Herald never had: the money was the war chest's investment income, not the donations the story spent paragraph after paragraph gesturing at.
Even the $900 figure is an estimate. The Herald says rooms at the Conrad "average £450 ($860) a night during peak season". A seasonal average became "$900-a-night" in the headline, and the Herald cited no invoice for the rate it printed.
Set against that: receipts the party has supplied, now with a newsroom Nine doesn't control, that flatly contradict the five empty nights. Their story still rests on two people who wouldn't put their names to it.
The Fire the Liar millions are in a term deposit, and the Herald printed that too
The insinuation doing the damage is that donor money bought luxury, the nearly $5 million raised from almost 80,000 supporters in the Fire the Liar campaign. That money is accounted for on the record, twice. James Ashby, named One Nation's party director on Monday, said every dollar raised "had been placed in a term deposit fund", a locked bank account that earns interest until the money is drawn out. The Herald printed that statement inside the same story it headlined with party funds. Hanson went further this morning, saying the funds "have been quarantined to fight Labor at the next election".
Who those donors are is documented too. An AFR analysis put 88% of donations at $100 or under, averaging $73. If you're one of the 80,000, the only on the record account of your $73 is that it's banked and waiting for the election.
Hanson: Seven planned the travel, pulled out, and left One Nation with the bill
Her post today also gives her account of where the travel costs came from, and why. On that account, the original plan had Channel Seven paying the travel for its Spotlight episode. "They pulled out forcing One Nation to cover all travel costs," she said.
That squares with the paper trail Seven itself created. The pitch email from Spotlight producer Luke Mortimer, leaked and published in full by One News, raised it directly: "We can discuss travel arrangements for you and Pauline to the UK." Seven has since said publicly it paid only for "incidentals" around the filming with British activist Tommy Robinson, a vehicle, a room used for filming and security for its own staff.
"Spotlight have been shady from day one," Hanson said. Readers who watched what that pitch became will remember why: an episode One Nation says was sold to it as an immigration special aired as an hour on Hanson's fitness to lead. Seven has defended the program, saying it "fairly quizzed Senator Hanson but also allowed her views to be explored and heard".
The Herald's sentence puts a Seven crew beside the booking schedule
The Herald leaves the impression its sources are One Nation insiders. One sentence is worth reading slowly.
"An insider with knowledge of Hanson's UK booking schedule told this masthead the Queensland senator stayed at the luxury Conrad London St James hotel in July after travelling to Britain with a Seven Network Spotlight crew last month."
On the Herald's telling, Hanson travelled to Britain with a Seven Spotlight crew, the trip was costed for her and James Ashby, and Seven paid for security around its filming. On Hanson's account, the itinerary was drawn up while Seven still planned to pay for the travel. The people who knew her movements were never limited to her own party, and they included a production crew whose relationship with her had just collapsed on air.
Her verdict on Spotlight sits in the same short post as her demand that sources who lie be outed, and the party has now joined those dots itself: One Nation blames Spotlight for the leaks, News.com.au reported, while noting it doesn't assert the claim is true. One News doesn't assert it either, but note what the Herald's wording doesn't say. "An insider with knowledge of Hanson's UK booking schedule" is never identified as a One Nation insider, and the same sentence puts a Seven crew on the trip.
Whoever the sources are, they now have a problem anonymous sources rarely face: documents. Editorial convention protects an anonymous source only while the source tells the truth. The Herald granted its key source anonymity "to speak freely", and there are now published receipts to test what was said freely.
Three questions the Herald's story leaves open:
- Did either source claim to have seen a payment record, or only the bookings?
- Will the Herald test its sources' claims against the booking records now published?
- If the invoices show its sources lied, will it keep protecting them?
Nine's papers have been here before. Last month's Hanson and Barnaby Joyce "rift" was built the same way, on sources who wouldn't be named, and every named person denied it.
