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The National Rifle Association has today released a statement regarding the revelations that One Nation staffers had flown to Washington DC in an effort to secure tens of millions of dollars in foreign funding from powerful American gun lobbyists, in exchange for loosening Australian firearm laws.
A spokesperson for the NRA says that while it is not a good look for their organisation to be even meeting with far-right extremists, they are relieved to learn that it wasn’t part of a comedy skit.
The powerful gun rights group made reference to to the English comic Sacha Baron Cohen, who is known for creating and portraying many fictional satirical characters, and most recently his new series ‘Who Is America’ – where he goes undercover and films humiliating interactions with American conservatives.
“We thought we were going to be in his next season for sure” said the spokesperson.
“That meeting was so bizarre.”
“They were either undercover comedians or an extremely disorganised political party. The fact that this entire conspiracy was filmed on secret cameras is even more embarrassing for them”
“We opted against a second meeting with them because we were worried it was a stitch up”
This comes as senior One Nation figures James Ashby and Steve Dickson were caught on film seeking millions of dollars of political donations from US gun rights group the National Rifle Association in a bid to seize the balance of power in Australia, while offering the lobby group weaker gun laws in exchange.
The story has been broken by Arab broadcaster, al-Jazeera, who used hidden cameras and a journalist posing as a grassroots gun campaigner to expose the far-right party’s bizarre efforts to secure funding in Washington DC in September – at the same time that Pauline Hanson was reportedly voting in support of a proposed ban on foreign political donations.
The footage captures Dickson, the party’s Queensland state leader and formerly a Liberal-National minister in Queensland who jumped ship thinking he might end up as Premier of Queensland before losing dismally to the LNP candidate that replaced him, and Ashby, Pauline Hanson’s chief of staff, endorsing NRA counter-attack lines in the event of a gun massacre.
Pauline Hanson has since referred al-Jazeera to ASIO for ‘interfering in a political election’ in a hope that the news publisher’s Arabic name will generate racial commentary within their base
The revelations also undermine newly elected Senator Mark Latham’s pre-NSW election tweets that praised Jacinda Ardern’s new gun control measure claimed One Nation were big supporters of Australia’s gun laws.
