One Nation Leader Pauline Hanson’s full, unedited Leadership Matters speech

Thank you to Seven West for having me, and for putting this to air. I’m told a few people in Canberra will be watching.

It won’t hurt them to hear what Western Australians have to say. Before I go any further, I want to welcome my colleague and your One Nation senator for Western Australia, Tyron Whitten.

Tyron is a Western Australian success story. He and his brother started an earthworks business in this state from scratch and built it into something big.

Canberra could do with more people like Tyron.

You might have heard I’ve been in Britain. The media got very excited about who I sat down with over there.

They show interest in how full a room is. And the room this morning is full. Even at 7am in the morning.

So let me tell you straight. I sat down with a lot of people. Some I agree with. Some I don’t.

But Australians are sick of politicians who only ever talk to people who already agree with them.

I went to Britain to see up close what happens when a government gets things wrong. Immigration. Spending. Energy.

I saw it. I saw what it’s done to the British people. Australia must learn from other countries, not repeat their mistakes.

Now, before I start, I want to ask you something. This room is full of people who run businesses. Small ones, big ones. Some of the biggest in the country. I’d like everyone to stand up.

I’m not trying to put anyone on the spot. Stay standing if your business, or the business you work for, is doing as well as it could. If not, take a seat.

That is what I hear right across Australia. And it’s the same everywhere. Not enough people still standing.

Businesses aren’t doing well. Their workers aren’t doing well. Their customers aren’t doing well.

Everyone is going backwards together.

In the richest state, in one of the richest countries on earth. Remember why you sat down — or why you’re still standing.

Because I’m going to ask you about it before I finish.

Everyone in this country knows I ran a takeaway shop. It’s the one thing about me nobody ever forgets.

But here’s what most of you won’t know. I didn’t just run one. I grew up in one. My mum and dad ran a café / takeaway shop.

Seven kids. I was number five. And in our house, you didn’t get anything for nothing. You worked. I took the orders. I served at the counter. I wrapped the food. I cleaned up at closing.

When I was old enough, Dad sat me down with the books. We wrote up the day’s takings and the day’s costs. Every dollar in, every dollar out. We weren’t rich. We weren’t connected. Nobody in our house ever believed the world owed us a living.

We were an ordinary Australian family. We worked for everything we had.

I left school at fifteen and I’ve worked ever since. I set up a plumbing business with my husband. We employed apprentices. We worked hard. Sometime later, as a single parent, I did what Mum and Dad did. I opened my very own takeaway shop.

So I don’t just talk about small business. I’ve lived it. I know what it’s like when the rent’s due and the takings are short.

I know what it’s like when the power bill goes up and you can’t put up prices because your customers are doing it tougher than you are.

When you run a small business, it’s never just you on the line.

Your family depends on that shop. Your staff depend on it. Their families depend on it.

You carry all of them, every single day.

But I’ll tell you what I loved most. The customers. When you serve people across a counter, you connect with them.

You hear what they’re worried about. Their mortgage. Their kids. Whether their job will still be there next year.

You can’t help but listen. I still get emails from people who remember me giving them a free Mars Bar when they were kids.

That shop counter taught me more about this country than Canberra ever will.

Now look around this room. Western Australia is full of people with the same story.

Somebody started with a ute and an ABN. A counter and a coffee machine. Some of those businesses stayed small. Some grew into the companies that built this state.

But every one of them started the same way. An ordinary Australian put everything on the line and had a crack.

And big or small, they will all tell you the same thing. It has never been harder to get ahead in this country. And the biggest thing standing in their way is their own government.

Most people in Canberra have never had to balance the books. Never had to make rent. Never had to make payroll. And it shows in every law they write. Everywhere I go in this country, people tell me the same things.

People tell me they’re working harder for less. They tell me the power bill and the insurance bill go up every quarter.

They tell me they didn’t start a business to fill in forms for Canberra. But that’s how they spend their nights.

