Hastie called them lying cowards

The party's own caption on the July post sets the gag. Albo convinces Andrew Hastie that One Nation is behind the abuse in his comments section. Hastie declares war, takes the Liberal leadership, and puts Angus Taylor in a coma, where Robert Menzies is waiting with a few words about the Forgotten People. That is the cartoon's plot, not a news claim about anyone's health.

Hastie is a former SAS captain. He holds Canning, south of Perth. One Nation has said it will run against him at the next federal election, due by 2028. That seat fight is the backdrop. The Wednesday fight is about a word: traitor.

On Tuesday he had already written to supporters. The Guardian's 8 September piece put him promising a costly fight with Hanson and her chief strategist, James Ashby, over claims he is a traitor to Australia. On Wednesday he escalated on News24 and in Canberra doorstops. The Nightly, SBS carrying AAP, the ABC and the Sydney Morning Herald all filed the same core quotes.

He put it this way to reporters in Canberra: "Yesterday I said that Pauline Hanson and One Nation had called me a traitor to my own country, and today Barnaby Joyce and Pauline Hanson both denied it. Today I'm calling them lying cowards."

On News24 he went further. "I would say that Pauline Hanson and Barnaby Joyce are lying cowards, and I'll say it again so there's no ambiguity," he said. "They are lying cowards." Then the receipt: "And then: On July 23, at the top of her X account, she posted a cartoon ... I'm called a traitor eight times ... when you start calling me a traitor to my own country, then we have a big, big problem."

He also said the episode called him a "gutless maggot". That insult, he said, he could live with. Traitor was different. "It's a slur on me. It's a slur on other veterans who have given under oath evidence to federal court, and I'm calling on Pauline Hanson and Barnaby Joyce to either own this, don't be weak, don't be cowards, own it, and explain why I'm a traitor and why other veterans are traitors, or delete it."

He told News24 he loves his country, served it, and risked his life for it, "as have thousands of other veterans, and if I'm a traitor, then she should be calling them traitors too." He said neither Hanson nor Joyce had "served a day in our uniform overseas on operations". And he framed the rule-of-law line: "I stand with a lot of Australians who believe in the rule of law, who believe that Australian soldiers should be held to high standards of battlefield conduct."

Hanson answered on two tracks. On Tuesday, speaking to The Nightly, she denied calling Hastie a traitor and said she would call him a "wanker" instead, after he complained about One Nation targeting Canning. On Wednesday evening, back on News24, she said she would not take the cartoon down.

She put the service point this way: "Of course I do. I don't think he is a traitor, and I have the highest regard for people in the Defence Force, and (people who) have fought for, and are prepared to put their lives on the line for this country, and I always have, and I always will." Then the distinction she wants on the record: "I respect him for his services that he's done for Australia. But I have not called him a traitor, that was in a cartoon and that's it. I'm not calling him a traitor to this country, he made that statement and I never said that. It is a satirical cartoon for Christ's sake."

Joyce told the ABC he had never called Hastie a traitor "nor ventured anywhere close to any such statement about him. In fact, I have never said a bad word about him". He said Hanson had told him she had not used the term either. "This is now apparent as a fact, she hasn't. There has now come to my attention a satirical cartoon that made the claim. I had not seen it nor was I aware of it," Joyce said.

To other reporters he added a safety line. "I dearly hope that nobody is threatening Andrew or his family, and certainly not premising (threats) on anything to do with One Nation," he said. "It's got nothing to do with One Nation."

So the clash is plain. Hastie says the pinned party cartoon is the accusation, and that denying the word while leaving the tape up is cowardice. Hanson says satire is not her personal label, and the video stays. Joyce says he did not say it and did not know the cartoon said it. That is the Wednesday standoff.

Don't Be Hastie runs about nine minutes. It sits on the Please Explain channel and on Hanson's X. The YouTube title resolves as Don't Be Hastie - Please Explain. The Gold Standard is embedding that official episode against this cut.

