{"id":8786,"date":"2026-04-13T05:57:00","date_gmt":"2026-04-13T05:57:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/2026\/04\/13\/pauline-hanson-says-convicted-rapist-employed-by-one-nation-has-been-sacked-the-guardian\/"},"modified":"2026-04-13T05:57:00","modified_gmt":"2026-04-13T05:57:00","slug":"pauline-hanson-says-convicted-rapist-employed-by-one-nation-has-been-sacked-the-guardian","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/2026\/04\/13\/pauline-hanson-says-convicted-rapist-employed-by-one-nation-has-been-sacked-the-guardian\/","title":{"rendered":"Pauline Hanson says convicted rapist employed by One Nation has been sacked – The Guardian"},"content":{"rendered":"

James Paterson had called decision by Pauline Hanson\u2019s party to rehire Sean Black \u2018absolutely extraordinary\u2019
Follow our Australia news live blog for latest updates<\/a>
Get our breaking news email<\/a>, free app<\/a> or daily news podcast<\/a>
Pauline Hanson says she has sacked the convicted rapist who worked as One Nation\u2019s campaign manager, but accused Coalition MPs of playing \u201cgutter politics\u201d by criticising her decision to rehire him.
Sean Black, who in 2018 was jailed for rape<\/a> and subsequently lost his appeal<\/a> against the conviction, was initially rehired by One Nation in 2020<\/a> as a campaign director after serving his time. He remained employed by the party until Sunday, Hanson said.
In a late-night appearance on Sky News, Hanson said \u201che\u2019s gone, he\u2019s finished\u201d when asked about Black\u2019s employment, and she was \u201csickened\u201d by criticism from opposition politicians in recent days.
Hanson said she had received \u201cno concerns raised by the other female staff\u201d about Black and that he had \u201cdone a great job\u201d since returning to the party following his time in jail.
\u201cIt\u2019s gutter politics \u2026 and it sickens me to what has happened,\u201d Hanson said.
\u201c[Black] did his time for the crime he was convicted of and that, and now he was trying to get on with his life… What now? What happens? [Put him] on the scrapheap? Or should we bring in the death penalty for anyone who commits a crime?\u201d
Hanson would not be drawn on whether a convicted sex offender, like Black, would appear on One Nation\u2019s proposed public sex offender register but said that policy proposal was mostly intended for paedophiles, and that people who have served time was \u201canother matter\u201d.
\u201cSociety has realised that if you do your time, you give back to society. And there\u2019s \u2026 not been any offence committed from this man ever since. When are we actually going to stop hounding them and give them their life back? He\u2019s paid his his dues to society,\u201d she said.
The Liberal senator James Paterson had earlier criticised the \u201cabsolutely extraordinary\u201d decision by Hanson\u2019s political party to keep a convicted rapist on staff, saying it\u2019s \u201cvery hard to take One Nation seriously\u201d.
\u201cIt means it\u2019s very hard to take One Nation seriously when they talk about law and order, when they talk about being tough on crime, when they talk about domestic violence,\u201d he told Sky News.
\u201cThey have a pretence of being a serious political party, and they are employing a convicted rapist to work for them. I don\u2019t think he should be allowed in Parliament House in sitting weeks, and if he is being brought to Parliament House, they should explain why they think that\u2019s appropriate.\u201d
The Liberal National MP Garth Hamilton had also written to the House of Representatives speaker last week to share his concern about whether Black had been in the building, according to the Courier Mail<\/a>.
\u201cI want to know when there\u2019s a rapist in parliament,\u201d Hamilton wrote.
Guardian Australia has contacted One Nation for a response.
One Nation\u2019s rise since the 2025 federal election could supplant support for the Coalition as the defacto opposition party in a number of regions, opinion polls suggest<\/a>.
The upcoming byelection in Farrer<\/a> will be a test of whether the rightwing party can capitalise on waning support for the major parties, particularly the Coalition.
Paterson said the Liberals would scrutinise One Nation by pointing to its failures, including the number of people it has had elected to parliaments that subsequently quit the party before the end of their first term.
\u201cI mean, this is an extraordinary track record of failure by One Nation, and it really calls into question whether or not they could ever govern in the national interest for all Australians,\u201d Paterson said.
The treasurer, Jim Chalmers, used a speech at a pub event in his electorate on Sunday to warn that Labor\u2019s opponents are a \u201cthree-ring circus of rightwing parties\u201d that \u201cdesperately want Australia to fail\u201d.
\u201cThey\u2019ve made the political calculation that the worse Australians fare, the worse Australia performs, the more divided our politics and societies, the greater dividend for them politically,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cTake One Nation. At every turn and in almost every vote, when they\u2019ve had the choice between voting how communities, like ours, need them to or voting the way Gina Rinehart tells them to, they make the wrong choice.<\/p>\n

\u201cTheir reason for being is to capitalise on the politics of division. Our reason for being is providing economic security and creating economic opportunity as the best defence against division and polarisation.\u201d<\/p>\n

source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

James Paterson had called decision by Pauline Hanson\u2019s party to rehire Sean Black \u2018absolutely extraordinary\u2019Follow our Australia news live blog for latest updatesGet our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcastPauline Hanson says she has sacked the convicted rapist who worked as One Nation\u2019s campaign manager, but accused Coalition MPs of playing \u201cgutter […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8787,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-8786","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8786","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8786"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8786\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8787"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8786"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8786"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8786"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}