Hanson faces scrutiny as media landscape shifts around her

One Nation leader Pauline Hanson outside Parliament House, promoting her campaign to "fire the liar". (ABC News: Ian Cutmore) Link copiedShareShare articleWelcome back to your weekly federal politics update, where this week Jake Evans gets you up to speed on the happenings from Parliament House. In February 2025, Pauline Hanson held a press conference about her plan to allow parents to split their income for tax purposes. After a brief speech, the senator asked if there were any questions — which was received with silence, because no reporters had showed up to pose one. "Any questions? Alright. No one has a question?" In the year since then, Hanson has appeared untouchable as One Nation has risen to a stratospheric height in just a few months, after 30 years of hovering around a primary vote of about 5 per cent. It is remarkable that in a week where the government was negotiating the most significant tax changes introduced to parliament since perhaps the carbon tax, that issue has felt like a side-story. This morning, Hanson briefly took questions out the front of Parliament House, where she had arranged for a convoy of trucks carrying "Fire the Liar" signs paid for with a pool of cash raised from 77,000 supporters. The event was heavily attended by journalists. Opposition Leader Angus Taylor would not commit his party to multiculturalism when asked multiple times, later explaining he supported "a version" of it. (ABC News: Ian Cutmore) Parliament House was Pauline's World this week — but it also revealed that One Nation is not untouchable. Labor is sharpening its message against the party, and made a meal in parliament of Hanson's press club comments that workers were lazy and too difficult to fire. Sign up to the ABC Politics newsletter with Courtney Gould It seized on a suggestion that she may be willing to walk back paid parental leave entitlements, forcing the senator to spell out that she would not do so. In the chamber, Hanson boasted about how she had prompted days of debate on multiculturalism, which tripped up Angus Taylor, who couldn't find his footing on whether to back it or an Australian monoculture. But she was also pushed to explain that "nothing would really change" in a monoculture. Hanson said her vision for a monoculture would look just like the Socceroos, a multicultural success story, who she says "are from different cultures, but they went in there to play the game for Australia". In front of the throng of journalists this morning, the Senator was pushed by an ABC reporter on whether her vision for a monoculture was just wordplay. Breaking from her talking points, Hanson told a story about a Russian woman she had met, whose mother had urged when the family immigrated to Australia it should "integrate, assimilate into the society", while the father refused. "Dad was wrong, mum was right, we have to integrate, we are Australians," Hanson recounted. It was the first time since the press club she had used the word "assimilate", a word the party knows is more controversial, even if it says it is not afraid to offend people to achieve its aims. It was noteworthy that in a week where Hanson dominated discussions in parliament and in the news, she also felt compelled to acknowledge online that she sometimes gets it wrong. "I'll tell you up-front, One Nation won't always be absolutely perfect. We'll make a mistake here and there, but we'll be up-front about it," Hanson wrote on social media this afternoon, alluding to her new colleague David Farley's accidental vote alongside the Greens and independents on a motion to wind back fuel tax credits. Even as Hanson faces more media heat, it remains to be seen what will filter down to the public between now and 2028. The face of Australia's media, Karl Stefanovic, has pivoted towards an overtly political podcast in the style of Piers Morgan or Joe Rogan, with more and more people getting information from influencers and not traditional outlets. Content generated by artificial intelligence swamps algorithms and comment threads. Across the political divide, MPs and operatives say they have seen a slick One Nation campaign machine take flight online in the last three or so months, that is clearly better funded and coordinated than it was before. Labor and the Coalition's cringeworthy memes at the 2025 federal election show both are aware of the internet war that must be won, even if they don't have a perfect grasp of it. They know which Pauline people will see depends on who wins the online fight for attention between now and 2028. Treasurer Jim Chalmers' key budget piece to tighten negative gearing and capital gains tax has support to pass. But savings to the NDIS are yet to be settled. (ABC News: Ian Cutmore) The government had set itself two goals for this fortnight: to pass its tax changes to tighten negative gearing and capital gains tax, and to pass its bill to save tens of billions of dollars in the NDIS. It ends th

Hanson faces scrutiny as media landscape shifts around her

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Hanson faces scrutiny as media landscape shifts around her

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