Blatantly Partisan Party Review XVIII (federal 2025): Pauline Hanson’s One Nation
Running where: the Senate and every House division in every state and the NT (no candidates in the ACT)
Prior reviews: federal 2013, federal 2016, NSW 2019, federal 2019, WA 2025
What I said before: “I don’t see there being much point any more reviewing this party in good faith when their whole worldview is defined by racism and bigotry, and when their candidates so routinely turn out to be loose cannons with bizarre and conspiratorial views. If any One Nation members are elected at this election, the main question will be how long they remain in the party.” (federal 2019)
What I think this year: I’ve gone back and forth on whether to bother reviewing One Nation (PHON). If you are reading this blog, you probably already know who Pauline Hanson is, and given the average sort of person who a) uses Tumblr and/or b) visits this blog specifically, you almost certainly think she’s racist bin juice. So, this entry is less to discuss PHON policies—they are what you would expect—and more to canvass the party’s electoral prospects, as the landscape has shifted a bit recently.
In the washup after the 2022 election, the consensus among the people with whom I discuss micro-parties and psephology was that One Nation was potentially on the wane. Lower thresholds to win seats in the upper houses of state parliaments compared to the Senate might keep them going (e.g. NSW, SA, and the new system in WA, where they won two seats, the second somewhat unexpected at least for me), but at the time it felt like the 14.3% threshold for the Senate would make it hard for them to win, possibly even in Queensland if Pauline herself is not on the ballot. And this year she is only halfway through her Senate term, so it's Malcolm Roberts up for re-election. But more recently, things have shifted back in One Nation's favour.
Roberts has the stare of a man who is dead inside, and remarkably he has stuck with Pauline. Almost every other person to represent PHON in a state or federal parliament has failed to serve a full term from one election to the next. As noted, the party has won two Legislative Councillors at WA’s recent election, which brings the total individuals to represent PHON in state and federal parliaments to 40. Assuming Roberts does not quit the party before polling day, he will become just the seventh person out of those 40 to serve from one election to the next (he got ejected via section 44 after first being elected in 2016, and regained his seat in 2019, so this will be the end of his first full term as a senator). He will most likely retain his seat for Queensland too.
And PHON might see something of a rejuvenated vote elsewhere too. Why? The state of their rivals, especially those that Clive Palmer is bankrolling. Everybody involved with the United Australia Party (UAP) is unintelligent and incurious even by the low standards for the far-right, and they voluntarily deregistered the party during the last term of parliament. What it seems they were too stupid to realise is that you cannot re-register the same party until after the next election, a provision that has existed for over forty years to avoid vexatious de- and re-registration (such as to avoid financial disclosure requirements, as seems to be the case here), opportunistic posers pretending to be recently de-registered parties, and parties squatting on a name without contesting elections. And so the High Court rejected the UAP’s bid for re-registration and Palmer has instead bankrolled the Trumpet of Patriots (TOP). But TOP has poor name recognition, and it is already splintering: their candidate in the Division of Flinders has quit. He is now assisting the PHON candidate in that seat and is asking other TOP candidates to withdraw.
So, it looks like voters too far right to stomach voting for the Liberals might drift to One Nation this time, even with parties like Rennick First, HEART, and the Libertarians competing for their attention. PHON has name recognition after all. That sort of voter will certainly be pleased by the party’s demands to slash migration, limit foreign ownership of property, and deport 75,000 illegal migrants (one dreads to think how Pauline & Co. envisage rounding up visa overstayers and deporting them). PHON are so obsessed with migrants and borders that their very thin firearms policy seeks to address “gun crimes” through “stricter border security”. There’s the usual “we want to enable hate speech” free speech policy, a predictable rant about government waste that wants to outright abolish climate change authorities and the National Indigenous Australians Agency as “wasteful”, and a covid policy laden with phrases calculated to gain the approval of cookers. Pauline has recently been doing her best to push along the transphobia barrow too, latching on to the specious “fairness in women’s sport” argument to call for a Senate inquiry. I could keep going, but the last thing I’ll flag is that PHON are consistently very bad on family court matters, with the deadbeat dads seemingly having Pauline’s ear about divorce and custody matters.
Recommendation: In the House, give candidates for Pauline Hanson’s One Nation a very low preference. In the Senate, give Pauline Hanson’s One Nation a weak or no preference.
Website: https://www.onenation.org.au/
