Updated ,first published
Pauline Hanson says she is not sure if she will pitch herself for prime minister at the next election, downplaying the notion after saying she could do the job as she admitted One Nation had shut down party branches she said were “infiltrated by extremists”.
The 72-year-old, whose rise in the polls has sent shudders through Canberra, seemed to open the door to a long-term alliance with the Coalition parties in a wide-ranging interview with this masthead’s Inside Politics podcast. Hanson insisted she would not be swayed by her most powerful backer, mining magnate Gina Rinehart, despite adopting one of Rinehart’s key policies, and opened up on her thinking about moving to the lower house.
After two polls showed One Nation’s first-preference vote above Labor for the first time, the populist leader claimed vindication for her long-held views, rebuffing the arguments of Tony Abbott and Barnaby Joyce, who have both said her political persona has evolved since she was first elected 30 years ago.
“Have I really changed?” she said on this masthead’s Inside Politics podcast. “No, because the rest of the country’s caught up with me.”
“I’ve been consistent with what I’ve been saying over years, and although it was looked at as politically incorrect to say those things at that time by saying ‘swamped by Asians’.”
Hanson shocked the nation in 1996 when she claimed Australia was “swamped by Asians” in her first parliamentary speech as the independent MP for Oxley after she was disendorsed mid-campaign by the Liberals.
She has since shifted focus to campaigning against Muslim migration.
“A lot of these Asians actually embraced me,” she said.
Six months after Hanson was suspended from parliament for wearing a burqa in the Senate – condemned as a racist provocation – and four months after she was censured by all federal parties for questioning if there were any “good Muslims”, she insisted that “Muslim immigration is totally different to Asian immigration”.
She says it’s about embracing the Australian way of life. “We’ve had people from all different cultural backgrounds that have come on board to be Australians… They say, ‘Pauline, you are right’. We don’t want this country to become like the place that we left, and neither do I.”
“People are fed up with the major political parties.”
Her party’s primary vote grew from 6.4 per cent at the election in May to about 15 per cent before the Bondi massacre, which accelerated the debates about migration and multiculturalism.
Now, One Nation is up to around 30 per cent in the YouGov and Redbridge polls, in front of Labor and pulling some support from the government, but considerably more from the Coalition. This masthead’s Resolve Political Monitor has One Nation at 24 per cent, and she is rated in some polls as the most preferred leader on migration.
Pauline for PM?
Hanson sent mixed signals when asked about whether she would present as a prime ministerial alternative, saying “I haven’t made that final decision at all” and rejecting the argument that many Australians were backing One Nation as a protest.
For months, she has shunned the prospect of holding real power. Coalition and Labor officials said privately that voters interviewed in their internal polling liked the idea of shaking up the system but did not see her as a serious prime ministerial candidate, and if she campaigned to lead the government, it would water down her appeal as an outsider.
On Sunday, she told Sky News she had “the ability” to be the prime minister, increasing the scrutiny on her policies and plans.
“I didn’t say ‘want to run’,” she told Inside Politics on Wednesday. “I said, if I am put in that position, I believe that I have the ability to be able to do the job. So there’s a hell of a difference.”
In separate remarks, she said: “I’m not backing away at all. I am the leader of this party.”
Hanson floated the idea she may run for a seat in the lower house, perhaps the Labor-held suburban Brisbane seat of Blair, a seat Labor holds by 5.5 per cent where One Nation’s 2025 primary vote was 10 per cent, or Wright, an LNP-held Brisbane seat also where the margin is 8 per cent and One Nation has had 16 per cent of the vote.
She also floated Capricornia, an LNP-held regional seat that Nationals leader Senator Matt Canavan is also interested in contesting.
“I could actually do anything. There’s nothing in the Constitution says the prime minister has to come from the lower house,” she said, citing John Gorton’s short stint as prime minister from the Senate.
Barnaby Joyce, the former National who has been One Nation’s highest-profile defection, warned this week that the party would be “getting ahead of ourselves” by entertaining the debate of running the country.
“That is a discussion for a long, long way down the track, maybe,” he said. There is speculation that Joyce could take over from Hanson as leader next term.
A bigger coalition
While the Coalition has been debating striking a preference deal with One Nation at future elections, some senior MPs fear Hanson’s outfit could become so well established that the parties would have to contemplate a political alliance. Such an arrangement would kill the Coalition’s chances of governing alone and is fiercely resisted by most opposition MPs.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese called the opposition the “Liberal One National party” in question time.
10 takeaways from the Pauline Hanson interview
- Hanson on what’s driving her support: “People are fed up with the major political parties because they’re feeling it out in the streets, in their suburbs, in their homes, in their jobs, the workforces on the streets. The mass migration has been a driving factor.”
- Is her polling support soft or temporary? “No, I disagree with that in so many ways. Even when I first got into politics with John Howard, you know, I was very popular back then as well. Even turning back the boats, that was my policy to actually do that.”
- Equivocating on running on a platform to be PM: “Even the polls are showing that a lot of support is coming from people for me to be leader. Now, I haven’t made that final decision at all, but at the moment I am the leader of the party. Have you asked Angus Taylor [if he wants to be PM]? Well, why do you question me then? Because you don’t think I can do it.”
- After discussing three different lower house seats where she could run: “I could actually do anything. There’s nothing in the Constitution says the prime minister has to go from the lower house.”
- On talking to senior Liberals about an alliance: “If anyone wants to talk to me about it, and we can make a change … then I’ll be talking to them.”