Mark Nicholson runs Stepmates Studios in Fitzroy with Sebastian Peart. One News Australia's Brooke Mercer profiled him on 4 August 2026, when Hanson named him One Nation's lead upper-house candidate for Northern Metropolitan ahead of Victoria's 28 November election. Mercer wrote that Please Explain launched in November 2021 as a six-episode job and has since run past 100 fortnightly episodes, rebroadcast on News24. She attributed more than 120,000 views to Don't Be Hastie. That view figure is One News's reporting, not an audited certificate.

The same profile says Nicholson wrote A Super Progressive Movie with Peart, produced with James Ashby, and that a planned Parliament House launch in November 2025 was cancelled by the Department of Parliamentary Services under an events policy about content "likely to cause offence to any part of the Australian community". The film still premiered. That history matters only as context for how seriously One Nation treats the cartoon machine. Wednesday's fight is about one episode and one word.

Why does traitor land so hard for Hastie? Because the cartoon sits on top of the Ben Roberts-Smith case, and Hastie has already given evidence once.

On 7 April 2026 the Australian Federal Police and the Office of the Special Investigator arrested Roberts-Smith and charged him with five offences of the war crime of murder under the Commonwealth Criminal Code. The CDPP's case page lists alleged dates in 2009 and 2012 in Afghanistan, with maximum penalties of life imprisonment. On 17 April 2026 Local Court Judge Grogin granted bail. Non-publication orders apply. The matter remains before the courts. Roberts-Smith denies the allegations and is entitled to the presumption of innocence. That sentence stays in this piece every time the case is named.

Two days after the arrest, on Thursday 9 April 2026, Hastie posted a statement on his MP site. "In 2022, I was one of 21 SAS veterans of the war in Afghanistan subpoenaed as a witness in the defamation action brought by Ben Roberts-Smith against Nine Media," he wrote. "As a qualified member of the SAS, I was present on one of the operational missions in 2012 that was examined by the Federal Court. I gave testimony under oath, as required by law."

He continued: "Mr Roberts-Smith is now facing criminal charges in relation to this operational mission, so it is possible that I will be called as a witness to this trial. I urge every Australian to respect the rule of law, the criminal justice system, and the accused's right to a presumption of innocence and a fair trial. Therefore, I will not prejudice this trial by making any further comment."

On Wednesday he told News24 the party had politicised that proceeding. "There's a legal proceeding underfoot, and they have politicised that to the detriment of everyone involved, including Ben Roberts-Smith," he said. "How are we ever going to have a fair trial with this sort of politicisation of an issue so central to who we are as a country? I stand for the rule of law, as does the Coalition. One Nation either needs to own this cartoon and defend it, or they need to delete it."

SBS's AAP file noted that Hanson's closest supporter, billionaire Gina Rinehart, has backed Roberts-Smith and has named a planned housing complex for veterans in his honour. That is reported affiliation, not a finding about the charges. Keep it in that lane.

Hastie also said he was going to fight "exceptionally hard" to hold Canning against both One Nation and Labor in 2028. "I'm not worried about losing my seat; I'm worried about being called a traitor after serving my country," he said. "They thought I'd just lie down and take it. They've unlocked an achievement. I'm going to fight all the way." He said One Nation had "picked a fight with the wrong veteran".

Now the geography. Secret Harbour is a Western Australian Legislative Assembly seat on the coast south of Perth. On Saturday 29 August 2026, One Nation's Luke Herdegen won the by-election. It was the party's first lower-house seat in the state. Labor's Georgia Tree conceded on 30 August. The Gold Standard already filed that result under Bel McRae. This piece does not re-litigate every booth. It needs the numbers that sit under Hastie's federal problem.

First preferences, as counted and reported: One Nation's Luke Herdegen 39.1 per cent, a swing of about 30.7 points. Labor's Georgia Tree 24.1 per cent. Liberal Ryan Robertson 17.2 per cent. Greens Rhi Davies 7.8 per cent. On the two-candidate preferred count, Herdegen defeated Tree 57.2 per cent to 42.8 per cent. Liberals finished third.

