‘Savage’ attack on One Nation volunteer ‘not politically motivated’, police say

An alleged attack on a One Nation volunteer outside his home in a coastal town on the Great Ocean Road is not being treated as politically motivated, police say.

The 60-year-old One Nation volunteer was taken to hospital with non-life-threatening injuries after an alleged attack by a 37-year-old Hampton Park man and a teenager with a blunt object outside his property in the Victorian town of Torquay on Sunday about 7.45pm, Victoria Police said.

A source with knowledge, but not authorised to speak publicly, said Victoria Police was treating it as an alcohol-fuelled, random attack. Police clarified the alleged weapon was a “blunt object”, not a baseball bat as previously reported.

Earlier on Sunday, police said they intercepted a vehicle on Blackgate Road in Mount Duneed about 4.20pm, a few kilometres from the Torquay property.

The driver, a 37-year-old man from Hampton Park, allegedly returned a positive breath test and had his vehicle impounded.

Police said the man smashed the windows of his own vehicle during the incident.

Speaking outside Geelong Hospital on Tuesday, where the victim is recovering, One Nation leader Pauline Hanson said the volunteer had been kicked so badly he “lost consciousness”, and had bleeding on the brain and “from basically every orifice” in his face.

In contradiction to the police description, Hanson said the attack “was life-threatening. Even now, with the bleed, it still could be life-threatening”.

Hanson said the teenage boy was damaging a One Nation corflute outside the victim’s property, prompting the 60-year-old man to confront him.

“They were walking along the highway, apparently, their car had been impounded, and they ... [said], ‘Hey, there’s some One Nation signs up there, let’s go and destroy them’,” Hanson said, without evidence.

One Nation Victoria deputy leader Colleen Harkin said on Tuesday outside Geelong Hospital that the alleged attack was “a political attack, a savage attack on a person, just because they’ve got a One Nation corflute on their own private property”.

Victoria Police said the teenager and a 37-year-old Hampton Park man were arrested after the alleged attack. The man was charged with intentionally causing injury and other offences, while the teenager was issued with a caution.

Hanson said the alleged offenders did not leave the property after the attack and are alleged to have started smashing the man’s car.

“They actually then went up to near the house and started smashing his car, as well, destroyed that,” she said.

Early on Wednesday morning, One Nation MP David Farley lashed the National Union of Students and the Greens for creating an environment that led to an alleged attack on a party volunteer in Victoria.

Farley said “no one else” was organising large-scale protests against Hanson’s party, accusing the groups of encouraging “the young and the naïve”.

“If you step back from it, and I was reflecting on where is this coming from, and I looked at the recent rallies that were organised by the National Union of Students right across Australia, and you sit back and you look at that, you look at who attended it,” Farley told ABC radio this morning.

“People like the Greens, the [NSW state] Newtown MP Jenny Long, and heaps of others, and you listen to the chants that were coming out. You know, one of the chants that was coming out there, high school students, uni teachers, to Pauline Hanson, ‘We’re coming for you,’” Farley said.

Speaking to this masthead after police said the attack was not politically motivated, Farley said his earlier comments were based on the information he had at the time.

“It’s good to be updated on the information,” Farley said. “I welcome reading the report to understand more about it.”

Greens MP for Newtown Jenny Leong said that implying young people in Sydney were “somehow responsible for acts [of] violence in another state shows the lengths that some politicians will go for a headline”.

“It is students and young people that will suffer most from the rise of the far right, so it is no surprise that they mobilise to express their dissatisfaction at growing inequality, environmental destruction and injustice.

“There’s no place for violence in our democracy, just as there is no place for the racist, divisive policies of One Nation in our communities.”

The National Union of Students has been contacted for comment.