Former One Nation senator Brian Burston has made claims of sexual harassment against his former boss and leader of One Nation, Pauline Hanson.
Senator Burston was previously serving under the One Nation banner until he and Senator Hanson became engaged in a feud which saw him quit the party in June of last year. Shortly after abandoning One Nation, Senator Burston joined Clive Palmer’s United Australia Party (UAP) and is currently it’s only serving parliamentarian.
Speaking to the The Daily Telegraph, Senator Burston has levelled sexual harassment allegations against his former party leader, saying that Senator Hanson had acted inappropriately towards him over the last 20 years of working together. He described an alleged encounter in 1998 where Senator Hanson had “rubbed her fingers up my spine”.
He also claimed that Senator Hanson had repeatedly propositioned him for sex following his entering of Parliament in 2016.
Appearing on Sky News, Senator Hanson dismissed the claims, saying that she “can’t stop laughing about it” and that she was “not that desperate” in spite of her age.
In October of last year, Senator Hanson was embroiled in controversy after she made a senate motion in which she declared it was “OK to be white”, a motion that was backed up by several Government senators. This caused Prime Minister Scott Morrison to say that it was “regrettable” that members of the Government had supported the motion that shared a popular white supremacist slogan.