Pauline Hanson's One Nation


One Nation, officially known as Pauline Hanson's One Nation, is a conservative right-wing populist political party in Australia. It is led by its founder Pauline Hanson, who has been a senator for Queensland since 2016 and previously served in the House of Representatives from 1996 to 1998.
The party had electoral success when it was established in the late 1990s, before suffering an extended decline after 2001. Nevertheless, it has had a profound impact on debates on multiculturalism and immigration in Australia. Following Hanson's return as leader and the 2016 federal election, the party gained four seats in the Senate, including one for Hanson herself, in Queensland. Since 2025, the party has had four seats in the senate.
One Nation's platform includes policies such as citizen-initiated referenda and opposition to the introduction of a treaty with Australia's Aboriginal population. It also favours restricting foreign ownership of Australian land and denounces economic rationalism and globalisation. The party opposes abortion. One Nation supports a general reduction in the levels of net migration and seeks to withdraw Australia from the United Nations Refugee Convention. One Nation has called climate science a "scam" and wants Australia to withdraw from the Paris Climate Accords. One Nation also seeks for Australia to withdraw from the United Nations and the World Health Organization.

History

1997: One Nation founded

Shortly after being elected to federal parliament, Hanson formed the One Nation party with co-founders David Oldfield and David Ettridge. During the formative days of One Nation, Oldfield was employed by Liberal Party backbench MP Tony Abbott as a political advisor. One Nation was launched on 11 April 1997, at an event held in Ipswich, Queensland. The party was officially registered by the Australian Electoral Commission on 27 June.

1998: First elections

The 1998 Queensland state election produced One Nation's greatest electoral success, with the ALP winning 44 seats to be the largest party in the Assembly, the Coalition winning 32 seats and One Nation winning 11 seats. During the campaign, polling for One Nation led to commentators saying One Nation might secure the balance of power in a hung parliament. During the campaign, all three major political parties suffered a decline in voter support due to One Nation having entered the fray. The National Party saw an 11.1% drop in support, their Liberal Party coalition partners lost 6.7% and Labor's vote dropped 4.0%. To the surprise of many pundits, the One Nation Party received 22.7% of the first preference vote, giving them the second largest voter turnout for any party in Queensland during the 1998 election. One Nation drew the majority of its support from regional and rural Queensland, winning nine of its 11 seats in rural and regional electorates.
With nearly 23% of the vote, One Nation gained a higher percentage of the vote than any other third party at the state or territory level since Federation. This was also the only election at which a third party gained more votes than both the Liberal Party and the National Party considered separately.
Subsequently, the One Nation contingent in the Queensland Parliament split, with dissident members forming the rival City Country Alliance in late 1999.
At the 1998 federal election, Hanson contested the new seat of Blair after a redistribution effectively split Oxley in half. Hanson lost to Liberal candidate Cameron Thompson, and the One Nation candidate in Oxley lost the seat to ALP candidate Bernie Ripoll. One Nation candidate Heather Hill was elected as a senator for Queensland. Hill's eligibility to sit as a senator was successfully challenged in Sue v Hill under the Australian Constitution on the basis that she had failed to renounce her childhood British citizenship, despite being a naturalised Australian citizen. The seat went to the party's Len Harris following a recount.
Political scientists Ian McAllister and Clive Bean, in an analysis of the 1998 federal election, found that although it was assumed that One Nation supporters came from a traditionally conservative demographic, instead:
Within a year of One Nation's electoral success, three of the 11 Queensland MPs elected had quit the party claiming the leadership had too much control over the party.

