Senator Pauline Hanson’s One Nation party has hired a former economic adviser to the US Republican candidate, Donald Trump.
Hanson’s chief-of-staff, James Ashby, told a community forum in the central-Queensland town of Rockhampton on Friday night: “On the economic side on things, tomorrow there’ll be a front-page announcement, from what I understand.”
“We have just taken him from the Trump camp, so he’s come on board with us,” Ashby said. “So that’s pretty exciting and we need to build credibility on the economics front.”
He described the person being hired as “one of the world’s leading economists” and said he had arrived in Australia on Thursday.
He declined to name the adviser, and further details were not forthcoming.
Guardian Australia has contacted the senator’s office requesting further information, but did not immediately receive a response.
However, the Queensland One Nation senator, Malcolm Roberts, tweeted that he was “very excited” by the news.
The Rockhampton forum was organised by the businessman Dominic Doblo, who has previously been accused of provoking religious division after posting comments online about Islamic extremists.
While Doblo told a local radio station that he expected about 500 people to attend the forum, the ABC reported the figure was closer to 200 people.
Addressing attendees, Hanson reiterated comments from her factually-incorrect maiden speech when she said that Australia was at risk of being “swamped by Muslims”.
She said on Friday night that she stood by the speech.
“If anyone wants to have a go at what I said, I’d suggest go and read the speech, everything I said in it was factual, and especially about Muslims, Islam and the impact it’s having on our country,” she said. “I won’t back down from what I believe in. We need to be able to have an opinion about it, and not shut down by saying the word racist.”