“A Reactionary, Pro-Big Business, Racist Party”: Victorian Socialists Call Out Hanson’s One Nation

On Saturday, 21 March 2026, members of Victorian Socialists went out to speak with communities across four locations in Naarm-Melbourne. And the discussions they engaged in with local community members revolved around why there is a growing need for a coordinated pushback against Pauline Hanson’s One Nation Party’s divisive politicking.

The reason that Victorian Socialists, and members of other Socialists branches nationwide, have launched a campaign targeting One Nation is that somewhat unfathomably, the 1990s established right-wing party, has surged ahead in the polls over the early months of 2026, so that the minor party’s three decades of divisive, racist politicking is now garnering significant populist support.

This surge in the polls has meant that One Nation is currently more popular amongst the Australian constituency than major party the Liberals. This meant that at last week’s South Australian election, One Nation picked up 20 percent of the primary vote, which was more than the SA Liberals took out, and this marked the most significant election outcome for the far-right minor party is 30 years.

Whilst One Nation has secured two upper house seats and one in the lower house in SA, with perhaps more to come, commentators are dismissing it for its lack of any clear policy. Yet, ultraconservatives, like Hanson and fellow party member Barnaby Joyce, are being elected across the western world now, and populist voters love division, whilst not getting bogged down in details.

Billionaires buying the populist vote

Victorian Socialists is also calling out Hanson’s big backers, as whilst One Nation puts across that it’s here for the battlers doing it tough, the fact is those financing the party are from the billionaire class, which is promoting the same tale as the rise of Donald Trump, which involved duping the poor and disaffected into voting for him, whilst he then upholds the concerns of big business and the elites.

“Every year, Australia gets more unequal. The billionaires get richer, while millions are struggling to survive day to day. We want to turn this around,” states the Victorian Socialists in terms of the upcoming November 2026 Victorian election. “We believe working-class people deserve a society in which we are guaranteed the things we need to live a decent life.”

Sydney Criminal Lawyers spoke to Victorian Socialists candidate Anneke Demanuele, who is running for the upper house in the Western Metropolitan region, and Omar Hassan, who is the candidate for Northern Metropolitan, about how their recent campaigning against One Nation has been taken amongst the local constituency, and why this threat is more formidable than many consider.

Anneke and Omar, Victorian Socialists are running candidates in the November 2026 Victorian state election. The fear at the moment is that Pauline Hanson’s One Nation party might further surge ahead with the vote it receives at that ballot, after what occurred at last weekend’s South Australian state election, which involved that party garnering more of the vote than the Liberals.

The reason for this is that Pauline Hanson’s One Nation party has been surging ahead in the polls since January this year, which again has involved coming in at second place ahead of the Liberals.

So, according to Victorian Socialists, why is it an issue that One Nation is surging ahead in the polls nationwide, because obviously, there seems to be a lot of constituents turning towards this party? And what is the issue that you see developing, if One Nation continues to rise in popularity?

Anneke: As we have seen in the South Australian elections this weekend, One Nation’s surge in the polls is not just a blip or something that can be explained away. It is something that is going to have a real impact and effect in Australian politics, and the fact that they were able to get 20 percent of the vote, means there is a legitimisation of far-right, racist Trump-style politics.

So, if One Nation can repeat the result of the South Australian election in other states, this is going to make it more legitimate and normal for people to hold far-right political outlooks and racists ideas.

Omar: We have seen globally that the rise of the far right has real implications. It means cuts to services that support poor and working-class people. It means the vilification of minorities, Muslims, migrants, women and LGBTIQ people. And we just can’t stand for that.

We don’t want to see that unfold in this country. We have also seen Pauline Hanson’s party support Trump’s appalling war in the Middle East.

So, we know that the far right, regardless of their rhetoric, lead to a more bigoted, hateful and toxic society. This is a society where the working-class people are poorer, and they are asked to die for empire.

We don’t want a repeat the lesson of the first half of the 20th century. We want to organise and stop the far right from rising before it is too late.

Victorian Socialist members went out campaigning across Melbourne last Saturday, to speak with constituents about the rise of One Nation, and what should be done about it.

So, what sort of opinions about One Nation are out there? Do people see this as a concerning rise, or did you encounter more support for the far-right party than you might consider you have in the past?

Anneke: It was a wonderful day. One hundred and fifty people plus mobilised. We had a lot of people for whom this was their first time campaigning for socialist politics.

