One Nation starts Victorian election campaign by banning two favourite enemies: the ABC and The Guardian

Pauline Hanson kicked off One Nation’s campaign for the Victorian election, which elections expert Antony Green said “could bring down the two-party system”, by banning two media organisations she sees as among her greatest enemies, the ABC and The Guardian, from a press conference.

“I’m not putting up with their rubbish,” Senator Hanson said at a media briefing with new state leader Warren Pickering and several upper house candidates. “I’m not putting up with their spin; their lies, whatever. I want truth and honesty.”

The ABC declined to comment but a spokesperson for The Guardian, a left-wing British newspaper, said: “Our journalists should be able to ask questions in the public interest and not be deterred from doing their job.”

Amplifying the combative approach, Mr Pickering said One Nation welcomed scrutiny but would sue media outlets that launched unfair attacks before the election on November 28.

“Any blatant character assassination attempts based on fabrication of our candidates will be met with swift legal action,” he said.

Labor gaining

Party officials say there is strong enthusiasm for One Nation after almost 12 years of rule by Labor governments that racked up the biggest state debt in the nation and left many Victorians feeling their streets have become unsafe and union corruption is out of control.

A longstanding One Nation member and army veteran, Mr Pickering will now be the face of the right-wing populist party in one of the most left-wing states.

He said One Nation intends to win the election outright. “We don’t intend to have to share government,” he said.

Pollster Redbridge Group plans to publish a Victorian poll this week. Even if One Nation matches the 31 per cent support estimated at the federal level in a separate Redbridge poll out today, experts say it is almost impossible to predict how many seats it is likely to win in the lower house. That’s because One Nation candidates who come first or second will need preferences from Liberal and Nationals voters to get elected.

Mr Green, the former ABC election analyst, said One Nation could contribute to the end of the dominance of the major two parties by winning the balance of power in Victoria, although One Nation’s popularity at the Federal level would be influenced by the effectiveness in the Victorian Parliament.

“Their behaviour in how they act if they obtain a position of power within the parliament will be watched closely from the perspective of the coming Federal election and the NSW election,” he said.

Betting odds show the Coalition well ahead, although the Labor Party is gaining after replacing Premier Jacinta Allan last week with Ben Carroll, who on Monday said he would cut the number of ministers by two to save money.

Paying the cost

Although Senator Hanson did not reveal any new policies on Monday, Mr Pickering said proposals to fight crime and corruption would be among the first when they start being published in the next couple of weeks.

A public event on Monday evening in Melbourne to introduce the party’s upper house candidates sold out despite costing $120-a-head, according to the party, and a request for 1300 volunteers was filled within 24 hours.

He accused the State Government of “blowing money” on expensive projects, including the First Nations Assembly, which will cost about $45 million this year, and the Suburban Rail Loop, the most expensive infrastructure project in Victorian history at a potential lifetime cost of $125 billion to $216b.

Fierce opponents of renewable energy subsidies, One Nation recently promised to repeal a law being used to force farmers to give up land for the $8b Victoria-to-NSW Interconnector West transmission line, which will feed wind and solar power into the states’ grids.

A public event on Monday evening in Melbourne to introduce the party’s upper house candidates sold out despite costing $120-a-head, according to the party, and a request for 1300 volunteers was filled within 24 hours.

The 43-year-old Mr Pickering is running for the lower-house seat of Pakenham in south-east Melbourne, Senator Hanson said, a seat won by the Labor Party in 2022 by 307 votes. The One Nation candidate came sixth, receiving 3.4 per cent of the vote, although that was years before the surge in support from voters unhappy with the major parties, driven by festering anger over pandemic lockdowns, inflation and the cost of housing.

Mr Pickering, a bricklayer by trade, has said he admired former Liberal leader Peter Dutton when he took a tough approach to immigration as Home Affairs minister.

In 2024 Mr Pickering accused the Albanese Labor Government of acting at the behest of the United Nations for introducing a law to police online comment, the Combatting Misinformation and Disinformation bill, which was dropped because of Senate opposition.

“It’s not an accident that these very similar bills are being pushed concurrently in every Western nation on the planet right now,” he said at a public rally. “It’s a concerted effort by the UN and the WAF to consolidate power into the hands of a few key unelected bureaucrats in foreign countries who wish to dictate to us our social and economic policy.”

One of the key figures in the party’s rise, James Ashby, Senator Hanson’s main political adviser, has been appointed One Nation’s national director, placing him in charge of preparations for the Victorian, NSW and Federal elections over the next two years.

At the last Federal election, Mr Ashby ran in the Queensland seat of Keppel, which covers northern Rockhampton. He came third, although received a 9 percentage point swing.

He has been replaced in Senator Hanson’s office by a former policy adviser to ex-prime minister Scott Morrison, Chris Taylor, who was recently a manager at a lobby group for big banks, which have been criticised by Senator Hanson for high profits and poor service.

“Australians are losing trust in the big banks, and for good reason,” she wrote last year on X. “Branches are closing, service is getting worse, and profits keep climbing.”

The Victorian candidates include its One Nation’s only state MP, Rikkie-Lee Tyrrell, former Liberal Party activist Colleen Harkin, an animator behind the party’s popular videos, Mark Nicholson, lawyer Aaron Sanford and Geelong councillor Chris Burson, a former policeman who said he was a bodyguard to Premier Daniel Andrews during the pandemic.