And they tell me they can’t find staff. And their staff cannot find anywhere to live.

Ordinary Australians tell me something bigger. They tell me the government isn’t on their side.

They tell me their wages don’t stretch like they used to. That their pay might go up, but they can afford even less. They’re right.

Real wages in this country have gone backwards 5.1 per cent since March 2021. That’s the OECD’s figure, not mine.

Out of thirty-seven countries, Australia is near the bottom of the pack. The Labor government blames the world. But the world is doing better than us.

They tell me this country has lost the values that once defined it. And they tell me Australia should be able to produce its own essentials and stand on its own two feet, not reliant on other countries.

That’s Australia talking. And Canberra isn’t listening.

The country is heading in the wrong direction. This Labor government is making us poorer, weaker and less safe. It’s time to fix that.

Now let me talk about this state. Western Australia helps to pay this nation’s bills. Your royalties fund the services here. Your taxes fund them everywhere else.

Western Australia is home to roughly one in nine Australians, but generates one in six dollars of national economic output.

Western Australia generates almost one in five dollars of national business investment.

It generates almost half of the country’s exported goods. But your businesses are being held back by this government.

A major project in this state has to wait too long for approval. Up to nine years for resources projects. A housing estate can wait four. That delay means less jobs for Western Australians. Homes that never get built.

When an Australian company like BHP sees some of its biggest future growth opportunities in Argentina rather than here at home, something is wrong. And when it’s too slow to build houses, here’s what that does.

Perth’s rental vacancy rate is 0.6 per cent. It’s the tightest capital city in the country after Darwin. Families with nowhere to live, in the richest state in the nation. And let me tell you why there’s nowhere to live. It’s not a mystery.

Last year, this country’s population grew by more than 400,000 people. In the same year, we finished about 173,000 homes.

Nearly two and a half people for every new home. And it’s not slowing down.

In just four years, this government will have added almost 1.6 million people through net overseas migration.

Nearly one million arrived in 2022 and 2023 alone. Nobody asked you about any of this. Nobody asked the young couple lining up at a rental inspection with fifty other people.

Nobody asked the apprentice still in his mum’s spare room at twenty-five. And nobody asked the businesses in this room who can’t find a roof to put over the heads of their workers.

This government is running the biggest migration program in our history, and building nowhere near the homes to match it.

Then it acts surprised when your kids can’t afford a house, and services are overwhelmed. That’s not compassion. That’s negligence.

This is about how many people come. What skills they have. How fast they come. And whether the houses exist first.

Canberra never did that sum. You’re living with the result. And here’s the simple truth. Businesses need workers. Workers need homes. And Western Australia needs both. This state has the projects and the jobs. What it needs is the skills.

So what did Canberra do? It cut apprenticeships and traineeships. We’ve stopped training our own.

And the skilled migration program is a farce. Less than half of those visas go to an actual skilled worker.

Across the whole migration program, actual skilled workers make up just one in three. So businesses can’t find workers. Workers can’t find homes.

And the Labor government that caused the problem blames everyone else.

And I want to say something about farmers – the people who feed this state. Because they cop it from this government too.

Canberra banned the live sheep trade. An industry this state built. The farmers said don’t do it. The transporters said don’t do it.

The state government said don’t do it. Canberra did it anyway. To appease animal activists and inner-city voters three thousand kilometres away. Not the Western Australians whose livelihoods depended on the trade.

That’s what it looks like when a government stops listening. On energy, business owners tell me the same thing everywhere I go.

The power bill used to be a small cost. Now it’s one of the biggest. And that cost doesn’t stop there. It goes into the price of bread.

The price of a haircut. The price of everything on the shelf. That’s what inflation is. Costs passed down the line, until they land on a family at the checkout. Australia used to have some of the cheapest power in the world.

That wasn’t luck. It’s why we had smelters and refineries and factories. It’s why a bakery could run the ovens from four in the morning and still make money. So what changed?

