One Nation has said party officials did not know of Rodney Culleton’s arrest over an alleged run-in with Queensland police in 2014 before he successfully ran on its federal Senate ticket.
One Nation has tightened its vetting process for candidates in next year’s Queensland election, insisting they now provide national police checks.
Guardian Australia can reveal the Western Australian senator, who quit One Nation on Sunday, was charged with obstructing police and contravening a direction after an alleged dispute over vehicle ownership at a Brisbane auction yard in August 2014.
When asked about Culleton’s charges on Monday, a spokesman for One Nation said the party was unaware of the incident as he had not disclosed it. Had the party known, it may have thought differently about Culleton’s preselection, the spokesman said.
The party, which had asked candidates to obtain and disclose state-based police checks before this year’s federal election, would now insist on national checks, he said.
Documents in the Brisbane magistrate court show that Culleton was charged with obstructing a police officer at Manheim car auctions on 6 August 2014.
A police spokeswoman said officers had been called to the Eagle Farm business “in relation to an alleged dispute over vehicle ownership” and a 52-year-old man who was refusing to leave the premises.
Culleton allegedly refused police requests to leave, adopting what officers described as an “aggressive” stance, before he was charged. He was further charged with contravening a police direction when he allegedly failed to attend Hendra police station to provide “identifying particulars”.
The matter was first heard in court on 27 August 2014 before the case was dropped on 25 February this year when prosecutors offered no evidence.
A spokeswoman for Culleton said the incident was “not relevant so there will be no comment on this”.
Culleton has fallen out with Pauline Hanson and her fellow senators, who say he withheld the fact he had a larceny conviction over the theft of keys from a tow truck driver in New South Wales, also in 2014.
Culleton had the conviction, which was carried out in his absence in March, annulled in August after his election before pleading guilty to the charge and receiving no conviction in October.
But the high court is yet to rule on Culleton’s eligibility for the Senate under a constitutional provision that a senator cannot be serving or awaiting a sentence for a crime that carries a prison term of a year or more.
Hanson told reporters in Brisbane on Monday that Culleton’s departure was “disappointing” but that “all political parties have these kinds of problems”.
She was forced to reject suggestions that it pointed to a rerun of internal problems that led to the party’s collapse after it won 11 seats in the 1998 Queensland election.
Hanson also dismissed parallels with Clive Palmer’s political party, which won a lower-house seat and three Senate seats before dissolving in acrimony amid complaints about Palmer’s treatment of his colleagues.
“The people are not walking away from One Nation,” she said. Hanson said the Culleton imbroglio was “not going to destroy me, this is not going to destroy the party ... If you look at what I’ve done in the past, this is just a bump.”
Hanson said vetting for the first 36 candidates in the state election, who One Nation announced on Sunday, had been made “more stringent” but she had left the details up to others on the party’s state executive.
She said she was “as confident as anyone can be” that the pasts of those 36 new candidates would not come back to haunt the party, although there were “no guarantees in life”.
Hanson read out a text from the fellow Queensland senator Malcolm Roberts, which said that, without Hanson, Culleton would “still be driving around in his ute cracking jokes” and not in the Senate.
Culleton is separately awaiting trial in Perth over the alleged theft of a hire car in 2015, which could also threaten his position in office if it results in a conviction. Culleton is also facing a possible bankruptcy declaration over allege debts of more than $6m, which could also end his political career.
He is also the subject of a complaint to Queensland police by the state’s chief magistrate that his letter to a Cairns magistrate regarding another case could amount to attempting to pervert the course of justice and threatening a judicial officer.
The senator was at the centre of bizarre scenes at his bankruptcy hearing in Perth on Monday, where he stormed out on proceedings over the presence of two men who were later arrested by police.
Culleton had refused to return to the hearing because the federal court judge Michael Barker had refused to remove the men, who had restraining orders taken against them by Culleton’s wife.
“If you are not going to remove them I will remove myself … they have made idle threats and I am not comfortable having them in court,” Culleton said in court.
WA and federal police later arrived and arrested Bruce Bell and Frank Bertola, onetime allies of the farmer-turned-senator in his campaign against the banks, who now are locked in a dispute with Culleton over money and are challenging his eligibility for the Senate.
Barker said his patience was being tested and he would not let the court be turned into a circus as Culleton demanded the hearing be adjourned.
Culleton claimed he had not had time to organise a lawyer, wanted the case to be heard before a jury and denied ever being served bankruptcy papers by a New South Wales police sergeant who appeared via video.
Barker said he believed Culleton was deliberately trying to “chew up time … control and cause the court to abandon the hearing today”.
Culleton has already been ordered to pay about $280,000 to the former businessman and Wesfarmers director Dick Lester over unpaid rent. The senator offered to pay to the court the money that is due to be decided.
