“Any questions? Alright. No-one has a question?” Pauline Hanson said that in February 2025, at the end of a short speech on her plan to let parents split their income for tax purposes. Not one reporter had turned up to ask her anything.
A year on, the picture is different. On Thursday morning Hanson took questions outside the front of Parliament House, where she had arranged a convoy of trucks carrying “Fire the Liar” signs, paid for from money raised among 77,000 supporters. Journalists packed the event, the ABC’s weekly federal politics update reported.
One Nation has climbed fast. After 30 years stuck at a primary vote of about 5 per cent, the party has risen in just a few months, and Hanson has looked hard to knock off her perch. Even so, the ABC’s Jake Evans wrote, the week showed the party is not untouchable.
Labor lines up
Labor is sharpening its message against One Nation. In parliament it made much of Hanson’s comments at the press club that workers were lazy and too difficult to fire. It also seized on a suggestion that she might walk back her paid parental leave entitlements, which forced her to clarify that she would not.
In the chamber, Hanson said she had prompted days of debate on multiculturalism, and that debate tripped up Coalition leader Angus Taylor, who could not settle whether to back multiculturalism or an Australian monoculture. Hanson was pushed to explain that “nothing would really change” under a monoculture. Her vision, she said, would look like the Socceroos, who “are from different cultures, but they went in there to play the game for Australia”.
Pressed by an ABC reporter on whether that was just wordplay, she dropped her talking points. She told of a Russian woman she had met, whose mother urged the family to “integrate, assimilate into the society” when they came to Australia, while the father refused. “Dad was wrong, mum was right, we have to integrate, we are Australians,” Hanson said. It was the first time since the press club that she had used the word assimilate, which the party knows is more controversial.
That afternoon she wrote on social media: “I’ll tell you up-front, One Nation won’t always be absolutely perfect. We’ll make a mistake here and there, but we’ll be up-front about it.” She appeared to be alluding to new colleague David Farley, who accidentally voted with the Greens and independents on a motion to wind back fuel tax credits.
The fight moves online
MPs and operatives across the political divide told the ABC that over the past three months or so they have watched a slick One Nation campaign machine take flight online, clearly better funded and coordinated than before. Labor’s and the Coalition’s memes at the 2025 federal election, the ABC wrote, showed both parties know the online war has to be won, even if they do not fully grasp it.
The same week, Parliament House dealt with other business. The government passed its tax changes on negative gearing and capital gains tax with the Greens’ support, adding a new borrowing restriction for self-managed super funds. It agreed to delay its NDIS bill until after the winter break so an inquiry could look at it.
