Pauline Hanson called it embarrassing. She didn't know the name of the leader she was defending.
Hanson attacked Albanese over his comments about Japan's prime minister, then could not name her — or Indonesia's president — in a new documentary.
Pauline Hanson spent this week telling Australia that Anthony Albanese had embarrassed the country in front of Japan’s prime minister.
Two days later, a documentary showed she did not know the woman’s name.
Hanson had gone after the Prime Minister over comments he made about two crown melons gifted to him by Sanae Takaichi during her visit to Australia in May.
Taking questions from reporters, Hanson performed a two-handed cupping gesture as she described what Albanese had done.
"I feel for that Prime Minister of Japan, Takaichi, and I think it’s wrong the way she has been treated," she said.
"It’s disgusting what he’s done."
Then came the documentary.
In The Fight for the Right, a News24 political special, Chris Kenny asked Hanson whether she would want to visit Jakarta and meet the president if she became prime minister.
"I don’t know if I’d say I want to," she said.
"Do you know who the President is?" Kenny asked.
"No, I don’t know his name. I can’t remember his name," Hanson said.
"You can’t remember the name of the President of Indonesia?"
"No, I can’t."
Kenny moved on to Japan.
"Oh, she’s — um — I can’t say," Hanson said.
Asked who leads China, she answered immediately: "Xi Jinping."
The prime minister she had named on Wednesday is Sanae Takaichi, the first woman to hold the office. She took the job in October and won a landslide snap election in February.
The president she could not name is Prabowo Subianto. He signed the Treaty of Jakarta with Albanese on 6 February, committing Australia and Indonesia to consult each other if either country’s security is threatened.
It was the largest expansion of that defence relationship in three decades, and it happened six months ago.
Indonesia is Australia’s nearest large neighbour, with a population of about 280 million. Japan is one of Australia’s biggest trading partners and sits beside it in the Quad.
They are the two capitals an Australian prime minister is most likely to visit first.
Hanson has been to Britain more recently than Jakarta. Last month she flew there to appear on a podcast hosted by Tommy Robinson, a far-right activist who has served prison time and cannot get an Australian visa.
The documentary also features Liberal leader Angus Taylor and Nationals leader Matt Canavan, and is built around why so many Australians are changing their vote. One Nation’s primary vote reached 26 per cent in Roy Morgan’s most recent poll, ahead of Labor.
She wants the job that requires her to sit down with both of them. She could not name either.