Liberal frontbencher and leadership aspirant Andrew Hastie has launched an extraordinary attack on One Nation’s Pauline Hanson and Barnaby Joyce, calling them “lying cowards”.

Hastie said Hanson and Joyce “are trashing my service record, they called me a traitor to my own country”.

One of Hanson’s Please Explain animated cartoons, from July and titled “Don’t be Hastie”, is at the centre of Hastie’s latest attack on One Nation, which has been targeting him and his seat of Canning in Western Australia. One Nation recently won a state seat, Secret Harbour, that is largely within Canning.

In the cartoon characters make references to Hastie as a “traitor”.

For instance the cartoon character Chalmers asks the character Hastie: “Why are they calling you a traitor?”

The character Hastie replies: “I don’t know. All I did was testify against Ben Roberts-Smith and support your evil hate speech legislation after promising not to.” To which the character Chalmers replies: “Yeah, right,........

© The Conversation