View from The Hill: Albanese lashes Hanson over attack on his mother

Anthony Albanese has hit back angrily and emotionally at Pauline Hanson for saying his late mother should not have lived in public housing for decades.

By implication labelling Hanson’s attack nasty and spiteful, Albanese told a Sunday news conference: “My mother was way out of Pauline Hanson’s league”.

For the second time in days, Hanson is on the back foot for making a personal attack.

Last week her senior colleague Barnaby Joyce distanced himself from One Nation’s animated cartoon, authorised by Hanson, in which Liberal frontbencher and war veteran Andrew Hastie was called a “traitor” multiple times.

Her comments about Maryanne Albanese, who died in 2002, were made in a podcast with Karl Stefanovic in February but only reported at the weekend, by The Australian.

In a mocking gesture on the podcast, Hanson wiped her eyes exaggeratedly, as she described as “pathetic” Albanese referring to growing up in public housing.

Hanson said:“I actually grew up in a street where we had housing commission houses there.

It was a helping hand to those people, but they had jobs.

And they worked.

"Housing commission houses should not be there for people to live in them for 30, 40 [years], and he said his mother lived in the same one she was born in for 65 years.” Albanese was very close to his mother and his early life with her has been a constant theme of his personal story.

In his 2022 victory speech he said: “It says a lot about our great country that a son of a single mum who was a disability pensioner, who grew up in public housing” could become prime minister.

Albanese said on Sunday: “I’m proud to be a houso, and I’m proud of the community in which I grew up.

I’m also proud about my mother.

She was someone who had a tough life.