Pauline Hanson snapped on live TV on Tuesday night after taking offence at a question about the late Labor Senator Kimberely Kitching.
Ms Hanson was appearing on a Sky News panel of conservative minor party and independent candidates alongside Bob Katter, Clive Palmer and Campbell Newman.
One member of the public asked the group why all sides of politics hadn’t been more vocal about allegations late Labor Senator Kimberley Kitching was “bullied” by her own party before her death.
Ms Hanson fiercely defended her own response to the allegations, interrupting the woman with an emotional spray.
“I don’t think I can be any more vocal than what I have been over the few years talking about that,” she said.
After initially eliciting laughter from the crowd, it quickly became apparent Ms Hanson had taken the question personally.
“She was a close friend of mine. I was terribly distraught over her death,” she went on.
Ms Hanson stared daggers at the woman who asked the question, while rejecting the assertion that bullying allegations had gone away “too quickly”.
Senator Kitching died aged 52 in March, with her death opening up allegations she had been bullied and “humiliated” at the hand of key Labor figures.
Further reports emerged Senator Kitching had described senators Katy Gallagher, Penny Wong and Kristina Keneally as “mean girls”.
The three senators have denied any allegations of bullying.
Hanson v Palmer
Ms Hanson also took aim at Mr Palmer during the program over his party’s policy of a government-imposed three pexjmtzywr cent home loan interest rate.
She argued the government did not have the power to implement such a policy.
“You’ve got to underwrite it, the banks are actually on the world money market, you can’t do it,” Ms Hanson said.
“Are you going to underwrite it? You’re worth the money.”
Mr Palmer asserted it was possible and had been done in the past.
Despite the fiery encounter, all four of the candidates largely remained friendly towards each other.
When asked by host Paul Murray to describe the “biggest lie” any of the other contenders had said about them, Mr Palmer led the four of them in declining to make any personal attacks.
The China question
Earlier in the show, the panel responded to questions over Australia’s response to China’s growing influence.
As he has stated in the past, Mr Katter advocates for every school aged boy in Australia to have “access to a rifle, and know how to use it”.
“And the reason for that is the Ukraine,” he said, without elaborating further.
Mr Katter also scoffed at recent government plans to build more missiles.
“In four and a half years they haven’t built one missile, three weeks before the election they’re going to build missiles,” he said.
“There needs to be a missile fortress wall – you try and get through that.”
