The man who sparked legal action from Pauline Hanson over his parody of her says the One Nation leader is “wanting it both ways” after she was slapped with a concerns notice over her satirical cartoon of Robert Irwin.
Simon Hunt is a satirist better known as his drag persona Pauline Pantsdown. As Pantsdown (which he legally changed his name to at one point), he produced the songs “Backdoor Man” and “I Don’t Like It”, both comedic parodies of Hanson that used samples of Hanson’s voice to parody and critique her policies on immigration and welfare.
“Backdoor Man” included lyrics such as “I’m a backdoor man for the Ku Klux Klan, with very horrendous plans” and “I’m homosexual. I’m very proud of it”. The songs became a hit on the ABC, with “Backdoor Man” landing at number five on the 1997 Triple J Hottest 100. “I Don’t Like It” peaked at 10 on the ARIA charts during the 1998 federal election, when Hunt ran as a Senate candidate in New South Wales.
In 1998, Hanson successfully sought an injunction to stop the ABC from playing “Backdoor Man”.
Hunt said of the Robert Irwin cartoon saga and Hanson’s defamation claim that she would “have to argue exactly the opposite of what she argued in my case”, and that it was an example of “Pauline wanting it both ways”.
Hunt said that the saga reminded him of a speech Hanson gave in 2018 in which she claimed she “hadn’t flip-flopped” on the issue of company tax cuts, but had simply “said no originally, then said yes, then said no, and … stuck to it”.
In Hanson’s original statement of claim, provided by Hunt to Crikey, she claimed that the song made several imputations, including that she “engages in unnatural sexual practices including anal sex with the Ku Klux Klan”.
Hanson claimed “damage to her political image” as one of the impacts the song had on her.
It closely mirrors what is happening 26 years later, as Hanson sits on the receiving end of a defamation threat over comedic representations of others.
Robert, the 20-year-old son of Australian wildlife conservation icon Steve Irwin, has threatened Hanson with legal action over the latest episode of her Please Explain cartoon series, which often targets her political rivals.
The episode featured a portrayal of Robert Irwin, who has taken over his late father’s post as the face of Australia Zoo, saying that the “Queensland government has given us a disgusting amount of money to show you the state of Queensland”, before sarcastically touring a cartoon version of Queensland riddled with social and political problems.
Irwin’s lawyer Zoe Naylor sent a concerns notice to the directors of the production company responsible for the video, asking