“Any questions? Alright. No-one has a question?”
That was Pauline Hanson in February 2025, at a press conference on her plan to let parents split their income for tax purposes. She had given a short speech and asked for questions. Nobody asked, because no reporters had come.
This week at Parliament House looked very different, according to the ABC’s weekly federal politics update by Jake Evans. On the morning of the report, Hanson took questions outside the front of the building, where she had arranged a convoy of trucks carrying “Fire the Liar” signs. The signs were paid for from money raised from 77,000 supporters. Journalists turned out in numbers.
From 5 per cent to untouchable
One Nation spent 30 years hovering around a primary vote of about 5 per cent. In a few months it has climbed to what the ABC called a stratospheric height, and Hanson has seemed untouchable. The update noted that in a week when the government was negotiating the biggest tax changes since perhaps the carbon tax, that story felt like a side show.
The week also showed she is not untouchable, the report said. Labor is sharpening its message against One Nation. It made a meal in parliament of Hanson’s press club comments that workers were lazy and too difficult to fire. It also seized on a suggestion that she might walk back paid parental leave entitlements, which forced her to say she would not.
Monoculture and the Socceroos
In the chamber, Hanson boasted of having prompted days of debate on multiculturalism. It tripped up Angus Taylor, who could not find his footing on whether to back it or an Australian monoculture. Pressed to explain, she said “nothing would really change” under a monoculture and compared her vision to the Socceroos, who “are from different cultures, but they went in there to play the game for Australia.”
Outside, an ABC reporter asked whether that was just wordplay. Hanson dropped her talking points and told a story about a Russian woman she had met. When the woman’s family immigrated to Australia, her mother urged them to “integrate, assimilate into the society” and her 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 online: “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 was alluding to new colleague David Farley’s accidental vote alongside the Greens and independents on a motion to wind back fuel tax credits.
The fight for attention
The update said it remains to be seen what filters through to the public before 2028. Karl Stefanovic has moved to an overtly political podcast in the style of Piers Morgan or Joe Rogan, more people are getting information from influencers, and content generated by artificial intelligence floods algorithms and comment threads. MPs and operatives across the divide say One Nation’s online machine has taken flight over the past three months or so and is better funded and coordinated than before.
Which Pauline people see, the report said, depends on who wins the online fight for attention. It described Senate estimates and Question Time as stages for clip farmers working on the real fight online. One Nation’s Barnaby Joyce and Nationals senator Bridget McKenzie skipped parliament this week for a conservative conference in the United Kingdom.
