Parminder Singh, a former One Nation candidate who ran for an upper house seat in Western Australia's 2025 state election, has apologised after describing gay people as having a mental illness in a video interview posted by Perth comedian and content creator Jasky Singh, better known as Mr Sikkant.
The comments landed in the middle of the current Secret Harbour by-election, where Singh was campaigning for the party. That’s the machinery at work: candidates, branding, and public messaging all moving through the same political pipeline while ordinary people are left to absorb the damage when the script turns ugly.
Who Gets Hit First
Singh said, "no, no, it's a mental illness" when asked if he thought people were born gay. He also said, "No-one born anything … I blame on the parents because parents are too busy." In the earlier video, when asked how gay people participating in parades affected him personally, he said it was an "advertisement" to young people. Those words weren’t abstract. They were aimed at people already forced to live under the pressure of public stigma, with a political candidate helping spread it.
In a statement, Singh said, "I'm sorry I hurt people. I was repeating something I had heard people saying on social media about homosexuality being a mental illness. I should not have presented that as a fact. I respect everyone, and I believe every person in Australia should be free to live their life with dignity, equality and respect." He stood by his earlier remarks about parades and school education, saying, "I respect everyone, I accept everyone, I just do not like the advertisement and this education in primary school." He also said, "I told [Mr Sikkant] not to publish this, it is a wrong presentation of me."
Jasky Singh said drafts of the full interview were provided to Parminder Singh before publication and that he did not request anything be removed. He said some of the videos had since been taken down from the Mr Sikkant social media channels because he was mindful of how the saga had affected Singh and his family. The whole exchange shows how political messaging gets packaged, edited, and defended after the fact, while the people targeted by the original comments are expected to swallow the fallout.
The Party Line, After the Damage
Parminder Singh was number three on One Nation WA's Legislative Council ticket at the 2025 state election but was not elected. His profile was removed from the party's website following media reporting of his comments. That’s the tidy cleanup phase. The candidate is gone from the website, but the structure that elevated him is still there, intact and waiting for the next round.
One Nation WA leader Rod Caddies said on Thursday the interview did not reflect the views of the party and said gay people deserved to feel "equal in society". One Nation leader Pauline Hanson had earlier distanced herself from Singh's comments and said she did not share his views. The party’s public distancing reads like damage control from an outfit trying to separate its brand from the consequences of the people it puts forward.
WA Labor minister John Carey, who is openly gay, said he was not surprised by Singh's comments because One Nation had a history of preselecting candidates with similar views. "This is not the exception. This is the norm in One Nation. When you're a party based on extreme issues, extreme views, that peddle hatred, no wonder that you collect candidates that are vile like this," he said. His words point straight at the selection process itself, where the gatekeepers choose who gets a platform and who gets treated as disposable once the backlash starts.
The facts here are plain. A party candidate repeated homophobic abuse on camera, then blamed social media for it. The party moved to distance itself. The profile came down. The by-election kept rolling. And the people at the bottom, the ones turned into a talking point, were left to deal with the wreckage while the political apparatus tried to scrub the stain off its own hands.