One Nation explained — what they actually stand for, and why Queensland is the centre of it

I'm QLD based, so this is written from here rather than as a national rundown. I've been trying to get my head around One Nation properly instead of just reacting to headlines, so I'm putting what I've found in one place. Happy to be corrected on any of it.

What they are

Pauline Hanson's One Nation is a right-wing populist party, launched by Hanson at the Civic Hall in Ipswich on 11 April 1997 — so this is a Queensland product from the ground up, not something that arrived here later. Its history has been built on opposition to immigration and multiculturalism going back to its founding. Its own line is that it defends "Australian values," the constitution and individual freedoms "against global agendas."

The Queensland history nobody under 40 remembers

Worth knowing before you judge the current surge, because we've been here before:

• At the 1998 Queensland state election (13 June), One Nation won over 22% of the vote — 439,121 votes — and 11 seats in the Legislative Assembly. Six of those came off Labor, five off the Nationals.
• It spent the following years falling apart internally, and by 2004 was down to one seat. By 2006 it had 0.60% of the vote.
• Hanson lost Oxley in 1998, spent years out of Parliament, then won a Queensland Senate seat in 2016 and was re-elected in 2022.

So the party's peak-then-collapse is a Queensland story first. That's the obvious thing to weigh against the current numbers.

Where the QLD vote sits now

Queensland is One Nation's strongest state, and it's not close:

• Pyxis Polling, surveying 4,962 voters across 12 April – 26 June: One Nation 32% in Queensland, Labor 30%, Coalition 22%, Greens 9%
• Resolve's Queensland state poll (n=868) had One Nation jumping seven points to tie Labor for second
• Newspoll put it at 32% in Queensland, and — this is the one that made news here — Hanson is preferred prime minister in her home state, ahead of both Albanese and Taylor. She's the only state where that's true.

Nationally it's been 25–31% across pollsters through 2026, but QLD is consistently the ceiling.

Two things that complicate the QLD picture

• One Nation Queensland currently holds 0 of 93 seats in the state Parliament. It's extra-parliamentary at state level.
• Its state branch leader is James Ashby. That matters for the next section.
• There was a byelection in Stafford (Brisbane) in May that was seen as a test — One Nation pulled out of it despite surging polls. It polled 3.2% there when it last ran.

The next real test

The Queensland state election is locked in for October 2028 — so about two and a half years of the Crisafulli LNP government before One Nation gets its shot at state seats. That's the one to watch from here, not Victoria.

Who's actually moving (national data, since there's no clean QLD-only version)

• Concentrated among 55+, non-university-educated, and regional/rural and outer-metro voters — which describes a lot of Queensland outside the Brisbane bubble
• Votes are overwhelmingly coming from the Coalition, not Labor or the Greens
• Roy Morgan found support strongest among voters born in South Africa and Italy, weakest among those born in Asia; Australian-born voters sat at the national average
• DemosAU found one in three past Coalition voters had switched

What the appeal is

• Cost of living and housing — the dominant driver. Voters pessimistic about the economic climate are far more likely to vote minor party. Immigration gets blamed for the rental crisis, but it isn't the top issue for most of these voters.
• Immigration — polling in May 2026 found 62% of One Nation voters ranked it in their top three issues, but only 28% put it first.
• Distrust of the majors — the sense both have converged and stopped listening.

What they'd actually do

• Cap permanent and temporary visas at 130,000/year (genuinely unclear whether that's a net migration target or a permanent visa ceiling)
• Deport 75,000 people the party describes as illegal migrants; reintroduce Temporary Protection Visas
• Eight-year wait before migrants access citizenship or welfare
• Expand fossil fuels, abolish net zero targets
• Reduce foreign ownership, cut government spending, boost apprenticeships

The pushback worth knowing about

• The Four Corners doco that just aired, Caught in the Crackdown, investigates what's driving One Nation's rise, how the party operates internally, and whether it's ready for power.
• The party admitted using $56,000 in party funds to build a shed on a property in Yeppoon owned by national executive member James Ashby — who is also One Nation Queensland's state leader. Per the party's own email to members and ASIC records, the company that owns it (Small Batch Brewing) is privately held by Ashby, Hanson and former treasurer Alex Jones, not by the party. The party defends it as an "unconventional" fundraiser that will cut costs and generate revenue.
• Separately, its financial reports have been described as "incredibly sloppy," with over $1m in missing or worthless assets and around $400k in debts to Hanson with no records of the loans being made in the first place.

My take

I think the honest reading is that the surge is mostly a cost-of-living and trust protest expressed through the immigration channel, not a mass conversion to One Nation's full platform. The Queensland angle is what makes me cautious: this party hit 22% and 11 seats here in 1998, and within six years it was gone. Whether it's built anything more durable this time — actual branch structure, candidate quality, a plan past Hanson — is the real question, and 2028 is when we find out.