Awkward moment ABC staff are booted out of One Nation event by Pauline Hanson’s chief of staff WITHOUT her approval: ‘They should have stayed’
Two ABC journalists have been kicked out of a One Nation event the night before the vital Farrer by-election.
The awkward encounter was captured by Nine News on Friday, and showed the two reporters packing up their stuff and being escorted out of the media event just moments before it was about to start.
One of the ABC staffers could be heard asking if One Nation candidate David Farley ordered their exclusion.
The party volunteer replied: ‘That doesn’t matter, come on…sweetheart, please.’
One of the ABC journalists hit back: ‘We are a tax-funded organisation.’
One Nation chief of staff, James Ashby, then chimed in to tell the reporters to remove themselves from the event, saying ‘bye-bye to the ABC’ as he ushered them out of the function.
Ashby said it was him who had ordered the pair to leave, and added their chief of staff in Canberra would know why.
The ABC journalists informed him that they were from Wodonga, which neighbours Albury in the Farrer electorate.
‘We serve the local community,’ one reporter said.
But it appeared Ashby’s direction was not favoured by Pauline Hanson who demanded answers over their exit.
‘Why, if they’re local ABC? Rural and regional?’ she asked.
‘Because they’re reporting back to ABC Canberra. They were told,’ Ashby replied.
Hanson responded: ‘They shouldn’t have gone.’
The Farrer by-election will be held on Saturday following the resignation of long-term member and former Opposition leader, Sussan Ley, after her defeat in a Liberal Party leadership spill in February.
Farrer has historically been a safe Coalition seat since its creation in 1949, but Saturday’s contest has been labelled a ‘political earthquake’.
For the first time in decades, the Liberal and National parties are competing against each other for the seat, but One Nation has been backed to win it.
Ley had held the electorate from 2001, and Saturday’s by-election is the first major electoral test for the new Liberal leader, Angus Taylor, and Nationals leader Matt Canavan.
Polling suggests One Nation’s Farley could win the party’s first-ever federal lower house seat.
Labor is not contesting the seat.