Pauline Hanson interview | One Nation's polls, Albanese, ISIS brides & more!

Well it seems each week we see new polling that shows just how strong One Nation has become.Overnight new Redbridge data published in the Australian Financial Review has brought even more good news for the party.One Nation officially Australia's most popular political party with a potential first preference vote of 31%.That's higher than the government's 28 % and leaps and abounds ahead of the coalition's 20%.Now, once preferences come into play, the ALP is ahead 51 -49 against One Nation.But it's clear there's an orange wave coming for the Parliament at the next federal election.

Pauline Hanson is the leader of One Nation.She's on the line.Senator, good morning to you.

Good morning, Mark.

Prime Minister Pauline Hanson.How does that sound and could it happen?

Mark, Mark, let's just take it back a notch or two.Yeah, right, OK. I'm having shakes now when you said that.But anyway, listen, I haven't been in this long race for my health and it's like a marathon race.You've got to last a distance and get there, but that's what we have.It's another year and a half, two years before the next election.Let's see how we go.

But people are screaming out and crying out for change.I've been out on the last four days from eight o 'clock in the morning till about 10, 11 o 'clock at night, just speaking to people, speaking engagements, getting out to country areas and people want change.change they've set up the two major political parties and it's I tell you what yeah I feel a lot of ways I feel vindicated by the polling that's coming through but like I said the true polling day is on election day.

Could it happen though Pauline?You in the lot?

Well, I'm not going to back away from it.If I'm out there pushing as leader of the political party and pushing my policies and telling people what I want to do for the country and my country, I've got skin in the gray again.This is my country.I'm not just here as a politician.I'm here as a representative of the people, having a voice.I'm sick and tired of the way things are going.

And of course, do I have the ability to do it?You bet I have.I'm backing myself, Mark.I'm not going to back away from it.it.You know, it's not a job for everyone and it takes a lot of guts and determination.

But Mark, what's important?I don't know everything.So what you do is you get the good people around you to make it happen.If you don't put your mates in, this is not a job for the boys.This is a job to get the right people around to make the decisions.And that's where I'd be hard about it.

It's not because the unions say you've got to have a decent number of members representing unions.It's not about big business.All the rest of it is getting right.people to work with me to bring about change.

All right.Well, with that said, Pauline, to be prime minister or even opposition leader, you need to sit in the lower house.I know you've said that you're considering it.What's left to consider?Surely you're going to make a run for the lower house.

Mark, you don't have to, because it's only convention that says the prime minister comes from the lower house.John Gorton was in prime minister from the Senate for three months.So the constitution does not stipulate that you have to be the lower house to be the prime minister.So it's a lot to be taken into consideration.Yes, I am considering standing for the lower house seat, but I'm not going to determine that now.It's still another year and a half, two years outside the election.

Mark, I can tell you, they will go after me.You know, both major political parties have got such a mean streak in them now, and so has the media, that they've got such such a watchdog over the top of me.Everything that I do, wherever I go, my com card to my flight, they've even put my plane up on an app saying where I'm flying, how much it costs to fly there.No cost to the taxpayer, but just all this.FOIs are coming left, right and centre.They're now attacking everything that I do.

They didn't take an interest in me beforehand, but now they're really scared and frightened about losing their own seats, and so they should.

Well, I guess off the back of that, Pauline, can you keep this momentum going right over the next two years?I spoke to your Chief of Staff, James Ashby, on this show last week about the vetting process of your candidates in the lead up to the next election.How do you ensure and how do you weed out controversial figures to ensure the party isn't embroiled in controversy ahead of the next election?

I totally agree with you.It's not unlike some of the other political parties.They had that ruckus that went on in Victoria with the candidate they selected there who was a supporter of a pedophile.So every political party has the problems with some of their candidates they endorse.We've come a long way, Mark.Just go back.

I came back to head this party in 2015.There was nothing.We had absolutely nothing.No office, no staff.staff, nothing.So I've rebuilt it from there.

We've learnt from our mistakes.We've had to, you know, scratch around.Now, in the seat of Barrow, we had 81 people put up their hand to be the candidate.We went through the vetting process.We came down to the last three in branch, selected from that last three.We've had 1 ,500 expressions of interest.

We're already working on that now to go through, see if they comply with section 44.We go through whether they've been bankrupt, whether they've had DVV, DVV, domestic violence against them.You know, this is a big process that we go through.

You can't afford controversy, can you?I mean, it's all well and good, you're riding a crest of a wave at the moment, but you've been in politics long enough to know that it only takes one silly comment, one controversial moment, and that support can dissipate pretty quickly.

