Anthony Albanese is calling for a One Nation candidate in Western Australia to be dumped for previously labelling single mothers “lazy”.
The WA One Nation candidate David Archibald wrote in a Quadrant article in 2015 that if the federal government was looking for budget savings it could stop funding the expensive “lifestyle choices” of certain minority groups.
Starting with Indigenous Australians, he agreed with then-prime minister Tony Abbott’s decision to stop funding remote Indigenous communities, saying remote communities were doing more harm than good.
He then took aim at single mothers, saying: “These are women too lazy to attract and hold a mate, undoing the work of possibly three million years of evolutionary pressure. This will result in a rapid rise in the portion of the population that is lazy and ugly.
“We know what causes pregnancy these days, so everyone who gets pregnant outside of marriage is a volunteer. This is an easy one for defunding.”
He said funding could also be scrapped for disability pensioners and federally funded childcare.
Albanese, who is now campaigning in Perth and was raised by a single mother, has called for Archibald to be dumped.
“I had an enormous amount of love and I have nothing but respect for my late mum, and I regard his comments as incredibly personally offensive but more importantly offensive towards all those single parents out there,” he said.
He said Archibald’s suggestion that entrenched single motherhood would lead to an increase in “ugly and lazy people” was also deeply offensive.
“The idea that if you have a single mother then somehow you’re less of a human being really belongs way back in the dark ages and I find it incredibly offensive,” Albanese said.
Archibald is running for the WA seat of Pilbara, with the election due on 11 March.
Pauline Hanson has already had to dump a number of candidates.
Peter Rogers was dropped as the party’s candidate for the Queensland seat of Mulgrave on Friday night after posts on his campaign website claimed the drowned Syrian toddler Alan Kurdi was “alive and well” and that the Port Arthur massacre was “a fabricated incident”. He said he did not write the article.
Shan Ju Lin, One Nation’s former candidate for the Bundamba, in Queensland, was dumped this month after she posted on Facebook that “gays should be treated as patients”.
Andy Semple, One Nation’s former candidate for Currumbin, in Queensland, withdrew from the party in mid December after people within the party raised concerns about inappropriate comments he had made on Twitter.
Hanson took to Twitter on Wednesday to respond to calls for her to dump Archibald.
“To all the fat lazy politicians & fat lazy journalists in the fat lazy media playing fat lazy, PC, identity politics – the answer is no,” she wrote.
