RSL Australia has been dragged into the escalating feud between Pauline Hanson and Liberal MP Andrew Hastie after declaring that One Nation’s cartoon branding the former SAS officer a “traitor” amounted to an attack on the service of Australian veterans.
The national veterans organisation intervened on Thursday after days of increasingly bitter exchanges over a nine-minute animated One Nation video titled Don’t Be Hastie, first published in July and authorised by Senator Hanson.
The cartoon repeatedly uses the word “traitor” while mocking the Canning MP over two politically charged episodes: his evidence in Ben Roberts-Smith’s unsuccessful defamation proceedings and his decision to support an amended version of the Albanese government’s anti-hate and extremism legislation earlier this year.
Hastie, a former SAS captain who served in Afghanistan, has demanded Hanson take the video down or accept responsibility for its language.
Hanson has refused, arguing that the video is satire and insisting she has never personally called Hastie a traitor.
RSL Australia said that distinction did not resolve the underlying issue.
“This may have begun as a political dispute between Senator Hanson and Mr Hastie, however, when a person’s military service is used as the punchline, when the word ‘traitor’ is thrown at someone who has worn the uniform and deployed on operations, that stops being politics and starts being an attack on every veteran’s service,” the organisation said.
It argued that veterans remained accountable for their conduct after leaving the Australian Defence Force, but that political disagreement should not be converted into accusations of disloyalty to Australia.
“Branding a former soldier a ‘traitor’ sends a corrosive message to the wider veteran community: that your service can be recast as betrayal the moment it’s politically convenient,” the statement said.
“Calling a veteran a traitor is a slur, and it deserves to be treated as one regardless of who it’s aimed at or how it’s dressed up.”
The intervention immediately opened a second argument — this time over whether the RSL was applying that principle consistently.
Critics questioned why the organisation had chosen to intervene so forcefully in a political dispute involving Hastie while, in their view, failing to show comparable public outrage when other former special forces soldiers were accused of serious wrongdoing during the long-running national debate over Australian conduct in Afghanistan.
Former commando Heston Russell was among those who pushed back, pointing to his own years-long battle with the ABC and questioning the RSL’s priorities.
Russell successfully sued the ABC for defamation over reports concerning allegations that members of a platoon he commanded had killed an Afghan prisoner.
In 2023, Federal Court Justice Michael Lee found the ABC had defamed Russell and that its public-interest defence failed. Russell was awarded more than $390,000 in damages, with the final amount exceeding $400,000 once interest was included.
A separate controversy later emerged over ABC footage of Australian commandos operating from a helicopter in Afghanistan.
An independent review found extra gunshot sounds had been “inadvertently but inaccurately” inserted into footage used by the broadcaster.
The review did not find evidence that journalists or editors had deliberately manipulated the footage in an attempt to deceive viewers. The ABC nevertheless acknowledged serious editing failures, removed material and apologised for the errors.
That distinction matters because the defamation case Russell won and the later controversy over added gunshot audio involved separate ABC publications and should not be collapsed into a single event.
The current argument surrounding Hastie carries another set of legal distinctions that have also become blurred in the political fight.
Hastie did give evidence in the defamation proceedings brought by Roberts-Smith against Nine newspapers and journalists Nick McKenzie and Chris Masters.
But he did so under subpoena.
Hastie has repeatedly stressed that point while responding to One Nation, arguing that obeying a court order and giving truthful evidence under oath cannot reasonably be characterised as betrayal of a fellow soldier.
The Roberts-Smith litigation was a civil defamation case, not a criminal prosecution.
Justice Anthony Besanko ruled in 2023 that Nine had established the substantial truth of several serious imputations about Roberts-Smith to the civil standard of the balance of probabilities. A Full Court of the Federal Court dismissed Roberts-Smith’s appeal in May 2025.
The legal position has since changed significantly.
Roberts-Smith was arrested in April 2026 and charged with five counts of the war crime of murder in relation to alleged killings in Afghanistan between 2009 and 2012.
Those are criminal allegations and are now before the courts. Roberts-Smith denies wrongdoing and is entitled to the presumption of innocence. Findings reached in earlier civil litigation do not amount to a criminal conviction.
The One Nation cartoon nevertheless uses Hastie’s participation in the earlier defamation case as part of its attack on his political judgement and loyalty.