People who have left wing ideas and opinions are really horrified by the rise of One Nation, and they want to do something about it.

We campaigned in Dandenong, Sunshine, Epping and Thomastown. One of the things that was quite remarkable about the day was how many people we had spoken to who had voted for the Victorian Socialists in the past, or people who were angry and horrified by the rise of One Nation.

There were a few people who said they were going to support One Nation and Pauline Hanson. The people who say that are very confident in their right-wing opinions.

But it makes the campaigning against One Nation even more important, because we need to show there is a constituency of people, who aren’t just going to take the rise of Hanson’s politics lying down.

Omar: We picked these areas deliberately, because they are overwhelmingly working class and migrant areas. These are areas that are taken for granted by Labor, because they’ve always been there.

These are areas where the Liberal Party puts in no effort, and the Greens ignore. So, we as a socialist party have a vision that unites the inner city progressive young left-wing crowd, with working class people in the outer suburbs. We want to bring these people together and fight for an alternative.

So, going out there was a deliberate choice. I personally encountered much more support for us and opposition for Hanson, than the polls would suggest.

Quite a number of people, including those with quite limited English skills, pointed to her picture and described her as a racist. They were initially suspicious because they saw her picture, and when we explained that we were against her, they were much more welcoming and warm.

We had stories of support from Syrian refugees. I spoke to a couple of Chinese families, who indicated their hostilities towards Hanson and around racism as well.

The people who were Hanson supporters, despite all the media about the battlers and so on, these people were racist and extremely anti-leftist. As soon as they saw that we were socialists, some of them started yelling, or some of them just slammed the door in our faces.

An Iranian colleague was doorknocking, and she said she felt quite fearful at one point as a One Nation supporter got out and was acting quite threateningly.

So, for the most part, those supporters of One Nation were not confused, they were quite racist and conservative people.

Victorian Socialists has been raising the wealthy backers and supporters of One Nation as it surges ahead in the polls. Can you elaborate on what you’ve been putting across, and why it is important to keep this front and centre?

Anneke: I am sure people have seen the photos of Pauline Hanson and Gina Rinehart at Mar-a-Lago for Trump’s Halloween party. Pauline was flown to America on one of Gina’s private jets.

There was a candidate in the Farrer byelection for One Nation, who was boasting about all the money that was going into their campaign from places like Woollahra and Toorak. He was very pleased to be receiving all this money from rich, wealthy suburbs in Sydney and in Melbourne.

We think it is important to point out that One Nation is getting support from the billionaires and from sections of the ruling class, because there is an easy narrative that the media can get across: that One Nation is a party that is speaking to disaffected working class people, but the reality is that One Nation is speaking to racists and business owners, who have their own set of interests.

You can connect Pauline Hanson’s support from billionaires to her attack on social services, her opposition to trade unions and her attacks on the left. These things are about opposition to the needs and interests of the working class.

Omar: It is about making an argument that all the racism, nationalism and flag waving is simply an attempt to distract that section of her voters who are a bit more down and out, from the fact that she doesn’t support anything that would make their lives better.

So, yes, we want to put it out there that there are those people being conned by One Nation, and at the same time, we are pointing out that racism is a part of this trick.

Racism is part of the trick. Racism is used to distract and divide, while the rich get richer and the rest of us struggle.

Hanson’s support for the war is emblematic of this. This war will impoverish workers and the poor all around the world, as we are all going to have to pay more for petrol, more for groceries and more for everything.

But Hanson supports this war, and she doesn’t support increasing welfare or increasing wages, she just supports the war. She voted against a 25 percent tax on gas exports just last week.

So, this is all part of a party that is a reactionary, pro-big business, racist party. The more that people understand that package, the better we’re placed to argue against her.

Anneke: The other part of pointing out the support that Hanson is getting from wealthy, billionaires and business owners is about saying that the rise of One Nation is not just a fringe event, and this actually requires a pretty big political fightback to put it back in its box.

In the 1990s, One Nation was more of a shocking event. But because the politics of Pauline Hanson is being replicated in the White House, and in parts of Germany and France, they are much more linked in with this institutional far right.

So, this is a politics that now has power behind it, and we need a massive movement to try and defeat this and its rise in Australia.

That leads into the next question, as there has been a surge in white nationalism across the continent since August last year, and ever since, so-called March for Australia rallies have been occurring on a regular basis, yet, as this is happening, there has also been a surge in white supremacist sentiment and authoritarian governance across the west.

