One Nation leader Pauline Hanson has condemned Channel Nine after a Ku Klux Klan leader praised her political rise during a new documentary examining politics and division in the United States.
The comments were made by Thomas Robb, a longtime leader of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, during Nine’s documentary Trump’s America: The Divided States.
Robb reportedly raised Hanson’s name during the interview before Nine reporter Reid Butler asked him about the One Nation leader and her anti immigration policies.
“Is it heartening for you to see someone like anti immigration Pauline Hanson doing well in Australia?” Butler asked.
“Yeah, yeah, it’s encouraging, absolutely,” Robb replied, according to reporting on the broadcast.
Robb then drew a comparison between Hanson and the KKK, saying she was “demonised by the same element of people that wants to demonise us”.
He went on to discuss Hanson’s opposition to immigration from countries including China and other parts of Asia, saying she wanted to restrict immigration because of concerns about Australia’s racial makeup and culture.
Hanson has strongly rejected any association between One Nation and the Ku Klux Klan.
“This is disgusting and a new low for the Australian media,” Hanson said in a statement.
“The Ku Klux Klan is a white supremacist organisation with a long history of racial hatred, terror and violence.”
She criticised Nine for sending an Australian journalist to the United States to interview a KKK leader and broadcast his views to an Australian audience.
“Any suggestion that One Nation or its supporters endorse the KKK or share its ideology is absurd and offensive,” Hanson said.
She also questioned the editorial decision to include the KKK leader’s views in a programme examining Australian politics.
“There is something seriously wrong with a media organisation that believes Australians need to hear what the Ku Klux Klan thinks about Australian politics and chooses to promote those views,” she said.
“Channel Nine should be ashamed of itself.”
What the interview actually establishes
The broadcast establishes that a senior KKK figure expressed support for Hanson’s political rise and described aspects of her immigration position favourably.
It does not, by itself, establish that Hanson, One Nation or its supporters endorse the KKK or its ideology.
That distinction is important because the KKK’s views are those of the organisation and its representatives, rather than evidence of a shared political position unless such a position is independently established.
The controversy comes amid wider scrutiny of Hanson’s political associations and statements.
In recent weeks, Hanson has also faced criticism over resurfaced comments about Indigenous Australians. She later offered a qualified apology, saying she regretted using the term “primitive” and did not intend to offend people. The Australian Human Rights Commission’s First Peoples and race discrimination commissioners separately condemned the comments.
Recent reporting has also examined connections between One Nation and figures on the far right, including people associated with anti immigration activism. Those reports are separate from the Nine interview and should not be treated as evidence that One Nation endorses the Ku Klux Klan.
The Channel Nine controversy therefore centres on whether the decision to broadcast Robb’s comments amounted to legitimate examination of Hanson’s political support and associations, or whether it created an association between One Nation and the KKK that Hanson says is false and offensive.
