One Nation denies AI-generated campaign video was racist

One Nation's Victorian deputy leader has defended an AI-generated campaign video featuring a suicide bomber and a home invader, denying it was racist. The video, shown at the party's campaign launch in Melbourne earlier this month, features a young man of African appearance wielding a machete and a suicide bomber who appeared to be of Middle Eastern descent.

"I don't accept the premise that it is racist," Colleen Harkin told 774 Melbourne on Monday morning. "It is big issues that need to be addressed."

In a wide-ranging interview with host Raf Epstein, Ms Harkin also claimed that climate change was irrelevant to the Australian economy and said One Nation was serious about rescinding Victoria's landmark Treaty.

As for the AI-generated video, she said it tackled the "general view about all the things that are going wrong in Australia" and what was needed to fix them.

"I think most people are looking at some of those things and they're saying, you know, we do have problems with crime in the state, we do have problems with social cohesion and where it's coming from."

The campaign video earlier sparked a row between a Tasmanian cafe owner who was offended by the clip and Pauline Hanson's daughter, who is a customer at the business.

When Epstein pressed Ms Harkin on whether the video was judging people not as individuals but as part of the group they might be part of, Ms Harkin denied there was any prejudice involved.

"Would you complain if it was a white-skinned person or a female with blonde hair?" she said.

When asked about the campaign video over the weekend, federal One Nation MP Barnaby Joyce indicated that he had not seen it, but said crime was a significant issue in Victoria.

"Machete crime has been an incredibly scary thing," he said. "People are terrified of the law-and-order issues in Victoria and it should be dealt with."

Ms Harkin also said One Nation's Victorian branch was not interested in a coalition with the Liberals but would urge voters to preference that party over Labor.

"Labor is our political enemy and the Liberal Party is our political competition," she said. "We will work with anybody to remove Labor, anybody."

Ms Harkin, who was a long-standing Liberal member before she moved to run for the upper house with One Nation, said her values and principles "hadn't changed one iota over the years".

But she said she remained in touch with many of her Liberal friends and was privy to "interesting intel" that she may not have otherwise had access to.

Climate Change

Ms Harkin is also the director of education at the conservative think tank, the Institute of Public Affairs.

Asked if she held the same belief as One Nation leader Pauline Hanson that climate change and global warming is a "hoax", Ms Harkin said: "I think climate changes all the time".

"The issue for Australia is what are we doing about energy security and what is it costing us?"

Epstein posited that climate science had shown that humans were the problem when it came to climate change.

"I think it's irrelevant to our economy. So what we do is we dig up minerals, we send it off overseas and we buy it back," Ms Harkin responded.

"If the world is serious about climate, it's not Australia that's causing the problem."

There is strong evidence linking rising temperatures to mounting costs to the economy, for example through growing insurance and clean-up bills from natural disasters.

In Monday's interview, Ms Harkin also echoed a previous statement from Ms Hanson that she had "no time for radical Islam".

"Radical Islam is a problem for Australia and I don't think many people would disagree with that," she said.

Ms Harkin said Muslims should stand up to other Muslims radicalising young people and "do it louder".

"I have access to Muslim people but in terms of how those kids are being engaged with and who's radicalising them, I don't," she said.