Internal disputes and claims of corruption

The party was affected by internal divisions and has split several times. Lawsuits involving ex-members did eventually force Hanson to repay approximately $500,000 of public funding won at the 1998 Queensland election amid claims by Abbott that the party was fraudulently registered. Abbott established a trust fund called "Australians for Honest Politics Trust" to help bankroll civil court cases against the party. The suits alleged that the party was undemocratically constituted in order to concentrate all power in the hands of three people—Hanson, Ettridge and Oldfield —and that it technically had only two members: Ettridge and Hanson. Even though Hanson's fraud charges were dropped, the Electoral Commission of Queensland never reimbursed Hanson for the monies that they collected from the claim.
The first Annual General Meeting of the One Nation party was held in April 1999, which critic Paul Reynolds said demonstrated that One Nation lacked organisation.
At the 1999 New South Wales state election, David Oldfield was elected to the New South Wales Legislative Council. In October 2000, Hanson expelled Oldfield from the party after a disagreement. His expulsion created even more instability in a party which was constantly embroiled in scandal and internal strife. Oldfield attacked Hanson publicly, saying that "everything including her maiden speech and every word of any consequence that she's said since, has actually been written for her". Oldfield engineered a split within the party, creating One Nation NSW, in 2001. The new party took advantage of electoral party registration laws to register itself as a political party under the 'One Nation' name with the NSW electoral commission, and achieved registration in April 2002.
At the 2001 Western Australian state election One Nation won three seats in the state, however the party was reduced to three seats the same year at the 2001 Queensland state election. During the 2001 Australian federal election, the party's vote fell from 9% to 5.5%. Hanson failed in her bid to win a Senate seat from Queensland, despite polling a strong 10% of the primary vote. Hanson also failed to win a seat in the New South Wales Legislative Council.

Electoral fraud charges

In 2001, disendorsed One Nation candidate Terry Sharples accused the party of not having the 500 members needed for registration, and called for the party to be deregistered, which was carried by the Supreme Court. Hanson appealed the verdict but was unsuccessful. Hanson appeared before the Brisbane Magistrates Court to face charges of electoral fraud, that same year. Hanson pleaded not guilty to the charges, claiming that she was being subjected to "a political witch-hunt." While court hearings proceeded, Hanson ran for a seat in the NSW Upper House as an independent, but only received 1.9 per cent of the vote.
Both Ettridge and Hanson were found guilty of fraudulently registering One Nation and obtaining more than $500,000 from the AEC, in 2003. Crown lawyers accused them both of falsely claiming more than 500 people were party members when they were not truly members. Hanson was sentenced to three years in jail, stating outside the court that the verdict was "Rubbish, I'm not guilty... it's a joke".
It was later disclosed that Abbott had been working behind the scenes to take Ettridge and Hanson down, meeting with several disgruntled One Nation members including Sharples. On 6 November of that same year, Hanson was released from prison after successfully appealing her conviction; she was acquitted on all counts.

2004–2013: Electoral decline

At the 2004 Queensland state election, One Nation polled less than 5% of the vote and its sole elected representative, Rosa Lee Long, acted as an independent. One Nation attempted to defend its Queensland Senate seat at the 2004 federal election, but lost it. Len Harris's Senate term expired on 30 June 2005.
On 8 February 2005, One Nation lost federal party status but was re-registered in time for the 2007 federal election. It still had state parties in Queensland and New South Wales. Subsequently, it created another state party in Western Australia. In the February 2005 Western Australian state election, the One Nation vote collapsed.
In the 2006 South Australian state election, six One Nation candidates stood for the lower house. Their highest levels of the primary vote was 4.1% in the district of Hammond and 2.7% in Goyder, with the other four hovering around 1%. They attracted 0.8% of the upper house vote. One Nation consequently won no seats in that election.
In the 2006 Queensland state election, the party contested four of 89 seats, and its vote collapsed. It suffered a swing of 4.3% to be left with just 0.6% of the vote. Its only remaining seat in the state, Tablelands, was retained with an increased majority by Rosa Lee Long. Tablelands was abolished prior to the 2009 Queensland state election, with Lee Long failing to win the seat of Dalrymple.
In the 2012 Queensland state election the party unsuccessfully contested six seats. The party received only 2,525 first preference votes across the state.

2013–2015: Hanson's return as leader

Hanson rejoined One Nation as a rank-and-file member in 2013. Later that year, she unsuccessfully contested the Senate for New South Wales at the 2013 federal election. In 2014, Hanson was reappointed as leader by the One Nation executive. She contested the seat of Lockyer for the party at the January 2015 Queensland state election, falling 114 votes short of defeating sitting Liberal National Party member Ian Rickuss.
In 2013, it was reported by One Nation that the party had more than 5000 members, with the figure rising since Hanson returned as party leader.
In July 2015, Hanson announced that the party was renamed the original "Pauline Hanson's One Nation" and contested in the Senate for Queensland at the 2016 federal election.
In the lead up to the 2016 election, Hanson arranged a "Fed Up" tour that began in July 2015 as part of her re-election campaign, flying in a private plane to Rockhampton prior to a Reclaim Australia rally, piloted by James Ashby.