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One Nation leader Pauline Hanson will rail against the Coalition and lavish praise on Donald Trump as she rubs shoulders with the US president’s inner orbit at a $25,000-a-head conservative forum at Mar-a-Lago in Florida.
Australia’s most prominent populist-right politician, who is hoping to recruit Barnaby Joyce to boost her fortunes, has been staying at Trump’s resort this week as polling shows her party is tracking at a high of 15 per cent for primary votes – only nine points short of the opposition.
Pauline Hanson has been in the US for weeks, missing an entire fortnight of parliamentary sitting.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen
Hanson was the only Australian invited by the Conservative Political Action Conference to speak at its exclusive “Circle Retreat and Gala” at Trump’s resort. UK Reform Party leader Nigel Farage was feted at a similar event in 2018.
“Australia … has become an economic and social tinderbox that was created by successive Labor and Coalition governments,” Hanson will say on Wednesday in the United States (Thursday AEDT), according to a draft copy of her speech provided to this masthead.
“It’s wonderful to be in America with a re-energised, strong and patriotic leader who has the best interest of his people at heart.
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“In just one year, president Trump has turned this country around … Illegal migrants are being rounded up by ICE and sent home in remarkable numbers.”
Hanson has missed a fortnight of parliamentary sittings to attend the event, billed as attracting a “diverse cross-section of the conservative movement, from political heavyweights to cultural influencers”.
As reported by this masthead, she attended the president’s Halloween party last week alongside Australia’s richest person, Gina Rinehart.
Tickets for the conservative forum, which includes a ballroom dinner with Trump, range from $US5000 ($7700) to $US25,000. Hanson has spent the week at Mar-a-Lago, crossing paths with figures such as former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani and bosses from tech firm Nvidia.
Hanson’s party has had ups and downs since she burst onto the scene in the 1990s attacking Asian immigration. Her party is currently polling at record highs (12 per cent in this masthead’s Resolve Political Monitor and 15 per cent in The Australian’s Newspoll) as she seeks to capitalise on concerns about migration at the same time as Opposition Leader Sussan Ley tries to tack towards the political centre. Hanson’s polling last time recorded higher levels of support than she recorded from voters at the election in May, indicating polling numbers might inflate her party’s popularity.
Joyce, the maverick former deputy prime minister, is openly flirting with joining One Nation, as first reported by this masthead, splitting Nationals colleagues between those happy to see him go and others worried about the damage he and Hanson could cause the Coalition.
Nationals leader David Littleproud has responded to the threat with new attacks on Hanson, casting One Nation as a “party of protest” that only knows how to express grievance.
“It’s easy to say no, but ultimately someone has to govern this country. If you don’t have alternative solutions other than no, then the country will see through that,” he said last week.
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Hanson’s CPAC speech is filled with provocative talking points on diversity and inclusion, the climate change “hoax” and migration.
“Australia is taking in the same hateful, radical migrants from countries that are having an enormous impact on the UK and so many European nations right now and we’re seeing the impact with almost daily machete attacks, violent home invasions and weekly pro-Palestine protests across our major cities,” Hanson will say.
“It didn’t happen by accident, and if you speak out about it, you’re branded Islamophobic, racist, or even a nazi.”
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