One News Australia reported that about 72 per cent of Secret Harbour sits inside the federal division of Canning, with the rest in Brand. Attribute that split to One News; it is the figure circulating in the WA fight. Hastie has held Canning for years. One News puts his two-party preferred margin at 56.55 per cent and ties that cushion to One Nation preference flows at prior elections. Again, that is their arithmetic on the public record, not a new AEC dump in this paragraph.

The morning after the count, Hastie emailed supporters. One News quoted him: "In my own seat of Canning, there's a real risk Labor could win because the support we always counted on is now divided. But I'm not interested in making excuses. I'm only interested in winning and delivering the changes you and I believe Australia needs."

On 6 September, The Nightly's Joe Spagnolo put Hanson on the record about Canning. "He (Andrew Hastie) is now concerned about losing his seat – and of course, what happened in Secret Harbour is a clear indication of where people are casting their vote, in part of his seat," she said. "Andrew needs to put his head down and work for his electorate. If he thinks he's going to be saved, and that I won't run a candidate in his seat, he's wrong."

She said One Nation would run in all sixteen Western Australian federal seats. "Andrew Hastie has taken it personally because I'm standing a candidate in his seat," she said. "He feels insulted by that, as if I shouldn't run a candidate in Canning. But he has to realise that I'm an individual political party and a lot of voters are looking to One Nation now who don't want to vote for the Liberals, or Labor."

Hanson praised WA Liberal leader Basil Zempilas for preferencing One Nation above Labor in Secret Harbour. "What I liked about Zempilas is that he actually did work with One Nation in that seat," she told The Nightly. "He could see the writing on the wall, having no chance of winning the seat. So, he worked with us (One Nation) to oust Labor. That's what the Libs have to wake up to. They have to work with us, if they want to change government."

Hastie had already rejected that reading. In an ABC interview before the by-election, also mirrored on his site, he said: "This is a state election contested on state issues, and I don't accept this idea that a win for One Nation is a win for the Liberal Party." Five days out, One News reported he conceded One Nation was already ahead, said he and Zempilas did not "see eye to eye", called One Nation migration figures "brain rot", and told Ashby to "stick to the cartoons and the memes".

Back up to June, because Wednesday did not arrive from nowhere.

In late June, Hastie told Coalition colleagues he would rather be taken out in a box than bend the knee to One Nation, and that he would "do them slowly". Those lines were widely reported, including by WAtoday and One News. On Friday 26 June his newsletter, reported by Sky News and One News, declared: "One Nation has declared war on me, so they shall have war." He wrote that the fight was personal and that "they will have to blast me out of Canning". He reached for Sun Tzu: never press a determined foe. He warned colleagues that preferencing One Nation "signals weakness" and that peace would be "on our terms".

One Nation's reply then, as quoted by One News, rejected the premise of a campaign against him: "One Nation isn't driving any campaign against Andrew Hastie. The Liberals are doing plenty of damage to themselves; they don't need our help. We make no apology for joining the many Australians who support Ben Roberts-Smith VC."

The Guardian reported on 23 June that Hastie would receive extra security, which he linked to online targeting over his Roberts-Smith stance and what he described as a One Nation-fuelled campaign. One Nation denied driving threats. Separate those claims. Extra security is a home-affairs operational fact as reported. Causation is contested.

On 2 August, One Nation opened a Canning branch in Mandurah, Hastie's home town, according to the public timeline One News later assembled. On 23–24 July the Don't Be Hastie episode went up. On 29 August Secret Harbour fell. On 30 August Hastie wrote the divided-support email. On 6 September Hanson confirmed the Canning candidacy. On 8–9 September Hastie went to "lying cowards". That is the sequence without embroidery.

Inside the Coalition, Hastie's volume is not the only setting. The Sydney Morning Herald's Wednesday piece noted that Opposition Leader Angus Taylor has described One Nation as unfit to govern, but usually takes a more low-key line than Hastie or Queensland Liberal Garth Hamilton. Earlier this year Taylor rejected South Australian Liberal Tony Pasin's idea of the Coalition and One Nation carving up seats to beat Labor. The argument still has buyers in Coalition ranks, SMH wrote.

Asked about leadership ambitions at a doorstop, Hastie said: "The leader right now is Angus Taylor. I support him. I consider him a good, close friend, and my actions speak for me."

