Pauline Hanson’s Trump support targeted in campaign over rising costs
Pauline Hanson’s support for Donald Trump’s war in Iran has become a central battleground in the Farrer by-election; With a big-spending advertising campaign trying to link the One Nation leader to rising fuel and fertilizer costs affecting regional voters.
Numerous published polls show Climate 200-backed independent Michelle Milthorpe and One Nation candidate David Farley in a tight race among southern NSW voters ahead of the May 9 election.
Left-wing advocacy group GetUp has raised more than $400,000 for an anti-Hanson campaign – spanning television, billboards, radio and digital platforms in regional cities including Albury, Griffith, Barooga and Deniliquin – arguing that the global conflict has driven up oil prices and farm inputs and placed Hanson’s political alliance with Trump at the center of the attack.
The new anti-Hanson campaign has galvanized a growing membership base nationwide for the group, which has grown by more than 100,000 people in the past month alone. He aims to spend at least $600,000 by the time the polls close; This dwarfs the entire 2025 election budget.
The surge has put the activist group in its strongest financial position in years after a dismal 2019 election campaign in which it was accused of alienating undecided voters by an obsessive and aggressive focus on climate change policy.
New polling suggests One Nation’s overall momentum may be stalling. The latest Resolve Political Monitor found that the party’s primary vote fell two points in April to 22 percent (the lowest level since January), remaining well above the result in the last election.
GetUp interim CEO Paul Ferris said One Nation has applauded Trump’s “economic recklessness” since the war in Iran began, and Farrer’s people have suffered from it.
“Those hardest hit by the fuel and fertilizer crisis are the same ‘warriors’ (farmers and families struggling to make ends meet) that One Nation claims to care about,” he said.
“Our research shows that when soft One Nation voters are shown the real record of the party and its MPs – voting to cut benefits such as old age pensions and allow the biggest companies to pay less tax – their support drops significantly.
“Similarly, voters strongly dislike his ties to Trump, his billionaire backers and his lavish lifestyle based on public spending.”
Both Labor and Coalition figures, such as National Party leader Matt Canavan and Liberal MP Andrew Hastie, have stepped up their attacks since One Nation’s remarkable results at the election. South Australian electionsHe won 22.9 percent of the vote and four lower house seats.
Milthorpe, 47, a teacher who narrowed retired MP Sussan Ley’s lead to just 6.2 per cent at last May’s federal election, warned potential donors that he was at risk of further spending by One Nation’s advertising campaign, associating Hanson with mining magnate Gina Rinehart and pushing back on suggestions that he was linked to the inner-city “orange” independent movement.
GetUp’s campaign includes 20 billboards in the electorate, television ads focusing on cost-of-living pressures and Albury hospital, and video-on-demand placements targeting younger voters.
Targeted radio ads were also launched, while the campaign expanded to metropolitan areas with additional billboards and bus stop placements. More than 40,000 anti-One Nation stickers were distributed across the country within 24 hours, according to the group.
One Nation MP Barnaby Joyce has blamed “bad press” for One Nation’s recruitment of convicted rapist Sean Black for the minor party’s decline in both Resolve and Resolve. Australian News poll.
He said GetUp would never say anything other than “you have smelly socks, One Nation.”
“Nobody takes GetUp seriously as an insightful, balanced view,” Joyce told ABC TV, also dismissing the idea that Trump’s unpopularity was a problem for One Nation. “When they hear about GetUp they say ‘there’s a bunch of bile going out’.”
“By the way, we are still higher in the polls than the Coalition, but that takes a lot of work. You have to remember we have one MP and four senators. So we have a lot of work, but a small number of people.”
Cut through the noise of federal politics with news, views and expert analysis. Subscribers can sign up for our weekly Inside Politics newsletter.
Rob Harris is the national correspondent for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, based in Canberra. He is a former European correspondent.Connect via email.
