Greens accuse One Nation of foreign interference with no proof, Hanson demands a withdrawal

Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young used a Senate debate on deepfakes to accuse Pauline Hanson's One Nation of being "up to their neck" in foreign interference, then gave the chamber nothing to back it up. Hanson rose on a point of order, called the claim "untrue" and demanded it be withdrawn.

The clash played out on Thursday during debate on a bill to crack down on deepfakes, and it's all there on the Australian Parliament's own recording of the Senate.

What Hanson-Young told the Senate

Hanson-Young pointed to a wave of AI deepfakes she said were "primarily run by operators in Vietnam" and being "used as part of foreign interference." She cited a fake video of Sunrise host Natalie Barr, then swung it onto her political opponents, saying she was "very concerned that there are some in our political class who are benefiting from the foreign interference of this type of deepfake technology."

Then she named One Nation. She questioned "just how involved they are in a number of these deepfake accounts," and said the party was "up to their neck with foreign interference and political meddling in this country." She named no foreign government, and she produced no evidence connecting One Nation to a single one of the accounts.

"I put it to you, Deputy President, that One Nation is up to their neck with foreign interference and political meddling in this country. I would ask Senator Pauline Hanson and her One Nation Party just how involved they are in a number of these deepfake accounts. Are they involved? Who's paying for them, and what is their connection?"

- Sarah Hanson-Young, Senate, 25 June 2026

Hanson hits back

Hanson was on her feet within seconds. "I think that language is offensive. It is untrue, and I want it withdrawn," she told the chamber.

When she got the call to speak, Hanson warned the deepfake bill was drafted so broadly it could sweep up One Nation's own "Please Explain" satirical cartoons. She also pointed out that the fakes flooding social media target her, not the Greens. "They've got me out there as Wonder Woman," she said, "all this deepfake as a band leader singing in a band."

Then the line that landed. The Greens, Hanson said, "would dearly love to have my social media," noting her own following had passed a million. The presiding senator noted there was no point of order in any of it.

"I think that language is offensive. It is untrue, and I want it withdrawn."

- Pauline Hanson, on a point of order

"They haven't got the guts to say it outside, but they'll throw these false allegations at me across the chamber. But that's the Greens for you."

- Pauline Hanson

"Senator Hanson-Young and the Greens would dearly love to have the social media that I have. They probably know I have over a million followers, who are organic, on my Facebook page alone."

- Pauline Hanson

So what happened to the bill?

Nothing, as it turned out. The deepfake bill never made it to a vote. The debate hit its time limit and was cut off mid-speech, with the President declaring it "interrupted" and the Senate moving straight on to the next item of business. Senator Pocock's My Face, My Rights Bill was left stranded on the Notice Paper, to be picked up again on a future sitting day.

It was headed for defeat in any case. Labor said it would not support the bill, preferring its own "digital duty of care" plan, One Nation opposed it outright, and the Coalition was lined up against it too. Only the Greens and David Pocock were in favour, so had it gone to a vote, it would have failed.

Two different things: real deepfakes and political cartoons

This is where the whole fight turns, and Hanson drew the line herself. The bill, independent senator David Pocock's Online Safety and Other Legislation Amendment (My Face, My Rights) Bill, is aimed at one thing: realistic AI deepfakes of real people, the kind used to abuse and humiliate, very often women. Nobody defends those, and as Hanson noted, the eSafety Commissioner already has the power to take abusive deepfakes down.

A political cartoon is the other thing entirely. One Nation's "Please Explain" animations caricature politicians, the way cartoonists have for centuries, and Hanson said they had taught the public more about politics than the bill ever would. Her objection was that the drafting was so broad it could sweep cartoons up too, with "no carve-out for satire, yet satire has been a legitimate and widely accepted tool for political commentary for centuries." She called it "a lawyers' picnic."

On that, the law is already on her side. Satirising politicians is lawful, protected by the implied freedom of political communication the High Court has recognised, and by an explicit parody and satire exemption in the Copyright Act. A cartoon only crosses a legal line when it states a false fact about a named person, not when it pokes fun. Even the Greens' David Shoebridge conceded the bill catches only material that depicts someone "in a realistic way," admitting "this isn't picking up political cartoons."

