Pauline Hanson confronts new MP David Farley over immigration and flag policies

One Nation’s leader, Pauline Hanson, says she “had to have a conversation” with the new Farrer MP, David Farley, after he appeared to defy her policies on immigration and flying Indigenous flags.

Shortly before winning Farrer in May’s byelection – the first federal lower house seat One Nation has won outright – Farley said Labor’s current immigration intake of 306,000 was “probably not” too much.

However, One Nation has a policy to cap migration at 130,000 people a year.

After the election, the Border Mail reported Farley would display three flags: the Australian, the Aboriginal and the Torres Strait Islander flags. But Hanson has said the One Nation policy is to fly only the Australian flag.

Asked about the party’s candidate vetting process at the Church and State summit in Brisbane on Saturday, Hanson said she only wanted like-minded people in the party.

“People will tell you what you want to hear,” she said. “They really do. Case in point, David Farley, right?

“He comes out during the election. What’s my policy? Stop immigration [at] 130,000 a year.

“So he’d come and said ‘Oh no, allow immigrants in the country’. Well, didn’t the media have a field day with that?”

She also spoke about Farley saying he’d fly three flags from his office after his election, telling the audience that: “You can’t know everything about the person.”

“But as I said to him … our policy [is] one flag, it’s the Australian flag, that’s it. So I had to have a conversation with him,” Hanson said.

Farley later posted on Facebook that his office would fly the Australian flag, and that no flag would stand above it or replace it.

Asked by Guardian Australia if that meant his office would not fly the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander flags, he said there were “plenty of flags for ceremonial events” and that Australians “unite under one flag”.

“My grandfather fought the first world war under the flag and we buried him under the Australian flag. My father did the same … and when Dad died we buried him under the Australian flag,” he said.

“We are one Australia, we have one flag, we unite under one flag.”

Defections ‘will destroy us’

Hanson also told the summit more generally that the party “cannot deal” with internal fights and arguments.

One Nation has a long history of departures and defections, and Hanson said the last thing she wanted was factions, which are the major parties’ way of managing different views.

“If I have anyone elected to our party any more and walks off and leaves the party, it will destroy us,” she said.

Guardian Australia has asked the party for clarity on its abortion policy after the One Nation senator Malcolm Roberts said he would push for a total abortion ban. Asked on Wednesday what gestational limit she would put on abortions, Hanson said after 20 weeks was “too late”.

At the weekend summit, the host, Dave Pellowe, asked Hanson whether she would welcome “large numbers of conservative Christians” as members, and she said “of course they’d be welcome”.

“We’re a Christian-based country, for crying out loud,” Hanson said. “If I had a bunch of radical Islamic Muslims, I’d have a problem with that … you wouldn’t get in.

“Don’t get me wrong, I’ve had a Muslim woman stand for me as a candidate in NSW.”

Emma Eros ran in the 2019 NSW election, and said at the time she joined the party because it was “inclusive and equal”.

In February, Hanson questioned whether there were “good Muslims”, remarks she later qualified, but Eros told 2GB the comments were “appalling”.

“It’s disappointing, but not surprising. Pauline’s never really been articulate. It's just a ridiculous statement to make,” she said.