A southern suburbs community radio station has accused One Nation of silencing its Secret Harbour candidate—the same criticism Labor faced during the bruising campaign.
Click play to hear the explosive accusation.
Luke Herdegen was booked to speak with IPL Radio prior to polling day, but state leader Rod Caddies reportedly intervened after being shown the questions.
Speaking with Youth Jam’s Isaac Mulcrone, the station’s managing director, Trys Reddick, said Herdegen was eager to proceed.
“We had an interview with Luke all lined up, he came in, he sat down and we were just talking about the interview. He came across as a decent guy that wanted to help his community but then his boss came in… He came in with an attitude that he wanted to close the interview down, he didn’t want the interview to go ahead,” he told Newsflash listeners.
Reddick said Caddies claimed he had promised the first interview to another local media organisation. However, after Caddies called that organisation, they confirmed IPL could conduct the interview as planned.
Reddick then claimed Caddies asked to see the interview questions.
“Then [Caddies] was saying ‘what questions are you going to ask him?’ We had them printed off, they weren’t our questions, they were questions our listeners wanted to know about so things like cost of living, homelessness, Penguin Island and AUKUS. The typical things people are concerned about.
“He was like ‘oh you can’t answer them, they’re One Nation policy’,” he said.
Every candidate who appeared on IPL was asked the same set of questions, which all answered, except for one candidate with defence force connections who was unable to answer a question about AUKUS.
Reddick emphasised that Herdegen was happy to proceed, highlighting the hypocrisy of One Nation attacking Labor for silencing Georgia Tree when they had done the same to their own candidate.
“It kind of frustrated me when there was a big thing about Georgia being silenced. They made a bit of hay about that but they did the same thing,” he said.
“It’s a little bit hypocritical.”
Herdegen, who won the by-election with 57 per cent of the vote, told Youth Jam on Monday that he would apply Pauline Hanson’s controversial media ban if he wasn’t given a “fair go”.
“While I’m given a fair go, I’ll talk to anybody and once I’m not, I’ll take the same route and I won’t talk to them,” Herdegen said.
Youth Jam has sought comment from One Nation WA.