Governments forgot their job. And their job is simple. Power you can afford, that’s available when you need it. That’s the whole job.

They gave that job away, one climate promise at a time. And every promise was sold the same way. This one will bring your bill down.

Instead came the subsidies. The schemes. The power lines running billions over budget.

Someone pays for all of that. That someone is you. And this is not one party’s doing.

Labor legislated net zero. But the Liberals signed the global deals and brought in the renewable target.

None of them will say the obvious thing. You cannot have cheap power and net zero at the same time.

You have to choose. They chose. And they chose against you. A country that can’t give its own businesses affordable and reliable power isn’t serious about having an economy.

And now the same government has gone after family trusts. Farming families right across this country use trusts to pass the farm to their kids. And it’s not just farmers.

Treasury’s own figures say about 350,000 small businesses run through family trusts.

The tradie with an ABN. The family that owns the IGA. The cafe. The trucking company. These people are not tax dodgers. They’re the people who risked everything to start a business.

They’re already battling the mess this Labor government has made of our economy. Now they’re scrambling to redo their plans, because the government changed the rules.

They said at the last election they wouldn’t. They lied. And they won’t stop there. This government wants to tax everything it can get its hands on.

That’s not reform. That’s a government that has never run anything, taxing the people who run everything.

And remember who pays in the end. It’s never just the owner. Small and medium businesses employ two out of three private sector workers in this country.

When Canberra makes a business harder to run, it affects their workers, their suppliers and their customers.

Every family that lives off a small business pay packet is standing behind that counter too.

I’ve stood on both sides of that shop counter. This government has stood on neither.

All these changes show up in one number this room understands. Investment. The job of a government is not complicated. Make your country a place worth investing in.

Investment goes where it’s welcome. It stays away where the rules keep changing. Business investment in Australia is nearly as low as it was in the recession of the early nineties.

And nobody in this room is surprised. Nine years for an approval. A new tax rewritten five weeks after it was announced. Different rules every budget. The threat of more taxes.

I told you BHP is looking to Argentina over Australia. They’re not alone. The world’s big miners and energy companies are spending tens of billions in countries other than here.

If we can’t get people to invest here, the money goes somewhere else. And the jobs go with it.

Now, the bigger picture, and I’ll say it straight. We used to be a country that made things. Cars. Steel. Medicines. Fuel. Through neglect, Canberra let it all go.

We have become dependent on other countries for the essentials that keep this nation moving. This year, the Middle East blew up. And Australia found out the truth. We hold just a few weeks of fuel. And barely any fertiliser.

The Prime Minister was on the phone begging our neighbours for help. That should never happen to a country like ours.

We have the resources. We have the workers. We have the know-how. What we don’t have is a government that believes in this country. What’s holding you back?

In my Budget Reply in May, I made a promise. One Nation will never pretend we know how to run your lives better than you do. I meant it. So I’m not here this morning to announce policies.

I’m here to do the opposite of what politicians do. Canberra stopped listening to ordinary Australians. One Nation has not.

Between now and Christmas, my team and I will be travelling this country. Pubs, businesses, kitchen tables, rooms like this one. Maybe even a few fish and chip shops! And we will be asking one question. What’s holding you back?

You. Your business. Your family. Our country.

After that, we will take these answers and One Nation will put forward its full plan of policies for the next election. Built on what Australians actually told us.

It starts this morning, in this room. When I finish up here, come and find me. Think of my question at the beginning of my speech, and tell me what’s holding you back. Bring me your problems and bring me your ideas.

Because here’s what I believe. This country isn’t broken. It’s being held back.

We can be a nation that makes things, builds things, and rewards the people who take a risk.

We can hand our kids a better deal than we got, instead of the other way around.

That’s what’s happening now, for the first time in our history. The country is heading in the wrong direction. This Labor government is making us poorer, weaker and less safe. It’s time to fix that.

Now it’s your turn to talk. What’s holding you back? Thank you.