The conservative road to nowhere: Hanson’s empty populism

Pauline Hanson’s European junket, billionaire connections and endless culture wars exposes the hypocrisy at the heart of One Nation’s grievance politics, and for all the others who want to join in.

One Nation’s support has suffered a drop in opinion polls, although it is too early to tell if it’s already reached its high-water mark and will drop down even further. The latest Roy Morgan poll shows One Nation in third place behind the Coalition, and this fall is consistent with most other polls that have been recently published.

In a Labor–One Nation contest, Labor leads by 55-to-45 per cent after preferences, and between Labor and the Coalition, Labor leads 56-to-44 per cent. Of course, these are only opinion polls, but it suggests the Labor Party would easily win an election – if it were to be held today – and despite the ongoing clamouring and promotion of right-wing causes by the mainstream media, One Nation would be nowhere near the levers of government, and rightly so.

This decline coincides with Pauline Hanson’s extended European junket, during which she addressed two conservative conferences in Britain, appeared with far-right anti-Islam activist and convicted criminal, Tommy Robinson, and was later photographed poolside, lapping it up with mining billionaire Gina Rinehart at the five-star Grand Hotel San Pietro in Italy. Hanson says the trip did not cost taxpayers “one cent” – it’s money or support coming from either Rinehart or Seven West Media – but she refuses to say who, even though she’ll have to inform the Parliamentary Registry of Expenses within 28 days.

At CPAC Great Britain – a conference of conservative has-beens and non-entities who are unhappy that the rest of the world is not championing their collection of insane far-right ideals – Hanson told her small audience that she was “sick of hearing about white privilege”, would “not apologise for being white” (even though no-one has asked her to), and feared for England’s future. Her assessment of the “British decline” was built around those familiar themes of the international populist right: migration, multiculturalism, Muslims, transgender people, net-zero policies and the supposedly malign influence of “globalists”. And, apparently, Australia is next to travel down this same road if it doesn’t watch out.

Let’s leave aside for the time being that many of Britain’s current issues are the results of over 40 years of neoliberalist policies, a continuous circus-act of incompetent governments, and the Brexit decision of 2016 – but it was an odd argument for Hanson to export from a country whose multicultural cities continue to perform highly by international standards. In the Economist Intelligence Unit’s 2026 Global Liveability Index, from the over 4,000 recognised capital cities in the world, Melbourne was ranked third, Sydney was fourth and Adelaide was eighth.

This doesn’t mean that Australia doesn’t have issues that need to be dealt with – housing is increasingly unaffordable, wages have struggled to keep up with the cost of living, public services are constantly under pressure, and governments have repeatedly failed to plan adequately for population growth. But these are issues to do with government competence and economic policy, not evidence of cultural diversity causing the end of civilisation.

The company Hanson chose to keep when she was overseas was also problematic. Among the delegates were the former British 49-day prime minister Liz Truss, the failed Reform UK leader Nigel Farage, and other desperadoes from the international right. Hanson’s separate appearance with Robinson was more even more concerning. Robinson has an extensive criminal record, including convictions for assault, fraud-related offences and ongoing contempt of court. Being interviewed by a controversial criminal might not be inherently terrible, but Hanson appeared as a sympathetic political subject in the same grievance-based world that Robinson lives in.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese criticised Hanson for travelling overseas to “denigrate and talk down Australia”, which is exactly what she did. That’s a justified criticism but it’s also another reminder of the wider hypocrisy within conservative politics. The politicians most likely to describe themselves as “patriots” are increasingly willing to appear in front of foreign audiences and depict Australia as a broken society that’s been captured by hostile influences, even when the evidence suggests otherwise.

Another one of these hypocrites is Nationals Senate leader Bridget McKenzie, who is keen to show the world – literally – that she is not going to be outdone by One Nation. Speaking at the same CPAC event, McKenzie declared that conservatives were “at war” with “leftwing globalists”, mass migration and “woke institutions”, and summoned conservatives across the English-speaking world to mobilise against these people. And if that wasn’t enough, she described Australia as becoming the “most woke” country in the world, before also attacking migration policy, transgender rights and net-zero. It’s pretty insane stuff.

