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The spectre of Pauline Hanson’s surging support is spooking the Coalition from providing bipartisan support for tighter gun controls, in a seismic shift from the political landscape that former prime minister John Howard enjoyed in response to the Port Arthur massacre in 1996.
On a dramatic day in Canberra, Liberal and Nationals MPs voted against the Albanese government’s new gun laws, which were passed in the Senate with support from the Greens on Tuesday evening to tighten firearm licensing, restrict imports and establish a national buyback scheme.
Nationals leader David Littleproud and One Nation leader Pauline Hanson. Credit: Alex Ellinghausen
Thirty years ago, when Howard teamed up with his Coalition colleagues to enact sweeping gun reforms, the Nationals were crucial in staring down howls of protest from rural communities to deliver what was the nation’s first major firearm crackdown.
Howard was lauded on the national stage for delivering some of the strictest gun laws in the world, and praise flowed to Nationals leader Tim Fischer for standing up to a vitriolic backlash from the bush, while Labor leader Kim Beazley offered unequivocal support for the government’s move.
At that time, Hanson held One Nation’s only seat in federal parliament, that of Oxley in Brisbane. But support for the party exploded into a shock result in the 1998 Queensland election as the fledgling party’s opposition to tighter gun controls helped deliver One Nation, in its first state contest, a stunning 22.7 per cent of the vote and 11 seats in state parliament.
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Reflecting on that time, Howard this week told another former Nationals leader John Anderson, who succeeded Fischer, that he understood why his government was perceived as “dictatorial” by rural voters, especially in Queensland.
“They [voters] say: ‘We haven’t broken the law, why should we lose our guns. Can’t they do something about lunatics without taking away our gun’,” Howard said.
This time around, Nationals leader David Littleproud made that argument on the floor of parliament. Both Liberal and Nationals MPs have reported a flood of feedback from rural and outer urban constituents who oppose stricter gun laws.
Littleproud was already contending with the defection of former party leader and deputy prime minister Barnaby Joyce at the end of last year, and support for One Nation has surged since.
The Resolve Political Monitor this week recorded an 18 per cent primary vote for One Nation, its strongest on record, up 4 points in a month to a mark three times higher than its 6.4 per cent share of votes at the last election.
The Nationals have moved to seize the political momentum since the May 2025 election, splitting briefly from the Liberals and declaring their opposition to net zero before their Coalition colleagues, but Resolve political analyst Jim Reed said Hanson’s party was cutting through the political noise.
“One Nation has a far clearer message on immigration, net zero and gun reform: no,” he said.
Coalition sources now view a slew of seats as vulnerable to challenge by One Nation, particularly with the support of a barnstorming campaign from Joyce, including Capricornia, Flynn, Wright, Hinkler, Wide Bay, Groom, Dawson, Forde, Longman and Maranoa in Queensland, Forrest and Canning in Western Australia and in NSW Lyne, Parkes, Riverina and Calare – which is held by independent MP Andrew Gee.
Two days after the Bondi terror attack, on December 16, Howard denounced Labor’s rapidly-announced push to reform gun laws as a “big attempt at diversion”.
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Littleproud immediately followed suit. His words to the parliament on Tuesday, as the lower house debated the government’s firearms bill, were that the gun bill was a “cheap political diversion”.
“We do not have a gun problem, we have a radical Islam problem,” the Nationals leader said.
Shadow attorney-general Andrew Wallace, a Liberal MP, said his party opposed the “fundamentally flawed” gun reform that imposed disproportionate burdens on lawful firearms owners, importers and retailers.
Joyce, who joined Pauline Hanson’s One Nation party in early December, opposed the new gun laws that he said last week unfairly punished rural communities.
“There has been no massacres based on fundamentalist beliefs in Tamworth, or Dubbo, or Wagga Wagga. We have other problems, but this is not one of them,” Joyce said. “I just want to be left alone – a law-abiding citizen who is complying with all the things I’m supposed to.”
Rural independent Helen Haines said many “law-abiding gun owners” in her electorate, who use them to euthanise animals and shoot pests on farms, had written to her with concerns.
However, Haines voted in favour of the new laws, arguing her constituents supported security measures in the new laws.
“The key point they make to me, which I have listened to so carefully, is that every gap that
we possibly have that allows people with criminal intent to get their hands on guns must be closed.”
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