Barnaby Joyce, a One Nation MP, has defended his party as “one of the gayest parties in Australia” following comments made by a former candidate. Parminder Singh, who was a Western Australian legislative council candidate for One Nation in 2025, stated in a video last month that he believed same-sex attraction is a mental illness and that marriage equality should not have been legalised.
Mr Joyce was asked about Mr Singh's comments on ABC’s Afternoon Briefing. He described the remarks as “highly offensive” and said, “He obviously doesn’t know One Nation because we got a surprise for him. We have quite a large proportion of gay people.” He added that One Nation believes in an Australian culture that is tolerant and egalitarian, and that Mr Singh's comments were “outside the guardrails”. One Nation's South Australian MP James Virgo is gay.
Anna Brown, chief executive of Equality Australia, called Mr Singh’s comments “demonstrably false, thoroughly discredited and deeply harmful.” She highlighted that nearly two-thirds of the almost 80% of Australians who participated in the 2017 postal survey supported marriage equality.
The comments emerge as One Nation prepares candidates for the Victorian state election in November. The party's vetting process has previously been criticised, with a candidate recently dropped ahead of the South Australian state election after a UK arrest warrant for alleged sexual touching without consent was revealed.