Why Pauline Hanson’s One Nation will never win government

Don’t believe the News Corp bots, Pauline Hanson’s One Nation failed miserably in South Australia and will continue to fail at every subsequent election. Founder David Donovan separates the real ones from the hoaxes.

Like Independent A.Australia Pauline Hanson’s One Nation party has failed badly in Saturday’s South Australian election, according to a report on Monday (23/3/26).

In fact, election observers found Pauline Hanson’s disgraceful display so dismal that speaks in a belligerent manner About “planting land mines” for the returning Prime Minister Peter Malinauskas, whose Labor Government was overwhelmingly re-elected and won 33 out of 47 seats at the time of writing (probably 34from 27 in 2022).

This unusually graceless leader ignored the ignorant jubilation of his supporters and was apparently oblivious to the fact that his party had failed to secure a single lower or upper house seat during that period (now onewill probably result in three).

This result was particularly depressing because PHON had every advantage leading up to this election; This includes the mainstream media enthusiastically promoting it at every possible opportunity and constantly exaggerating poll results to bolster the party’s worn-out credibility.

In a more disturbing way Independent A.Australia He reported in two stunning revelations that Hanson’s pro-Trump cheerleading team at Facebook and News Corp fraudulently and misleadingly misrepresented PHON’s poll results and even actively created fake news using artificial intelligence to cast a more positive light on Pauline Hanson and her party.

This groundbreaking investigation later It was taken over by ABCeven without giving creditA. for the scoop (but what else is new?)

The correction has been made. But even the correction was too much for Murdoch, Seven, Nine and Meta to muster any significant electoral success in South Australia.

There is so much to say on this subject, and not all of it can be covered in these pages, because no one knows more about Pauline Hanson and her disgraced minions than the people who wrote a book about her colorful, convicted criminal chief of staff. James AshbyIn 2015: Ashbygate: A Plot to Destroy Australia’s SpeechR. Since then,IA.‘s investigative editor, Ross Jones, meticulously documents every dangerous act and unsavory development.

It’s impossible to summarize the mundane workings of the Hanson operation in one short article here, so we encourage you to check out our dedicated “Ashbygate” page and purchase the book to learn more about the background of this latest episode.

This article is about why PHON, or “One Nation”, has never been a realistic challenger in South Australia, and why it will never pose a serious threat to gaining power in any territory or state – and certainly not federally.

WHY PAULINE HANSON’S ONE NATION WILL NEVER GAIN POWER IN AUSTRALIA.

Don’t believe the hype! There are two intersecting reasons why One Nation will never form a Government in Australia and probably won’t even win enough seats to become the official Opposition. One of these is mathematical, the other is sociological, but they go hand in hand.

First of all, mathematical reason

To gain power in a region, state, or national level, a party or political group must win a majority of seats in that legislature’s lower house. Where the upper house is located has nothing to do with sitting on the “treasure benches”. The government sits on the so-called treasury benches because in order to form the government, a political party or parties must be able to guarantee supply: that is, it must pass its budget and other appropriation acts necessary to finance its legislative and other agenda.

The South Australian State Election has shown why Pauline Hanson’s party will never come close to winning a majority of seats in the lower house of any Australian parliament. Because despite the support of Gina Rinehart and her millions, as well as many other billionaire supporters; Despite the full support of the mainstream media, led by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp, as well as Seven and Nine, backed by fake AI interviews on Facebook, it managed only 22% of the first preference votes in the SA Lower House.

This resulted in One Nation securing only a single seat in the Lower House – undoubtedly its best-ever result in the state.

In fact, even at the height of its history, when Hanson burst onto the scene in 1998, he could only muster 23% of the vote in Queensland and win only 11 out of a total of 89 seats in Queensland’s unicameral (without an upper house) Parliament. He lost all but four of those seats in the next election in 2002, and his primary vote fell by 11%.

The reason One Nation is unlikely to gain more than a fifth of first preference votes, and therefore not more than a handful of seats in the lower house of any Australian Parliament, is due to our nation’s almost unique system of compulsory (for both houses) two-party preferred (for the lower house) voting system.

It is compulsory because voting is mandatory and because bipartisanship is preferred, unless there is a clear majority for one candidate in the primary votes, it usually comes down to which two candidates receive the most preference.

In South Australia, despite receiving fewer statewide primary votes (19%) on Saturday, the much-maligned Liberal Party still had (at the time of writing) four seats ahead of One Nation’s. This is because the vast majority of voters prefer One Nation over the Liberal Party.

Pauline Hanson and One Nation may be passionately supported by their zealous supporters, but everyone else seems to either dislike them or see them as a risk. That means One Nation would need to get at least 35 percent of the primary vote, possibly even closer to 40 percent, to get into second place. It has failed to achieve this so far other than a single seat and will result in a maximum of three seats.

The compulsory nature of our voting system is also important here, as opposed to the way the UK and US systems motivate people to participate. With low voter turnout, it may be enough to get over the line with a first-past-the-post system, even if it is only 22% of the total voting population, as this is very possible with a vocal and motivated minority like One Nation has.

It surprised absolutely no one… pic.twitter.com/KCwipynyNL

— Kenny Devine (@TheKennyDevine) March 26, 2026

Now the sociological reason

So, with mandatory preferential voting, the silent majority of voters restores honesty and order in our system. Because the majority of Australian people IA. He complains and deplores the prejudices and bigotry of Pauline Hanson and her loud-mouthed, prejudiced supporters.

As Darren Crawford wrote on Monday:

Pauline Hanson, who spent almost 30 years in politics with a stutter, built her entire brand on the “fear of others.”

At first, in the late 1990s, this involved blaming Asian immigrants for taking over the country. He began accusing Muslims of attacking everything that moved around the beginning of the new millennium.

This was followed by reports that African gangs were cutting everyone with machetes in the mid-2010s. He has always felt sorry for Indigenous Australians. Lately, Hanson has started telling gullible people that they should fear Asians as much as Muslims.

These “deplorables,” as Hillary Clinton described Trump supporters (Hanson is one of Australia’s biggest MAGA supporters and a recent guest at Mar-a-Lago), are unpopular with most Australians. And no amount of bots or millions from Gina Rinehart-style billionaires or support from Rupert Murdoch and Facebook will make it happen.

Moreover, Australians are not, for the most part, stupid. Why would they risk their valuable tools of power on Pauline Hanson, a bumbling, stuttering bumbling mess in a party of clowns, misfits, and criminals wholly devoid of any coherent policy or administrative identity? We all saw what happened to Trump, and Hanson isn’t even half as smart as that alleged pedophile con artist.

Australians (mostly decent Australians) will never allow this ridiculous party of protest, attack and outrage to have more than a sizeable, obnoxious minority in the lower house. not enough IA. He even suggests giving them a trial run on the opposition benches of any Australian parliament in our great brown land.

Thankfully, Australia has a system of democracy that, although far from perfect, does not easily allow third-rate fanatics like Hanson to drag a sufficiently disaffected minority into this country into yet another dystopian Trump-style Far Right hell.

David Donovan is the founder of Independent Australia and former deputy chairman of the Australian Republican Movement. Follow Dave on X/Twitter @davrosz and Bluesky @davrosz.bsky.social.

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