Inside the rise of One Nation and the politics of tragedy

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About an hour after the horror of high-powered rifles reverberated around Bondi Beach, Pauline Hanson’s right-hand man received a phone call.

On the other end of the line was One Nation’s head office in Brisbane, asking the party’s chief of staff and most influential aide, James Ashby, how he wanted to handle the influx of memberships.

“We had 300 new members in one hour off the back of that tragedy,” he told this masthead during an expansive interview in the Central Queensland coastal city of Yeppoon.

Ashby claimed the party had added thousands to its membership database by Friday – though requests for proof were rejected – as One Nation unabashedly seized on the massacre to land political blows and expand its supporter reach.

“People now realise they have had as big a gutful of what these two major parties have been doing to our country – with the mass migration, the calibre of people coming into this country – and I think, they’re that wound up as a result of this, they now want to help,” he said.

Thousands gathered at Bondi Beach on Friday to mourn.

“There’s a real undercurrent of anger out there that existed before this tragedy, but since this, I don’t think this government know what they’re in for at the next election.”

Hanson visited Bondi Beach in the days after the antisemitic attack on the Chanukah by the Sea festival, which claimed the lives of 15 people in Australia’s most deadly mass shooting since the 1996 Port Arthur massacre.

As a horrified nation was plunged into a week of shared grief, culminating in a vigil at Bondi attended by thousands where the prime minister was booed, political leaders faced calls for gun law reform and a crackdown on hate speech.

Meanwhile, Hanson had launched a full-throated attack on Sky News, blaming the terrorist attack on governments allowing the “wrong people” to migrate to Australia.

On the Tuesday after the attack, flanked by recent National Party defector Barnaby Joyce, she was greeted with scattered applause when she arrived to lay flowers for the victims.

One Nation’s decades-long crusade

Hanson burst on to the scene in the 1996 federal election, claiming the Ipswich seat of Oxley despite being disendorsed by the Liberal Party. In her maiden speech, she launched her polarising style of politics with the claim that Australia was “in danger of being swamped by Asians”.

Many were offended but her popularity grew.

At this year’s May federal election, One Nation secured just 6.4 per cent of votes, but the party has risen in the polls since, amid frustration that immigration was fuelling the housing crisis and persistent cost-of-living pressures.

A Resolve Political Monitor, conducted for this masthead, from early December revealed One Nation’s primary support had jumped two points to 14 per cent. Its primary vote surged again a week on from the Bondi attack, to 16 per cent – a Resolve polling record high for the minor party.

Senator Lidia Thorpe reacts to Hanson wearing a burqa in the Senate.

In November, Hanson wore a burqa on the Senate floor, a repeat of her infamous political stunt from 2017. The protest against what she called an oppressive garment was panned across the political spectrum for vilifying Muslim Australians, but did not dent support among her base.

And yet Ashby was quick to shut down this masthead’s assertion One Nation was a far-right party.

“We’re not far-right, we’re centre-right,” he rebuked. “And that’s what people need to realise. I’m not interested, and neither is Pauline, in being a far-right party – we are a centre-right party, and we’re proud of that fact.”

Ashby also noted One Nation’s campaign against the major parties went beyond immigration, and included regional struggles such as access to healthcare, housing affordability and cost-of-living pressure.

“We’re not just talking about immigration. We’re talking about, more broadly, what’s happened because we’ve become so city-centric, so regions like this often feel forgotten, and I think by and large they’re right, they are [forgotten],” he said from his adopted tropical home city.

Ashby would not reveal specifics about the party’s total membership numbers or how recent growth compared with overall changes. He was also tight-lipped about future recruitment, while teasing that other conservative figures would join Joyce in abandoning the Coalition.

The party views the spike in membership as evidence of its surging appeal that foreshadows electoral returns, a suggestion dismissed by leading pollster Kos Samaras.

“Whenever someone talks about membership, that is a red flag for me,” the Redbridge Group director said. He said the rise of a populist movement would rarely manifest as direct membership of an organisation, and support was more likely to be transient.

“I find it hard to believe that those individuals who we are seeing in our data moving to One Nation – largely experiencing financial stress at home, largely in their 50s with a history of voting Liberal and very time-poor – suddenly all have this great need to join a political party. It just doesn’t add up.”

On Sunday, Joyce encouraged his supporters to join an anti-immigration rally in central Sydney, against the advice of the NSW premier and police. About 200 people were there to hear him speak.

The MAGA source of revenue

When Hanson was spotted alongside Gina Rinehart at Donald Trump’s luxury Florida resort, Mar-a-Lago, it set tongues wagging that Australia’s richest woman would lean on her enormous wealth to propel One Nation’s growth.

Ashby said the speculation was unfounded. “I haven’t seen any money from her,” he said, but added the party was always eager to hear from business figures who shared Hanson’s vision.

Joyce ended months of speculation in December, confirming he’d leave the Nationals and join One Nation.

Instead, he said an expansion campaign, launched in the days after the May federal election, has been funded through sales of One Nation-themed apparel, beer coolers, Australian flags and merchandise from its cartoon series mocking political rivals – most notably Prime Minister Anthony Albanese.