And this is what some of them are doing.They're trying to come into our branches and disrupt the branches and making some stupid bloody comments, which then goes back to us.Any association that we may have, they try to make out I was associated with a Nazi organisation, which I'm not.So we're getting false lies put out there.us and we're all the time combating this.Mark, I run a party that I want the down -to -earth, grassroots Australians.

I'm not going to have ratbags around me.And if I do, well then they're not part of the party.They will never get in to be a candidate.Because we've been around for a while, we've got those loyal ones who are grassroots Australians from all different backgrounds, whether it be in the tradies out there, people who run businesses themselves.I had a professor from the university said, I wish I could run for you.He said, but I can't at the moment.

And these people from all different political persuasions of the past are saying, we've had a gut feel.We see the problems that's happening out here.We want to get involved.

Well, just on that, what is the one issue?I mean, when I go down to the local shopping centre, Pauline, people stop me and say, Mark, I've turned on Labour, I've turned on the Coalition, I'm voting One Nation.What's the one issue people stop you in the street, Pauline, in your travels and say, Pauline, you've got to do something about this?What's the one issue that overwhelmingly comes to you from the electorate?

Well, the cost of living.Basically, the cost of living is the factor of the driving electricity charges that Small businesses are going under, so it's cost of living and mass migration, the number of people in Australia, so that's having a real impact.That's why people don't trust the major political parties anymore because they've been responsible for this situation we're in now.They don't like the way the country is going.So their understanding, the congestion on the roads, you can't get in to see a doctor, you can't get in to the hospital to have your operations, these are all impacting.The cost of electricity is driving up the cost of your goods.

the lack of farming sector.Another one, big one, is crime, escalating crime.People don't feel safe in the streets anymore.So I'd say it's those three big things.Small business is struggling.

Well, I'd love to know, Pauline, what you do with these ISIS -linked women and children, right?Because I've really been hammering this over the last week or so because I think Tony Burke's getting away with it off the back of a pretty ordinary budget.I cannot believe that we've got a Royal Commission on anti -Semitism and social cohesion while at the same time we're allowing terror sympathisers back into our country.I've said, well, OK, if they're citizens, well, we need to have a look at a constitutional amendment.to stop those people who leave our shores to support a terror regime from coming back to Australia.What would you do about these ISIS -linked women and children, Paulo?

That's right.Since they've come back in here, eight charges have been laid.Those charges that were laid, they would have known that, and that would have been the reason why you could have kept them out of the country, not to return here.No one's been able to answer me, have they got dual citizenship?If they had dual citizenship, you could strip them of their Australian citizenship.You can't leave anyone stateless.

That's another thing as well.The cost of the taxpayer, well, I'd actually be hitting up their families to pay this for the cost of bringing them back in the country.And another thing too, those passports were processed here in Australia, handed to one of the friends to take it over there to deliver to them.That should never have happened.So there are instances there that they could have stopped it all.It's been going on this long, but they want them in the country.

A lot of these Muslim electorates down there are predominantly in Burke's and Clare's and Bowen's electorate.And this is why they want it.And they're sympathisers of the Muslims.I don't care what Elberlazy says and gets up there and says, and Burke says, no one in the wide world.And I've been so strong on this that I don't want these radicals here in Australia.You've got 18 ,000 under a watch list, I don't know for what reason.

and then you've got 220 that possibly are of this ilk that we're watching them.Stop them coming in the country in the first place.And as I said, ban the burqa.If you ban the burqa, that will stop these people of mindset who wear the burqa, control their women, and have that mindset, they will not come to Australia in the first place.

Well, just on that, Pauline, and I want to ask you this, and I've wanted to ask you this for a long time.I know it's a hypothetical at the moment.If you were to become prime minister, You would need to be a Prime Minister for all Australians.You've been outspoken about various ethnic groups over the years and some people to this day still call you a racist.So my question, Pauline Hansard, is can you actually be a Prime Minister for all?

Of course I can be a Prime Minister for all those who want to be Australians.You know, I did a radio interview just before and they said, oh, well, it will come down to the Chinese and the Indians in these communities of how the vote goes.And I thought, hang on a minute, why are we determining whether they are Chinese or Indians?Aren't they Australians?And that's what we are missing here, is that people of their cultural backgrounds.Yes, we acknowledge that we are multiracial.

but we must be Australians and that's what people are screaming out for.

