One Nation leader Pauline Hanson delivered her first ever formal address to the National Press Club, three decades after she first entered federal politics in 1996. The speech ran for nearly fifty minutes, well beyond the roughly thirty minutes of a typical Press Club address, and was followed by half an hour of questions from political journalists.
Her appearance came as One Nation has been rising in the polls. The party's primary vote has grown from 1.3 per cent in 2016 to 3.1 per cent in 2019 and 5 per cent in 2022, and recent surveys have placed it in the mid to high twenties, at times ahead of both major parties. Commentators noted that, a long way out from the next election, the party is positioning itself as a credible third force in Australian politics.
Hanson devoted a large part of her speech to immigration, calling for cuts to migration and arguing that Australia should be a monocultural society living under one cultural umbrella. She cited census figures, including that around 32 per cent of the population was born overseas and that more than half of residents were either born overseas or had a parent who was, and said One Nation would restrict immigration from places it regards as immersed in extremism, naming radical Islam.
As she turned to the cost of living, citing figures from the Salvation Army's Red Shield report about Australians skipping meals and struggling to get by, a banner automatically unfurled on the wall directly behind her. The banner accused her of opposing a pay rise for workers while pocketing a pay rise for herself, and it appeared at the moment she reached that section of her prepared remarks.
The stunt prompted a furious reaction from organisers, who said it looked staged but had clearly not been arranged by the club. Chief executive Morris Riley launched an internal investigation into how it happened, with board member Jane Norman calling the episode hugely embarrassing and confirming there had been no prior knowledge of it. Officials tore the banner down while Hanson continued with her address.
Across the rest of the speech, Hanson set out a range of One Nation positions. She said the party would introduce nuclear energy and criticised government spending on hydrogen projects and the Snowy 2.0 scheme, pointed to the need to overhaul the tax system with ideas such as a flat tax and income splitting, and said that under One Nation the SBS would be abolished while the ABC would be reduced to a subscription service in the cities.
The question session produced a sharp exchange with The Guardian's Sarah Martin, who asked about taxpayer funding for Hanson's daughter, Lee Hanson, who is employed as a political adviser for a New South Wales senator while spending time campaigning in Tasmania. Hanson called Martin a trashy journalist and said she would be barred from future interviews, while denying any role in the appointment and insisting her daughter had won the job on her own merits.