One Nation has employed Pauline Hanson’s Tasmanian-based daughter as a senior adviser to a New South Wales senator, in a taxpayer-funded role worth as much as $180,000 a year.
Guardian Australia can reveal that Lee Hanson, who lives just outside Hobart, was appointed as the senior adviser to Senator Sean Bell in October last year.
She has been spearheading the party’s expansion in Tasmania, and is also the party’s national executive manager.
Bell was a Queensland resident and staffer of Pauline Hanson’s when he was appointed to take the NSW Senate position after the resignation of elected senator Warwick Stacey. Stacey served as a senator for just six weeks before leaving citing health reasons.
After Bell’s appointment in September last year, Lee Hanson began working for him as a senior adviser, which, according to the latest enterprise agreement for commonwealth members of parliament staff, has a pay range of $151,000 to $183,000.
She is understood to be one of four “personal staff” allocated to One Nation after the last election. It came after the party had its allocation of staff reduced at the direction of the prime minister, Anthony Albanese.
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It was unclear if Bell or Pauline Hanson was the employing office holder.
Under the Members of Parliament (Staff) Act, parliamentarians are not allowed to employ immediate family members. However, parliamentarians are permitted to employ the family members of other MPs.
The party did not answer specific questions about Lee Hanson’s employment, including who she was employed by and how this role was compatible with her role in Tasmania.
“Employment decisions within the elected offices of One Nation MPs and senators are based on merit and capability,” it said.
“One Nation does not believe in DEI [diversity, equity and inclusion] or gender quotas unlike Labor, the Greens and Coalition.”
One Nation’s ‘next generation’
Pauline Hanson and fellow One Nation senator Malcolm Roberts were each allocated two senior advisers in the previous term of parliament. But when One Nation won two extra Senate seats at the last election, the party did not receive any further allocation for personal staff.
The One Nation leader criticised the move, calling it a “capricious and politically motivated” attack on the minor party.
The move left Roberts with no senior advisers, prompting one of his former staff members, Aidan Nagle, to take the matter to the Fair Work Commission in an unfair dismissal case. Nagle has since been employed in Pauline Hanson’s office.
After a hearing in Brisbane in February, the FWC agreed to proceed with the matter after the commonwealth argued it did not have jurisdiction. The FWC accepted Nagle’s argument that the actions of the prime minister’s office “loaded the gun”, while the “trigger” was the operation of the legislation that led to his position being terminated.
The unfair dismissal case is yet to be heard.
The promotion of Lee Hanson also comes as the 42-year-old takes a more prominent role in the party’s affairs nationally, and as Pauline Hanson positions her as the “next generation” to take the party forward.
According to her LinkedIn profile, Lee Hanson was appointed a member of the party’s national executive in July last year.
A party spokesperson said this position was unpaid.
The trusted adviser
Despite being an adviser to a NSW senator, Lee Hanson’s Facebook profile shows that she has been promoting One Nation’s presence in Tasmania and campaigning on local issues, saying the party “is surging” in the state.
One Nation has opened four of five planned new branches in Tasmania, where polls show the party is ahead of the Liberal party on federal voting intentions.
“We can’t take our foot off the pedal, we have a lot of work to do before the next federal election. Let’s roll up our sleeves and continue to build on the momentum,” Lee Hanson said in a post in February.
The appointment of a Tasmania-based adviser to a NSW senator comes after Bell was criticised for accepting his role while living in Queensland.
While there is no constitutional requirement for a senator to live in the state that they are representing, Bell’s selection as the party’s replacement candidate prompted debate in the NSW parliament about his suitability.
Bell, described as Hanson’s “trusted adviser for nine years”, has been appointed for a six-year term, while Barnaby Joyce was expected to be the number one Senate candidate for One Nation in NSW at the next federal election.
The independent state upper house MP Mark Latham – a former member of One Nation who once led the federal Labor party – spoke against Bell’s nomination in the NSW parliament, saying the appointment was “breaking a 124-year constitutional convention”.
Latham said Bell was as “Queenslander as a Pauline Hanson fish and chip shop”, and had not ever been seen in a parliamentary forum in NSW.
Bell was endorsed for the role in a joint sitting of the NSW parliament, which heard there was no requirement for a senator to reside in the state they represent.
One Nation said at the time that Bell was “currently in the process of moving to NSW”.
According to property records, Bell still owns a house in the suburb of Tivoli in Ipswich, west of Brisbane, with his wife, Amelia Schultz.
Property searches do not show any record of Bell or Shultz owning property in NSW, however, on his register of declared interests to the Senate, Bell has declared ownership of a residential property on the NSW central coast.
A party spokesperson did not respond to a question about this discrepancy, but said: “All One Nation senators are residents of the state in which they represent.”
