One Nation leader Pauline Hanson has cried censorship after the latest episode of her ‘Please Explain’ cartoon series was ripped from social media following a complaint from the Australian Electoral Commission.
The video has been removed from Facebook and TikTok after the AEC branded it ‘misleading and false’.
The cartoon showed a character based on Labor’s Senator Penny Wong delivering a batch of fake votes to her bed-bound Covid-stricken leader, Anthony Albanese.
‘I brought you these,’ she tells him. ‘These are postal votes under the names of dead people, fake identities, some were stolen out of letterboxes.’
The fake senator then falsely claimed that the Australian Electoral Commission doesn’t check identification documents as that would be ‘racist’.
However the AEC stressed on Friday that IDs are checked when Australians enrol to vote.
The skit – one of a lengthy series by Ms Hanson’s team – prompted a warning from the AEC, and later its deletion or restriction by several social media platforms.
The AEC wrote on Twitter they found the video ‘deeply, deeply disappointing’.
The commission revealed they’d spent Friday reviewing the video to confirm it was misleading and ‘working with social platforms to have it removed for violating their policies around misleading electoral information.’
Twitter allowed it to remain online but attached a tag to the video warning viewers it contained misleading information.
Ms Hanson (pictured) claimed TikTok censored the episode of her cartoon series ‘Pauline Hanson’s Please Explain’
Penny Wong’s caricature (pictured left) told bed-ridden Albo (pictured right) the AEC doesn’t check ID when voters enrol. The AEC has since clarified that they do
Senator Hanson shared a series of screenshots showing the video was unavailable to Facebook users.
‘Your post goes against our Community Standards on voter suppression,’ the warning said.
The politician claimed TikTok had ‘censored’ the episode and Twitter was limiting shares and likes.
Ms Hanson said her party was fighting ‘continuously’ for electoral reforms and said she would not remove the video herself.
‘Sometimes the truth hurts, so I won’t be taking down the cartoon on any social media platform,’ Ms Hanson wrote.
The AEC said on Friday: ‘We agree that satire is an important tool and it’s genuinely great to see it used effectively.
The AEC has rejected claims voters do not have to show ID to enrol, despite ‘Penny Wong’ telling ‘Anthony Albanese’ (pictured in the skit) that was the case in the cartoon
‘Unfortunately in this case, it’s been used to spread misleading information about electoral security.’
The AEC added on Twitter that Ms Hanson’s attempts at undermining democratic confidence were ‘extremely disappointing’.
‘Aspects of it are clearly false, and any registered party would know this,’ the AEC posted.
‘No election the AEC has run has had a margin smaller than the number of alleged multiple votes [and] ID is required when you enrol to vote.’
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