Are we to consider that what is happening in Australia is solely a homegrown phenomenon, or is this all linked? What are the implications of all this happening across the west at once?

Omar: It is definitely linked. We have seen the implications of the far-right victory in America, where you have an ICE gestapo kidnapping people off the streets, murdering people and deporting them to prisons in third countries, with no legal recourse and no right to appeal.

We have seen in Europe fascist parties deporting millions of refugees and calling for the deportation of all migrants in Germany, for example. We have seen Giorgia Meloni in Italy implementing massive attacks on the LGBTIQ community and migrants.

This is a global phenomenon. The best way to understand the era we are living in is to compare it to the era leading up to World War II. There are growing tensions. There is growing polarisation on both the left and the right. And behind the scenes, there is an increasingly open militarisation of society.

So, for a section of capital and big business, the far right does all these things quite naturally: it is militaristic, it is racist, it is jingoistic, it is nationalistic and it is pro-big business. All of these things make sense in the world that we are in from the perspective of those who run it.

And lastly, Anneke and Omar, Victorian Socialists were out there last Saturday attempting to coordinate approaches against the rise of One Nation. But this is a continentwide phenomenon, as the results of the South Australian election reveal.

So, looking ahead, how does your party consider that the rise in One Nation might be mitigated more broadly? And as this movement does appear to have links globally, does this mean the approach taken to the rise of One Nation needs to have a broader focus?

Omar: We have been tackling this on a range of levels. Anneke and I are both activists and organisers with the Campaign Against Racism and Fascism. We initiated and led all the rallies against March for Australia last year, and we are prepared to do so again if such rallies are called.

We are also looking at protesting One Nation branch meetings that One Nation is starting to hold in urban centres, and that is something that can be replicated across the country.

Then there’s political argumentation and propaganda that needs to be developed. The far right has very highly developed ecosystems online for spreading their absolute rubbish ideologies, and so, we need to develop left-wing alternatives, like your site and others.

We want to podcast to spread left wing ideas, because left wing ideas need a broader hearing.

Then there is the electoral sphere. One Nation is trying to take advantage of the fact that major parties are increasingly viewed with suspicion, and they try to position themselves as the main alternative to that.

But we don’t think of them as any alternative at all. We just consider them to be a repackaged version of the Liberals with even further right politics.

We want to convince people that socialist politics are the alternative. And like I said earlier, going out to working class communities and talking to people, face-to-face one-on-one, is something that the Labor party doesn’t do, the Greens don’t do, and, of course, the other parties don’t do either.

It is quite a unique position for Victorian Socialists and the Socialists party across the country to be doing this work on the ground.

Anneke: NSW Socialists this weekend had a big forum about the rise of Hanson and One Nation in the inner west, and they invited people to talk about what the socialist response to that might be, while in the west, Western Australian Socialists have launched a campaign against One Nation, including postering, stickering and forums.

So, I imagine Socialists branches across the country will be engaging in political activism against the rise of One Nation.

Omar’s point about the many different spheres that the far right exist in, and the fact that we need to be involved in confronting them in these spheres, is right.

Socialist politics can provide the best answers to the rise of the far right too.

Labor at the moment, they are genuflecting to things like multiculturalism and diversity, but at the same time, Labor in state and federal governments, oversee racist institutions.

You can see this in the way we treat refugees and asylum seekers, or racist police forces that imprison and kill Indigenous and Black and Brown people.

They actually create the conditions for far-right politics to grow and fester, and they have no real interest in really combatting it, only on an electoral basis does Labor have an interest in combatting it, because they want to win elections.

As Socialists, we want to overturn the whole system that allows racism, sexism, homophobia and exploitation to prosper. So, we want to push the politics of the working class and the politics of solidarity – that is what we do.

Omar: If you look at history, after the defeat of the Nazis in Germany, there was this idea that fascism was this freak occurrence, that involved some collective psychotic episode happening in Germany that would never happen again, as capitalist rationality had been restored.

But what we are seeing happening all around us is the rise of the barbaric far right and fascistic irrationalism that denies climate change, promotes the most radical antiscience and antilogic arguments, and it increasingly vilifies working class, poor and minority populations.

This is not some sideshow, but it is a core aspect of capitalism, and that is why we are against the whole lot.