What the evidence actually shows

Here's the part Hanson-Young left out. The AI content she was waving around has already been traced, and not to One Nation. An AAP FactCheck and the RMIT Information Integrity Hub both traced the deepfakes to foreign, profit-driven content farms chasing ad revenue, with no link to One Nation established.

More awkward still for the Greens, a lot of that content features Pauline Hanson herself, including the debunked Natalie Barr clip. The fakes use Hanson. They aren't made by her. So a Greens senator stood up in the Senate and recast a foreign clickbait operation that targets her opponent as a One Nation plot, with the country's own fact checkers already on the record saying the opposite.

Who is Sarah Hanson-Young?

Hanson-Young has been a Greens senator for South Australia since 2008 and was one of the youngest women ever elected to federal parliament. She came up through refugee advocacy, and asylum seekers have been her defining cause ever since.

Today she is the Greens' manager of business in the Senate, with the environment, water and the arts as her portfolios, and one of the chamber's most aggressive critics of One Nation. Just days before the deepfake debate she branded Pauline Hanson and the party "cultural vandals" in a Senate speech.

Her own conduct has drawn scrutiny. In December 2025 Sky News reported she had claimed almost $50,000 since 2022 for her husband, former Greens strategist turned lobbyist Ben Oquist, to fly between Adelaide and Canberra under the parliamentary family travel entitlement, on top of close to $3,000 in flights and accommodation to attend the Bluesfest music festival. It was within the rules, and she defended it, but almost $50,000 of taxpayer money to fly her Greens insider husband to Canberra was excessive by any measure, and she has since said she will stop claiming his travel.

She also has form for accusations she later has to take back. In 2018 she wrongly blamed broadcaster Ray Hadley for gender-based slurs against Julia Gillard, then apologised: "I regret the error... and I apologise to Mr Hadley." In 2021, after MP Andrew Laming's lawyers stepped in, she retracted and apologised over an upskirting claim about him that turned out to be wrong.

She also knows defamation law better than most, having won a landmark $120,000 case against then senator David Leyonhjelm in 2019, a verdict upheld by the High Court. A senator who has sued and won over a single insult, and who has twice had to retract claims she got wrong, chose to accuse One Nation of foreign interference from behind parliamentary privilege, where the claim can never be tested in a courtroom.

Why she can say it and not be sued

Here is the part that frustrates people. Under parliamentary privilege, anything a senator says inside the chamber is legally untouchable. Hanson-Young cannot be sued for defamation for accusing One Nation of foreign interference on the floor of the Senate, no matter how false or unproven the claim is. That immunity is centuries old, and it exists so politicians can speak freely in parliament.

The catch is that it stops at the door. The moment she repeats the same accusation outside parliament, on television, on social media or in a press release, the protection is gone and she can be sued for defamation like anyone else. It is why politicians save their boldest and least proven accusations for the chamber, and why Pauline Hanson dared the Greens to say it "outside this chamber," where it could actually be tested.

Why the Greens are reaching for "foreign interference"

Strip away the outrage and what is left looks a lot like sour grapes. One Nation has surged past the Greens in the polls, now leading federal voting intention on 30% to the Greens' 13%, and Pauline Hanson outpolls Anthony Albanese as preferred prime minister, 33% to 29%. She has also built one of the biggest organic followings in Australian politics. The contrast on Facebook alone is brutal:

• The Greens NSW: 43,000 followers
• The Greens SA, Hanson-Young's own home state: 6,500
• Sarah Hanson-Young's own page: around 139,000
• Pauline Hanson's One Nation party page: 428,000
• Pauline Hanson's "Please Explain": more than 1 million

That is the reach Hanson taunted the Greens about in the chamber, and it is a gap the minor parties cannot close.

When you cannot out argue or out reach a rival, the next move is to question how the rival got there. Branding One Nation's growth "foreign interference," with nothing to prove it, does exactly that. It tells voters the success is not real, that it was somehow manufactured offshore rather than earned. It is a way of explaining away a rise the Greens cannot match, and it conveniently casts the party beating them as the villain.

On what was actually put before the Senate, it was an assertion and nothing more. The only thing established in the chamber was that the claim came without proof, and that Hanson wanted it withdrawn. Everything else, the foreign farms, the profit motive, the fakes of Hanson herself, points away from One Nation, not toward it. Which leaves a simpler explanation than any foreign plot: the Greens are watching a party they cannot beat get bigger in the polls and on social media, and they do not like it.