But Pauline, if I could just butt in there for a second if I can.I mean, I'll put my hand up and you'd be aware of this.I was critical of your comments about Lakemba being unsafe and I actually attended the Lakemba night markets to coincide with Ramadan and I met some wonderful, wonderful people.As Prime Minister though, would you visit Lakemba, which falls into Tony Burke's electorate?

I'd go to the festival.I've gone to the Chinese festival, Chinese markets and different things.I'm down in Adelaide, the big Chinese market down there.I went to the Sikh temple when I was in WA last time.I did a speech before them.So I go to these places.

I'm not hiding by all means, but you could see, he went to the Lakemba mosque just to prove a point.Well,wasn't he scared?You could see it on his face.And then when he was booed and carried on, when he walked through the streets, you know, that shouldn't be happening in Australia.

But Pauline, I've just got to pull you up for a second.You were invited to the Lakemba night markets this year.Why didn't you go?

I think I had something else on, Mark.You know, my diary is so cool.Just because I've been invited there doesn't mean, say, I have to cancel some other engagement to go there.So don't put it on me just because I've invited that I've got to turn up.I've got a lot of things that are going on in my life constantly all the time.And I don't live down in Sydney where it's just the next suburb across from me. I get all of that, Pauline, but it did go for a week.

So I just think it's important for me to pick you up on that and ask you the question.

Yeah, but that's fine.You're putting the hypothetical, would I be prime minister?Yes.If you're prime minister of this country, yes, you must be prime minister for all people that are here as Australians.So I expect people, if you're here in this country and you want to become Australian, then you be Australian and you actually assimilate.

I'll tell you one thing, Pauline.It is refreshing to get straight answers out of a politician.I'll put that on the record.Hey, it was your birthday last week, so happy birthday.You sat down for a meal with Clive Palmer.Was that awkward?

No, no, no.

Not a mealie.He said my nation's just another version of the Liberals.What are you doing sitting down with big Clive?

He turned up in my office with a bunch of flowers and two birthday cakes that I shared with my staff.So anyway, and you know what?He said to me a couple of years ago, a year and a half ago, he wanted to take over the party.And I said, it's not for sale, Clive.Okay, that's it.So anyway, he turned up and he said, you know what?

He said, you're doing a good job.Good on you.So anyway, that was a nice, refreshing comment to get from Clive.But I'll tell you what, Mark, we're not joining together.We are not going to be partners inpolitics and he definitely won't be standing as a candidate for One Nation.

So I'll put that to rest.

All right.One last one before you go.I'm not ageist at all, right, Pauline, and I want to make that very, very clear.Come the next election, you'll be, what, 74?

So my question...No, that's right.OK.It depends what it is. I could be 73 or going on to 74.

But the reason I wanted to put that on there, and I know it's very rude of me to say that, but, you know, one thing I wanted to say, you know, 74 years of age, a lot of people are slowing down.A lot of people saying, you know what, time to put the feet up and just relax.But I get the sense these polls have just fuelled your desire to keep going.

You know, Mark, I was already fuelled to keep going because people were trying to write me off for the last election, but I'm still here anyway.You know, how long is a piece of string?It will come down to my health.I've got nothing wrong with me. I take no medication, nothing.I've got more energy in me than a lot of these other people.My staff are flat out keeping up with me from 8 o 'clock in the morning till 10, 11 o 'clock at night.

I can still run down the halls of Parliament in my heels when I have to get to the chamber.So don't underestimate me and there's a lot of other leaders around the world.I'll let the people know this, I've already told my staff if I can become like a Joe Biden just tap me on the shoulder and give me the will to move on.

Oh, Pauline.You make me laugh.

And I'm not myself.There's one member of Parliament there I think should move on.I think he's passed it, but I'm not mentioning any names.

Come on, you've got to tell us who it is now, Pauline.

You can have a guess yourselves, but anyway.

Does it rhyme with Anne for re -Anne for Albinushi?

Anyway, have a guess yourselves.Anyway, I'm passionate about what I'm doing.I want change for the country and it comes down to who's the right person to do the job.So it's not about Pauline Hanson becoming Prime Minister, it's getting the right people around in there into that position to make change for the people out there.

All right.Well, next time you're in Sydney, pop into the studio.I reckon there's a whole heap of listeners here that would love to have a chat to you and put some questions to you as well.Can we do that?

Love to.Awesome.

Talk to Jane.Let's tee it up.All right, Pauline, we'll chat soon.

All right.Bye, Mark.Bye -bye.Thank you.

No worries.Pauline Hanson, leader of One Nation.