- On AUKUS: “You’ve got to look at the fact that America can’t build subs, they’re only building 1.3 at the moment. You know, they were expecting about 2.3 a year… We’re in the deal with AUKUS. AUKUS is more about an ally with the United States and Great Britain. It’s not just about building subs, there’s more substance to it.”
- On China: “I’d like to [see us] be more self-sufficient.”
- On banning sports gambling ads: ”I think it could be allowed in certain times after a certain time at night. If you’re going to ban that, then ban the whole industry altogether.”
- On taking advice from her most powerful backer, billionaire Gina Rinehart: “Why wouldn’t I listen to her or listen to anyone else?”
- On extremism in One Nation branches: “I said, well, just send out a memo to people, be aware of anyone who wants to come talk to the branches who may have extremism.”
Asked if she would speak to new Liberal president Tony Abbott about some sort of alliance, she said, “If anyone wants to talk to me about it, and we can make a change [in] the direction of policy that’s driving this country, then I’ll be talking to them.”
“In the long run … my main aim is, you get rid of Labor and to get rid of the Greens, that’s what it’s about, and the teals.”
Hanson remains evasive about the prospects of any such coalition, saying “you’re not going to box me into a corner [where] I’m going to be tagged with the Coalition government because they’re responsible for a lot of problems that we’re in now, and my members do not want to see me associated or to join forces with them.”
“There’s really three major parties now in it. I’m a major party, you know? I’m not just this minor party out there on the fringes to actually give preferences to give one of the majors.”
‘Far-right’ growing pains
Hanson revealed she had recently shut down four local branches over concerns about what she said may have been “far-right” figures speaking at meetings, as the party’s membership grows and volunteers and donors desert the Coalition.
“Members invite others, and also they could be trying to set us up right. So, even the media will try and set us up to get someone to go there as a speaker. Then all they’ve got to start expressing their views, and that’s in the media.”
“I’m being infiltrated by these extremists, so it’s all the time happening with One Nation, they set us up all the time, and I’ve really had enough of it,” she said, while denying the people who spoke were white supremacists.
Hanson is endorsed by prominent right-wing influencers including Sam Bamford of the 2 Worlds Collide podcast and members of the March for Australia movement.
Bamford has been in a heated debate online about his view that true Australians are those with British heritage and white skin, or Indigenous Australians. Asked about this, Hanson said Bamford’s view was “ridiculous” and they were not “bosom buddies”, though she appeared on Bamford’s podcast in February.
To weed out unwanted controversies in the future, Hanson’s trusted chief-of-staff James Ashby and senior party officials have developed a new AI-based tool, codenamed the “Obsidian Hawk Check”, which scrapes the internet to check the social media and criminal history of anybody wanting to become a party volunteer, leader or candidate.
The tool will be used in the Victorian state election in November after many years of controversies over candidates and questions about One Nation’s disclosure of finances and its administration.
Hanson suggested that the chief reason she recently sacked party official Sean Black, a convicted sex offender, was because of pressure from the media and Coalition.
“I tried to give him a fair go, and he did his time in prison, and I stuck with him because he was trying to make a living for him and his family. What do we do with these people? What would you like me to do?” she said, baulking at the claim that her support for a sex offender undermined her tough-on-crime stance and cultural conservatism.
Hanson firmly rejected claims from former One Nation MP and Labor leader Mark Latham that Hanson and her staff used her control over party financial structures for “laundering taxpayer funding”.
Rinehart’s influence
She also insisted she would not be influenced by mining billionaire Gina Rinehart.
Australia’s richest person is a highly motivated backer of Hanson, donating a $2 million plane to fly Hanson and Joyce around the country. The West Australian has encouraged wealthy friends to donate to One Nation before campaign finance laws become more restrictive next year. Rinehart and the Seven West media businesses she recently bought into are also the most powerful backers of Victoria Cross winner Ben Roberts-Smith, a cause Hanson has also embraced.
“She doesn’t influence me at all,” Hanson claimed. “She’s like anyone I’ve been to, her meetings, I’ve listened to the speeches, I’ve heard her views on these things, and they’re very in line with my views.”
Policy dilemmas
Answering questions about her party’s policies, Hanson said she would cut the NDIS, just like the major parties propose, as well as the Indigenous affairs and climate departments, and scrap Snowy Hydro 2.0.
But these savings would not go close to funding Hanson’s proposed spending boost to defence. Hanson wants more than double the current defence spending to 5 per cent of GDP, which would cost hundreds of billions of dollars over the forward estimates.
One of the only public figures in Australia to have called for the precise 5 per cent figure is Rinehart. Even the Trump administration, which has been pushing allies to spend much more on defence, has asked Australia to move to 3.5 per cent of GDP, while Trump himself has asked NATO allies to move to 5 per cent.
On this week’s 4.75 per cent boost to the minimum wage, Hanson hedged, saying it would hurt businesses. But, she said, workers were doing it tough, too. Labor has sought to portray Hanson as anti-worker, as polls show working-class voters and mortgage-holders flocking to the Queenslander.
She said a ban on sports gambling ads would ultimately lead to a ban on gambling itself; needed to be reminded of the JobsReady graduates program; and had not heard of the Morrison-government news bargaining code that Labor has updated to push tech firms to pay for Australian journalism.
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Paul Sakkal is Chief Political Correspondent. He previously covered Victorian politics and won a Walkley award and the 2025 Press Gallery Journalist of the Year. Contact him securely on Signal @paulsakkal.14.Connect via X or email.