It also targets him over one of the most divisive parliamentary votes of the year.
In January, Hastie publicly signalled that he was likely to vote against the Albanese government’s proposed anti-hate legislation, warning that the original package posed risks to freedom of speech, conscience and religion.
But the legislation changed during negotiations.
The Liberals ultimately supported an amended version after controversial racial-vilification provisions were removed and other changes were negotiated with the government.
Hastie voted for that amended bill.
His critics have accused him of breaking his word. Hastie’s defence is that the legislation he ultimately supported was materially different from the bill he had promised to oppose.
He told 2GB in June that the provisions he considered objectionable had been “completely cut out of the Bill” and that he believed he was honouring an agreement that protected free speech while preventing a more restrictive version from passing with support from the Greens.
That explanation has not satisfied One Nation supporters, particularly as the minor party seeks to challenge the Liberals from the right on free speech, immigration and cultural issues.
The political stakes are particularly sharp in Hastie’s electorate of Canning in Western Australia, where One Nation has signalled it intends to mount a serious challenge at the next federal election.
The cartoon dispute escalated this week when Hastie described Hanson and One Nation MP Barnaby Joyce as “lying cowards”.
He argued that Hanson could not authorise and distribute a video repeatedly portraying him as a traitor and then distance herself from the accusation by describing the production as satire.
Hanson has dismissed the uproar as exaggerated, saying she did not personally use the label and had no intention of deleting the cartoon.
Joyce took a different course.
After initially distancing himself from the video, which pre-dated his move to One Nation, he apologised to Hastie over the episode. Hastie subsequently accepted that apology while continuing to hold Hanson responsible for the cartoon.
The RSL intervention added institutional weight to criticism already coming from across the political spectrum.
Independent senator and Army veteran Jacqui Lambie condemned the video, while Opposition Leader Angus Taylor called for it to be removed. Former prime minister Tony Abbott has also said One Nation should take it down.
For the RSL, however, the argument was framed more broadly than defending a particular Liberal politician.
Its statement sought to draw a line between scrutinising what a veteran has done and characterising military service itself as evidence of betrayal when that veteran later takes a politically unpopular position.
That principle has now produced its own controversy.
Some veterans believe the RSL’s wording was justified precisely because allegations of treason carry an unusually serious meaning for people who have served in uniform.
Others argue that an organisation representing veterans should have shown the same urgency during previous disputes in which soldiers were publicly accused of unlawful killings, misconduct or war crimes before criminal proceedings had run their course.
The comparison is not straightforward.
Hastie is being attacked for evidence he was legally compelled to give in court, while allegations concerning Roberts-Smith and other Afghanistan veterans have involved investigations, civil findings and, in Roberts-Smith’s case, current criminal proceedings.
Nor does criticism of media reporting automatically resolve the truth or falsity of the underlying allegations. Each case turns on different evidence and different legal standards.
What the backlash does reveal is a deeper division within Australia’s veteran community over how the country should discuss the Afghanistan war, alleged misconduct by special forces and the obligations soldiers owe to one another after leaving the battlefield.
One view places particular emphasis on loyalty between soldiers and resistance to what supporters see as unfair public attacks on veterans.
Another holds that military loyalty cannot override the obligation to give evidence truthfully when called before a court, particularly when allegations concern conduct during armed conflict.
Hastie has placed himself firmly in the second camp.
One Nation’s cartoon presents that stance as part of a broader pattern of political betrayal, combining the Roberts-Smith controversy with Hastie’s vote on the amended anti-hate bill.
The RSL says the use of the word “traitor” crosses a line regardless of the political argument surrounding either issue.
Its critics say the organisation has now invited scrutiny of when it chooses to speak, which veterans it publicly defends and whether its interventions are consistent.
That debate is unlikely to end with the cartoon.
The Roberts-Smith criminal case is continuing, One Nation is preparing an electoral challenge to Hastie, and the Coalition is struggling to contain a growing contest on its right flank.
What began as an animated political attack has therefore become something much larger: a fight about free speech, party loyalty, military honour, the treatment of veterans and whether giving evidence against a former comrade can ever fairly be described as betrayal.
For RSL Australia, entering that argument was intended to defend a principle.
The response shows that it has also exposed the organisation itself to a question many veterans now want answered: when political controversy reaches into military service, who decides when the line has been crossed?