The stock includes its own version of a MAGA cap synonymous with Trump – replacing the ubiquitous American slogan with “Make Albo Go Away”. Ashby said nearly $96,000 worth of merchandise was sold in the 48 hours to Friday morning.

One Nation now had more than 70 political branches across the country, Ashby said, to boost organisational ability on the ground with a direct line to the party’s Brisbane headquarters.

The plan was to have a branch in as many of the 150 federal electorates as possible by the next election, which could be as early as August 2027 and no later than May 2028.

“We recognised following the federal election there was a real need for greater involvement from grassroots-level members, and the only way to encourage that, grow that, was through membership and branches,” he said.

The Central Queensland city of Mackay is the base of the One Nation movement.

“I don’t want to be a Brisbane-centric political party – you’ve got to be able to ask people from the state of Victoria to develop their own policies. You’ve got to be able to ask branches across that state to help pitch in so you’ve got a variation of understanding from every corner of that state.”

Ashby said One Nation’s membership base was growing throughout the country, but the front line of its movement was the seat of Capricornia, which stretched from Rockhampton along the coast to southern suburbs of Mackay and captured large mining centres Collinsville and Moranbah. Hanson addressed a branch meeting here earlier this month, in front of 160 people at the Yeppoon RSL.

Speculation that Ashby would run as a candidate in the seat was rife, but he said he was yet to decide, and the party’s candidacy would be confirmed in the new year.

Ashby is Hanson’s most important adviser.

This masthead travelled more than 1000 kilometres last week across the expansive and sweltering electorate, where the groundswell of One Nation support was underpinned by a growing disenfranchisement with the major parties.

Business owners complained of unfair tax settings and industrial relations laws they said had weakened productivity, while mining workers felt abandoned during a resource sector downturn and transition to clean energy.

Workers and families also cited housing and living-cost pressures, poor infrastructure development and strained access to healthcare. Blame fell on the Albanese government, but the Coalition wasn’t spared.

“As far as who to vote for, LNP or Labor, everyone wants a change, and everyone’s going to go to Pauline if she goes for it,” coal miner Daniel Mathieson said while enjoying a knock-off at the Tandara Hotel in Sarina, 40 kilometres south of the North Queensland city Mackay.

Coal miner Daniel Mathieson says Hanson has his vote.

Mathieson and his wife Jenny are gun owners and relatively new One Nation members, furious with the attacks at Bondi and the government’s response.

“I’m more concerned with the Albanese government making this about gun laws and not what the actual issue is, which is immigration,” Jenny told this masthead after a tropical storm swept across the surrounding cane fields.

Rockhampton retiree Neil Hardy said he voted for Labor during his career as a tradesman but had swung behind One Nation out of frustration the party no longer best represented workers – a swing he said was consistent among his wider circle.

“I think there will be a change for sure,” Hardy said of the party representation in Capricornia, now held by the Nationals’ Michelle Landry.

But while the frustration at the two major parties was widespread, not all believed Hanson and One Nation were the solution.

“They’re never going to get into power, it’s pointless,” Colin Marshall said, pointing to the party’s single seat in the House of Representatives following Joyce’s defection.

Colin and Laura Marshall, who have joined the hordes of Victorians who have migrated to the pristine coastal city of Yeppoon in Central Queensland.

Former state minister and long-time Central Queensland Labor powerbroker Robert Schwarten said the threat of One Nation was undoubtedly resurfacing in the region, and he urged both major parties to act swiftly to squash it.

He conceded Hanson’s party could claim the seat of Capricornia – “if the National Party doesn’t wake up to itself” – but said One Nation’s organisational prowess on the ground had been greatly exaggerated.

Schwarten said the jump in support in the aftermath of Bondi would be shortlived, hypothesising that the electorate and the nation would reject a race-based response and anti-migration sentiment.

“They’re not voting for Ashby … they’re voting for a kick in the arse to the body politic,” he told this masthead from Rockhampton. “I don’t see that immigration will be the issue that will win him Capricornia.”

Pauline Hanson’s One Nation is rising, particularly in the Central Queensland electorate of Capricornia.

Samaras had similar reservations about the party’s forecast growth and warned politicians not to use tragedies as a campaign tool.

The pollster predicted One Nation’s response to the Bondi attack would probably galvanise its base but fail to win over more voters.

“I don’t think they’ll lose any support yet on this issue and the way they’re handling it, but they certainly won’t be grabbing support beyond the usual group of Australians who harbour radical right-wing, populist views,” he said.

Like Schwarten, senior National Party figure Matt Canavan conceded voters were frustrated and fed up with the major parties and were turning to minors such as One Nation.

“I think the political class has failed Australians in recent years,” the Central Queensland-based senator said.

“So I take the threat of minor parties very seriously, not just One Nation. There’s the growing sense that we haven’t done a good job, and we’ve got to do better.

“[But] no matter how popular you are as an individual, you still only get one vote as a member of parliament. You need 76 in the House and 39 in the Senate to make any change.

“With all respect to Pauline, she has not shown a great ability to build a team over the years, and so I don’t think One Nation is going to be the vehicle to deliver proper change for Australia.”

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