page_title: Pauline Hanson's One Nation
section_title: Overview
hierarchical_section_title: Pauline Hanson's One Nation / Overview
caption_attribution_description: Launching her book today.
context_page_description: Pauline Hanson's One Nation, also known as One Nation or One Nation Party, is a political party in Australia. One Nation was founded in 1997, by member of parliament Pauline Hanson and her advisors David Ettridge and David Oldfield after Hanson was disendorsed as a federal candidate for the Liberal Party of Australia. The disendorsement came before the 1996 federal election because of comments she made about Indigenous Australians. Hanson sat as an independent for one year before forming Pauline Hanson's One Nation.
  Federally, no One Nation candidate has ever been elected to the House of Representatives. However, one candidate from the party was elected to the Senate in the 1998 federal election, and four One Nation senators were elected in the 2016 federal election. In state politics, however, One Nation has performed better. At the 1998 Queensland state election the party gained more than 22% of the vote in Queensland's unicameral legislative assembly, winning 11 of the 89 seats. David Oldfield was elected to the New South Wales Legislative Council as a One Nation candidate, but he was expelled from the party and later formed the unsuccessful splinter group, One Nation NSW.
context_section_description: One Nation was formed in 1997 by Pauline Hanson, David Oldfield and David Ettridge. Hanson was an endorsed Liberal Party candidate for the seat of Oxley, Queensland at the 1996 federal election, but was disendorsed by the party shortly before the elections due to comments she made to a local newspaper in Ipswich, Queensland opposing "race-based welfare". Oldfield, a councillor on Manly Council in suburban Sydney and at one time an employee of Liberal minister Tony Abbott, was the organisational architect of the party.
  The name "One Nation" was chosen to signify belief in national unity, in contrast to a perceived increasing division in Australian society allegedly caused by government policies claimed to favour immigrants and indigenous Australians at the expense of the white Australian majority. The term "One Nation" was last used in Australian political life to describe a tax reform package in the early 1990s by the Labor government of Prime Minister Paul Keating (1991–96), whose culturally-cosmopolitan, Asia-centric (internationalist), free-trade, and pro-affirmative action policies were completely antithetical to what supporters of the later One Nation party formed in the late 1990s stood for.
  Arguing that other political parties were out of touch with mainstream Australia, One Nation ran on a broadly populist and protectionist platform. It promised to drastically reduce immigration and to abolish "divisive and discriminatory policies ... attached to Aboriginal and multicultural affairs." Condemning multiculturalism as a "threat to the very basis of the Australian culture, identity and shared values", One Nation rallied against liberal government immigration and multicultural policies which, it argued, were leading to "the Asianisation of Australia." The party also denounced economic rationalism and globalisation, reflecting working-class dissatisfaction with the neo-liberal economic policies embraced by the major parties. Adopting strong protectionist policies, One Nation advocated the restoration of import tariffs, a revival of Australia's manufacturing industry, and an increase in support for small business and the rural sector.
  One Nation became subject to a political campaign by Tony Abbott, who established a trust fund called "Australians for Honest Politics Trust" to help bankroll civil court cases against the Party. He was also accused of offering funds to One Nation dissident Terry Sharples to support his court battle against the party. Abbott conceded that the political threat One Nation posed to the Howard Government was "a very big factor" in his decision to pursue the legal attack, but he also claimed to be acting "in Australia's national interest".
  The party's greatest appeal was in country areas of New South Wales and Queensland, the traditional heartlands of the junior partner in the non-Labor Coalition, the National Party. Indeed, for much of 1997 and 1998, it appeared that One Nation would pass the Nationals.
  The party has been involved in Glenn Druery's Minor Party Alliance, with Druery claiming that he has been white-anting One Nation since 1999.
caption: One Nation leader Pauline Hanson
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