One Nation leader Pauline Hanson has said there are "a lot of questions" about the Port Arthur massacre that left 35 people dead in 1996.
In footage captured by an undercover al-Jazeera journalist, Senator Hanson and a group of other people including James Ashby, her chief of staff, discuss the massacre.
Pauline Hanson, seen next to her chief of staff James Ashby, says there are 'questions' about Port Arthur in a secretly recorded video.Credit:ABC/Al Jazeera
"An MP said it would actually take a massacre in Tasmania to change the gun laws in Australia," Senator Hanson says. "Haven’t you heard that?" Senator Hanson asks al-Jazeera's Rodger Muller, who was pretending to be a representative of 'Gun Rights Australia', a fake gun lobby group created for al-Jazeera's investigation.
"Have a look at it. It was said on the floor of Parliament," Senator Hanson says.
"That whole September 11 thing, too," Mr Ashby says in the video, moments later.
"Those shots, they were precision shots. Check the number out," Hanson says in the video.
The clip, originally filmed by al-Jazeera, was released by the ABC.
"I've read a lot and I've read the book on it, Port Arthur. I read a book on it, on Port Arthur. A lot of questions there," Senator Hanson says in the video.
Al-Jazeera's first report on One Nation and the US National Rifle Association (NRA) was shown on the ABC on Tuesday night. A second report is yet to be broadcast.
Senator Hanson called the broadcast an "al-Jazeera hit piece".
"After the full hit piece has been released I’ll make a full statement and take all appropriate action," she said on Twitter on Tuesday.
One Nation staffer James Ashby would not comment on his or Senator Hanson's remarks about Port Arthur when contacted on Wednesday night.
Port Arthur was Australia's worst gun massacre and led then prime minister John Howard to introduce some of the world's strictest gun laws.
Senator Hanson has previously denied any link between her party and Port Arthur conspiracy theories.
"We do not support any conspiracy theories regarding Port Arthur or [gunman] Martin Bryant, we do believe that he has been convicted of this and he's been charged over it, and that he is guilty of the offence and the crime committed at Port Arthur," she said, according to a transcript of a 2001 interview with the ABC.
On Tuesday, Mr Ashby and One Nation's Queensland leader Steve Dickson were forced to deny they had travelled to the United States to solicit donations from the NRA in order to weaken Australia's gun laws. Their denial followed the release of other footage from al-Jazeera.
And Mr Ashby blamed alcohol for some of the footage.
"I will be the first to admit, we'd arrived in America, we got on the sauce, we'd had a few drinks and that's where those discussions took place – not with any potential donors, no one but Rodger Muller, Steve Dickson and myself," Mr Ashby said.
Nick is a journalist for The Sydney Morning Herald.
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