McKenzie’s speech is of more consequence than Hanson’s because it came from the Senate leader of a party that sees itself as part of Australia’s mainstream alternative government. The Coalition’s election defeats in 2022 and 2025 should have prompted serious policy development on housing, insecure work, regional services, energy, climate adaptation and declining living standards – the issues that affect people in a material way every single day – instead, McKenzie – and Hanson – are gallivanting around the world in a self-indulgent talkfest and importing this far-right culture war garbage that believes that behind every policy problem is a mysterious international conspiracy of wokeness.

Developing workable policies that makes people’s lives better requires solid research, negotiations in parliament, trade-offs and an admission that some problems in this world are difficult. But who’s got time for that when there’s a luxurious Italian poolside to swim in or a suave fashion show to attend? All culture-war politics needs is an easily found enemy of hate, inflammatory language based on lies, and a social media campaign to force the issue.

For sure, this all mobilises anger and gets the attention, but how many new houses will be built by destroying the “most woke” country in the world? How many hospital waiting lists will be cut by attacking transgender people? How will engaging in a war against “leftwing globalists” improve schools or deliver infrastructure? Or better still, where do we find these leftwing globalists and when will this war against them commence?

Hanson’s return to Australia produced more of the same. At a leadership breakfast in Perth, she defended her trip, praised Rinehart as a “very proud, patriotic Australian” and said the billionaire supported One Nation because she recognised the same qualities in the party. Hanson presents herself as the friend of “the battlers”, but the battlers are very unlikely to share an Italian holiday resort with the likes of Rinehart, or attend the high-end Dolce & Gabbana fashion show.

Here we have the supposed champion of Australians abandoned by elites, relaxing poolside with a billionaire and mining magnate, while warning that the country was being stolen from under their feet. One Nation keeps telling voters that it’s the privileged establishment and elites that are responsible for their woes, while maintaining close relations with the most powerful economic interests in the country. Migrants, Muslims, climate advocates and transgender people – the other – are always at the centre of Hanson’s political story, while the business-as-usual of the concentration of wealth and corporate influence remains in place. And it’s this big gap in rhetoric that’s beginning to catch up with her.

Ultimately, Hanson is being exposed as just another politician – she said the dismantling of the White Australia policy was when Australia’s immigration system started to go wrong, but then denied she ever called for its return, despite calling for immigration to be stopped from “radical Islamic countries”, Gaza, and countries where women wear the burqa.

This raises obvious questions: would exclusions be based on nationality, religion, birthplace, individual security assessments or the political conduct of a government? Or would it be up to Hanson to decide?

The Department of Home Affairs suggests that a large proportion of overstayers come from China and the United States – not from the Muslim-majority countries that dominate Hanson’s rhetoric. Most of these people arrive lawfully and overstay temporary visas, and the government already has legal procedures for identifying, detaining and removing the very few unlawful non-citizens who exist in Australia. There is no need for a local US-style enforcement agency, because one already exists and there are very few unlawful non-citizens. But none of this matters to Hanson: it’s all about discussing an inflammatory issue, identifying a problem that doesn’t exist, and suggesting an extreme solution to that non-existent problem.

All these inconsistencies and ongoing foolishness doesn’t prove that One Nation’s support will continue to fall. There’s always going to be a receptive audience for this material, and it’s also easier for political figures from the right to manufacturer the outage, than do the hard work of developing policies that will make peoples lives better. During the week, we had a classic “man-bites-dog” story, where One Nation’s Barnaby Joyce appeared on the ABC’s 7.30 program, only to start shouting at one of his dogs mid-sentence, before returning to his endless list of grievances and complaints about the state of the world.

Of course, the media focussed on assessing why Joyce shouted at his dog, and how this became a viral social media moment – but nothing at all about the content of what he said in the interview. That’s why One Nation festers on: an environment where style is valued over substance, and the man barking at his dog is remembered for the bark, and not for his justification for why his party leader – Pauline Hanson – decided to meet with a known criminal in the UK, share a luxury hotel with a billionaire, or would want to bring back the White Australia policy.

But voters eventually expect politics to produce more than imaginary enemies, create endless culture wars, or offer solutions to problems that don’t even exist. One Nation will never be able to turn resentment into a credible policy – and if the Coalition continues following it deeper into an imported culture war – both will end up withering on the vine for a long time to come.