ABC's late-June leadership reporting had already framed the tension: colleagues watching whether Taylor would take the fight to Hanson as hard as Hastie, while others worried that hard lines cost right-of-centre votes. That is party-room politics, not a verdict. Wednesday's slur fight lands inside that unresolved argument.

A few clean lines on what the cartoon is, because satire fights always blur.

It is an official One Nation product. Hanson voiced the series from the start. The July episode is pinned on her personal X. Hastie's complaint is that the soundtrack of "traitor" inside that product is the party's accusation whether or not she reads the word aloud at a press conference. Hanson's reply is that she personally did not call him a traitor, respects his service, and will not treat a satirical reel as a formal charge sheet. Joyce says he was not in the cartoon business and did not know the line was there.

Courts do not decide X pins. Voters will. Canning is a 2028 problem. The video is a 2026 problem that Hastie has now forced onto the national wire.

Look again at Hastie's Tuesday letter, as the Guardian summarised it. He framed One Nation as trying to unseat him because he gave evidence against Roberts-Smith in the failed defamation case against the Nine papers. He called his critics cowards who do not believe in the rule of law. He warned of a costly fight in time and money. That letter is the bridge between the June war talk and Wednesday's News24 appearance.

SBS's brief put the human stakes without theatrics. Hastie is demanding One Nation delete a cartoon he says smeared his military service. The nine-minute video remained pinned. Tension with Hanson predates July; it sharpened when he was drawn into the Roberts-Smith litigation track. Joyce's Wednesday denial of knowledge sat beside Hastie's demand that someone in the party room own the language.

The Nightly's Wednesday write-up added Hanson's evening television answer in full enough form to quote cleanly. She would not remove the cartoon. She separated respect for service from acceptance of Hastie's framing. "Satirical cartoon" is the phrase she wants readers to hold. "Lying cowards" is the phrase Hastie wants attached to the denial.

AAP's Lucinda Garbutt-Young and Tess Ikonomou filed under the wire that Hanson denies the traitor claim after the lying-coward barb, and they reproduced the July X caption block. That caption is useful because it shows the party's own joke structure: Hastie as the Liberal who declares war on One Nation after Albanese whispers in his ear. The satire casts Hastie as the aggressor. Hastie says the soundtrack calls him a traitor to Australia. Both can be on the tape. Only one of those readings is a resign-or-delete demand.

Federal electoral reality in WA, as Hanson stated it to The Nightly: Labor holds eleven of sixteen seats, Liberals four, Teal Kate Chaney holds Curtin. Hanson said the Fire the Liar campaign had raised A$5 million to get rid of Labor, with Hasluck, Pearce and Bullwinkel also on the target list alongside Canning. Midland events near Hasluck's Tania Lawrence were already part of that west push in June, on Hanson's own telling.

Secret Harbour's longer Labor history matters for scale. ABC election coverage around the by-election noted the area had been Labor territory in different shapes since 1989, most recently held by Paul Papalia on an 11.5 per cent margin before his July resignation. Papalia had held the seat and predecessors since 2007. Sixteen candidates nominated. Casey Briggs called the seat for Herdegen a little over four hours after counting began. Rod Caddies, One Nation's WA leader, claimed victory at 9:30 p.m. local time before Labor conceded.

Caddies had earlier told The Nightly he had "no intention of fighting Andrew Hastie or the Liberals" and that he was going "to war with Labor", calling Hastie's posture a "ghost war". Federal campaigning is a different lane from state Assembly tactics. Hanson has now put Canning on the federal list in her own voice. Caddies's June peace talk and Hanson's September targeting can both be true at different levels of the party.

Election analyst Antony Green, quoted in The Nightly's earlier Secret Harbour preview, called a Canning loss for Hastie "the death knell of the Liberal Party" in that west scenario. Strong language from an analyst. Treat it as colour on stakes, not a forecast locked in.

