SA’s One Nation Leader banned from social media site
A One Nation MP has labelled a leading social media site’s decision “piss weak” as the SA party aims to censure the Attorney-General over their staffing levels.
One Nation SA leader Cory Bernardi has been banned from Facebook just days after receiving “legal threats” over student protest videos he published in early August.
The series of social media videos featured the party leader labelling young protesters “losers” and “incels” at the ‘Students against Hanson’ protest this month.
Bernardi announced he had been suspended from Facebook on his X account (formerly Twitter) on Saturday, saying One Nation would be appealing the suspension.
“This follows legal threats from parents of kids at the anti-Hanson protest, demanding we delete our viral video of what happened in broad daylight on the steps of Parliament House,” Bernardi said.
“These students performed for the cameras, used vile language and made threats, knowing they were being filmed.”
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It comes just days after One Nation SA confirmed it had received “legal threats” to delete the videos published by Bernardi from lawyers acting on behalf of parents whose children were featured in the social media videos.
An estimated 2000 high school and university students walked out of classes in early August to take part in the protest where they held placards with messages like “Nazis are monoculture” and “there’s no good racists”, while students could be heard chanting “F**k Pauline Hanson” and “F**k Cory Bernardi”.
Bernardi’s video where he confronted protesters amassed more than 753,000 views, 32,000 likes and thousands of comments on Instagram, while the same video made by Bernardi and reposted by Turning Point Australia gained more than 1.5 million views.
Another protest is set to be held on Adelaide streets on September 17, with organisers expecting the event to “be even bigger”.
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Social media users labelled Bernardi’s videos as “creepy” with one commenting “that’s what happens when you post images of minors on social media without their consent Cory”, while others supported Bernardi’s bid to get his account reinstated.
But One Nation upper house MP Carlos Quaremba called the ban “piss weak”.
“They are so scared of what we’re saying that they can’t even debate us on the issues, they just want to shut us down,” Quaremba said.
“If they’re going to shut us down, they’re going to shut you down next, it’s unacceptable.
“We’ve had threats of violence, we’ve had threats of legal action, but I’ll give you the hot tip, as long as my ass points to the ground we’re not stopping and we’re coming even harder.”
One Nation has also announced it would bring forward a censure motion against Deputy Premier Kyam Maher in parliament this week over “misleading” comments regarding One Nation’s parliamentary staffing resources.
One Nation says it has been denied the same staffing resources as other SA crossbench parties.
“[Maher] said that One Nation had been allocated an additional seven staff, describing this as far above and exceeding what had been provided to the other minor parties,” Bernardi told parliament in August.
“No-one knew about the seven additional members of staff except, obviously, the Deputy Premier, who claimed it was there the day before, but it is clearly another misleading statement.”
A spokesperson for Maher said the censure motion would be dealt with by the Legislative Council this week and breaches of social media standards were determined by the social media platforms.
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