One Nation leader Pauline Hanson has declared that domestic violence is “wrong, but it’s also a two-way street” in a radio interview.

Hanson made the comments in an interview with Brisbane’s 4BC radio station on Wednesday, in which she also alluded to being a victim of domestic violence.

“Domestic violence is a scourge but look … I’ve been through it myself in my life. And I just feel if you’re not in a house where you feel safe … then you shouldn’t put up with it,” she said.

“If these women are getting abused by men out there, then don’t put up with it.”

In other comments, Hanson noted that “women can lose their cool as well”. She also attributed the issue to the “pressures of cost of living”.

“People have to pay the bills,” she said.

“Everyone is under so much pressure, it’s really hard. I don’t think we communicate enough with each other.”

Hanson’s comments have been condemned by women’s activists. Higgins, the former Liberal staffer who alleged she was raped by a work colleague and now executive director of political advocacy group VidaFund, said they were atrocious.

“Normalising this victim-blaming rhetoric in relation to domestic violence when 38 Australian women have already been lost to femicide (in 2026) is atrocious,” Higgins wrote.

Brittany Higgins was scathing about Hanson’s comments. Images: Instagram

Women’s and Girls’ Emergency Centre chief executive Nicole Yade said the remarks were “vile and shameful”.

“She is speaking from a position of privilege and complete misunderstanding that characterises practically every word that leaves her mouth,” she said.

“Having experience of domestic and family violence herself, Senator Hanson’s comments are deeply disappointing. Rather than offering empathy and understanding, they reflect a victim-blaming narrative that has no place in conversations about domestic and family violence.

“It also ignores a simple reality: You cannot leave if there is nowhere safe to go.”

Yade said her organisation supported 200 women and children in crisis, who had nowhere else to go, every night.

“It is extraordinary that anyone needs reminding of this, let alone someone who seeks to be a leader of this nation,” she said.

“Senator Hanson may never apologise for her senseless comments, but they cannot be allowed to send a message to victim-survivors and those trapped in abusive situations.”

Wednesday’s comments came as One Nation MPs tried to distance themselves from the views of veteran senator Malcolm Roberts, after video surfaced of him claiming deaths during the Covid-19 pandemic were “staged”.

In a video interview published in 2025, Roberts questioned the extent of deaths during the early days of the pandemic.

“Major news broadcasters had these videos of people dying in their droves in makeshift morgues in the streets of New York, the streets of Beijing, the streets of Italy,” he told a forum hosted by podcaster Sam Hope.

“We thought it is pretty serious from what we’ve seen. We didn’t realise until fairly recently that those were all staged. They’re bullshit.”

One Nation MP Barnaby Joyce has distanced himself from the comments, while adding he didn’t want to throw his colleague “under a bus”.

“Malcolm’s a great guy, he’s so smart, but on that issue I don’t concur with his view,” he told Sky News.

“He’s entitled to have it and I’m entitled to have mine.”

Joyce also apologised for his bizarre outburst during an interview with ABC’s 7.30 on Monday night, during which he yelled at his dog to sit down midway through a sentence.

“You couldn’t hear it, but I could. And it was under my skin,” he said.

“It was under the floor, under the deck and it was just barking incessantly.”

In the 2025 interview, Roberts also questioned the severity of Covid, saying people were “conned” about its impact.

“The chief medical officer who was involved in staging a lot of the lies we were told by the bureaucracy … the chief medical officer’s graphs showed low to moderate severity,” he said.

He said he had written to then-prime minister Scott Morrison and then-Queensland premier Annastacia Palaszczuk requesting “evidence” but didn’t receive a reply.

Roberts has previously been accused of promoting conspiracy theories and antisemitic tropes.

He has not directly addressed the criticisms in recent days, although he took to social media to accuse mainstream media outlets of “selective cherry picking and dishonest distortions … on behalf of their uniparty mates”.

One Nation has faced increasing scrutiny as it rises in the polls, soaring above both the Coalition and Labor in some surveys.

However, a Roy Morgan poll published on Tuesday showed the anti-immigration party’s primary vote dipped more than five percentage points to 22.5 per cent in the space of a week.

The poll, conducted during Hanson’s widely publicised trip to Europe, showed Coalition support rising to 23 per cent and Labor unchanged on 27.5 per cent.

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-with AAP