Preference maths is the dull engine under the noise. Nightly reporting before the by-election said Hastie received about 78 per cent of One Nation preferences at the last federal contest, a touch above the state average. If One Nation finishes first or second in Canning next time, those preferences do not flow to him the same way. That is why a state by-election inside his footprint had federal readers glued to WAEC's feed.

Zempilas had claimed a One Nation win would be a win for Liberals because it showed Labor falling. Hastie rebuked that. The Liberal how-to-vote in Secret Harbour still preferenced One Nation over Labor. Herdegen won. Zempilas phoned congratulations, as did Nationals leader Shane Love, according to contemporaneous WA reporting. Hastie's federal brand and the state Liberal machine are not the same instrument.

James Ashby sits in the middle of Hastie's costly-fight warning. Ashby is One Nation's national director and has been the public strategist on the cartoon and campaign side. Hastie's August Karvelas interview jab — that Ashby might have spent money on "the cartoon he made about me" and should stick to cartoons and memes — is on Hastie's own transcript trail. Ashby is named in the Guardian's 8 September costly-fight piece beside Hanson. This newspaper is not litigating Ashby's private spending. It is noting who Hastie has put on notice.

Please Explain's production habit is speed. Mercer's studio profile described six-day sprints and a fortnightly drop. That industrial rhythm is why a July episode can still be the pinned artifact in September. Deleting it would be a political act, not a technical one. Leaving it up is also a political act. Hanson chose leave-up on Wednesday night television.

What about Joyce's role? He is One Nation's Member for New England after defecting from the Nationals path into Hanson's party room — the precise timing of that move is outside this week's wire, but Wednesday's photos from AAP's Mick Tsikas show Hanson and Joyce together at Parliament House earlier in the week. Hastie called out both names. Joyce's defence is personal innocence plus late discovery of the cartoon. Hastie's reply is that leadership owns the channel.

Veterans' language cuts both ways in this story. Hastie invokes overseas operational service. Hanson invokes respect for the Defence Force while refusing Hastie's traitor frame. Roberts-Smith remains a Victoria Cross recipient facing criminal charges he denies. None of those facts cancel the others. A fair paper prints them adjacent and lets the reader hold the tension.

The defamation history is already adjudicated on the civil standard. Roberts-Smith lost against Nine. Appeals failed. The High Court refused special leave. That civil outcome is not a criminal conviction. The April charges start a different process. Hastie's April statement tried to keep politicians out of the witness box of public comment. His September fight is about a cartoon he says drags veterans who gave evidence under oath. He is talking again, narrowly, about reputation and rule of law, while still pointing at a fair trial problem he says One Nation created.

Online abuse in Hastie's comments sections is part of the cartoon's premise and part of his real complaint history. The Guardian's June security story and Hastie's own remarks about comment-section campaigns sit behind the satire. Satire that names a living MP as traitor eight times is still a party publication when it is pinned to the leader's account. That is Hastie's legal-political theory in plain clothes.

Will there be a court case over the cartoon? Hastie has hinted at costly process without filing a statement of claim on the Wednesday wires this desk used. Hanson has not pulled the episode. Joyce has not claimed editorial control. Until someone sues or the pin disappears, the public fight is rhetorical and electoral.

Canning's next federal roll will open in a different Australia from 2025. One Nation's national primary has moved — the Gold Standard has already filed Bel McRae's early-September poll piece on that shift. This cut does not re-run every poll table. It is enough to say the party that took Secret Harbour is not a fringe visitor in Hastie's patch anymore.

Hanson told The Nightly she expects WA preselections for 2028 early next year. That calendar is her statement, not an AEC writ. Candidates' names for Canning are not yet the story. The story today is the word on the soundtrack and the refusal to delete.

Metric note for overseas readers: Secret Harbour and Mandurah sit roughly fifty to seventy kilometres south of Perth's CBD along the coastal strip, depending on which corner of the districts you measure. Canning covers Mandurah and inland shires in that southern corridor. Distances are approximate locality, not a surveying brief.

Money note: Hanson's A$5 million Fire the Liar figure is her fundraising claim as reported 6 September. It is not a disclosure return reproduced here. Treat it as a party boast on the record.

