Australia’s largest veteran support group, the Returned & Services League of Australia (RSL), has issued a statement warning that calling veterans traitors is a slur and an attack on every veteran’s service.
The statement follows a bitter rift between Liberal front‑bencher Andrew Hastie and One Nation leader Pauline Hanson, after the latter refused to apologise for a cartoon her party published that labelled Hastie a ‘traitor.’ The RSL said the use of the word sends a corrosive message to the wider veteran community: that a veteran’s service can be recast as betrayal the moment it is politically convenient.
In its statement the RSL said: ‘The recent comments from Senator Hanson towards Andrew Hastie MP go beyond political disagreement. 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 added that veterans do not cease to be accountable to their oath once they leave the Australian Defence Force.
The RSL urged all sides of politics to keep the distinction between political critique and personal attack. It called for the term ‘traitor’ to be treated as a slur regardless of who it is aimed at or how it is framed, and for veterans to be protected from such demeaning language in the public sphere.
