Conservationist and television star Robert Irwin has threatened Pauline Hanson’s One Nation with legal action after they featured him in their weekly animation series.
The Queensland government recently announced that Irwin and animation sensation Bluey would be the face of a campaign highlighting attractions in Queensland.
This week One Nation released a video where Irwin and the cartoon blue healer travel the state only to discover disappointments at every stage.
Pauline Hanson launched her cartoon series which takes aim at her political opponents in November 2021 in the lead up to the federal election. The series often depicts Hanson as a teacher and politicians from other parties as bickering school children.
The cartoons are often featured on broadcaster Sky News.
The latest video sees Robert Irwin encountering challenges in his travels including native titles claims, juvenile offenders, housing challenges, poor roads and trouble getting into a hospital.
His lawyers say the video could cause “significant harm to our client’s brand and image” and lead to people believing he is associated with the One Nation party.
“The unauthorised use of our client’s image in this context is particularly egregious, as it manipulates the truth and misrepresents our client’s personality, values, and beliefs.” the legal letter reads.
Hanson has declared there’s no way she’ll be taking the video down and hit back at Irwin by saying his late father Steve Irwin would not have threatened legal action.
“Robert, lighten up mate, your father was an iconic picture in Australia, he was a larrikin, he would actually laugh it off.” Hanson told reporters when she attended a wind farm protest in Bunbury.
Steve Irwin was killed in 2006 while filming a maritime documentary. Robert Irwin was two years old at the time of his father’s death.
One Nation’s spokesperson James Ashby, who will be running in the upcoming Queensland election, also defended the video saying it did not portray Irwin is a negative light.
“It’s hard to know exactly what Robert is offended by, because the reality is Robert was the hero in the episode, not the villain,” Ashby said.
Hanson previously got court injunction against Pauline Pantsdown’s song
While Pauline Hanson has defended the video as parody, and told Robert Irwin to lighten up, people are recalling that she took out a court injunction in 1997 to stop ABC radio station Tripple J playing a song created by drag persona Pauline Pantsdown.
Simon Hunt created his alter-ego Pauline Pantsdown in response to Hanson back at the beginning of her political career.
Hunt performed a lip-sync track called Backdoor Man made up of cute and paste quotes from Hanson at a dance party. Soon the recording made its way on Triple J where it was very popular for 11 days. Hanson took the ABC to court claiming the track portrayed her as a “transexual and a prostitute”.
Pauline Pantsdown released another song I Just Don’t Like It which was also a huge success, but it had fewer personal lyrics about Hanson.