Media note: News24 carried both Hastie's lying-cowards hits and Hanson's evening refusal. The ABC took Joyce's denial. The Nightly took Hanson's wanker line and the later respect-for-service lines. SBS and AAP put the short wire into wider circulation. SMH framed the Coalition contrast with Taylor. This desk is synthesising those primary trails, not inventing a fourth quote.

For readers who want the tape, the official Please Explain upload is the exhibit. Watch it yourself. Count the traitor lines if you want to check Hastie's eight. This newspaper is not a closed captioning service. It is telling you why a Liberal frontbencher spent Wednesday detonating two colleagues' denials.

One more beat on tone. Hastie said he had been lying low while an online hate campaign ran, then decided to put his career on the line. That is his self-description in the SMH/News24 trail. Hanson says he took a candidacy announcement as a personal insult. Joyce hopes nobody is threatening the Hastie family. Three speakers, three moral centres. The cartoon is the object they all have to walk around.

Victoria's 28 November state election is a parallel track. Nicholson on the Northern Metropolitan ticket, Pickering's separate Melbourne dramas already filed by this desk, Loy Yang and Princes Highway planks already on the shelf — none of that resolves Canning. It does show a party fighting on multiple state fronts while its federal leader pins a satire about a Liberal deputy-leadership fantasy in which Angus Taylor ends up in a cartoon coma. Taste is not a legal category. Pins are.

Hastie's own April caution still matters beside his September volume. On 2GB the day of his written statement, as SMH reported, he said Roberts-Smith is entitled to the presumption of innocence and a fair trial, and that political commentary must not prejudice the process. "If this process is prejudiced, we're actually not doing Ben Roberts-Smith a service," he said then. Wednesday's argument is that One Nation's cartoon does exactly that politicising work. Hanson rejects the traitor frame and keeps the satire online. Readers can hold both dates without collapsing them into one mood.

AFP Commissioner Krissy Barrett's 7 April media statement said a former ADF member had been arrested and would be charged with five counts of war crime – murder after a joint OSI–AFP investigation, with alleged deaths of Afghan nationals between 2009 and 2012 who were not taking part in hostilities. OSI director of investigations Ross Barnett called the arrest a significant step and underlined the presumption of innocence. Those are the charging authorities' words. This newspaper is not retrying the indictment in a feature column.

The civil defamation trial that first put Hastie in the witness box ran years earlier. He was among veterans subpoenaed by the newspapers. He has said publicly that rumours about Roberts-Smith's conduct were discussed inside the regiment — language that landed in Federal Court transcripts and later news files. That civil evidence trail is why One Nation's backing of Roberts-Smith and Hastie's oath collide in the same sentence on talkback and in cartoons. It is also why Hastie keeps returning to "under oath" when he answers traitor.

WA Liberals under Zempilas are fighting a different election cycle from Hastie's federal calendar. Preferencing One Nation in a by-election Labor looked likely to lose is a state tactical call. Hanson's praise for that call is a federal recruitment pitch. Hastie's rejection is a federal brand defence. Three clocks, one coastal strip. Secret Harbour's 39.1 per cent primary for Herdegen is the number that made all three clocks audible in the same week.

If you only remember four dated pegs, make them these: 7 April, charges laid; 23 July, Don't Be Hastie posted; 29 August, Secret Harbour won; 9 September, lying cowards. Everything else in this file hangs off those four pegs.

What should a first-time listener take away? A Liberal MP and SAS veteran says One Nation's own cartoon called him a traitor over evidence he gave under oath. The party leader says she never spoke that word and will not delete the satire. Her New England colleague says he did not say it and had not seen it. The fight sits on top of a live war-crimes prosecution that must remain fair, and on top of a WA federal seat One Nation has promised to contest after winning a state booth inside its borders. That is the news.

Hanson left the video up. Hastie left the challenge up. Joyce left a denial on the ABC. Canning is still Hastie's seat until voters say otherwise. The next move that changes the file is a deletion, a lawsuit, or a candidate name on a Canning ballot. Until then, Wednesday's record is the lying-cowards quotes, the pinned July cartoon, and two politicians insisting the soundtrack is not their voice.