Political Violence in Australia: From Clontarf to Wangaratta

We like to think of ourselves as a pretty easygoing democracy. You can bump into your local member at Woolies, have a yarn with a senator at the footy, or bail up a minister at a street stall on a Saturday morning. Most of the time that's exactly how it goes. But every so often, going right back to the colonial days, someone has crossed the line from shouting to shooting. This page walks through the best-known cases, from a picnic at Clontarf in 1868 to a street in Wangaratta only this month, and then looks at the flood of threats our politicians now report every year.

The shooting of Prince Alfred at the Clontarf picnic, 12 March 1868, as shown in a wood engraving of the day. Samuel Calvert, 1868, via Wikimedia Commons (Public domain).

Clontarf, 1868: a shot at a prince

The first big one happened right here on the harbour. In 1868 Prince Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh and Queen Victoria's second son, was touring the colonies on the steam frigate HMS Galatea. The Dictionary of Sydney says he arrived in Sydney on 21 January 1868 to a huge welcome. On 12 March he went to a picnic at Clontarf, a fundraiser for the Sydney Sailors' Home organised by the barrister and politician William Manning.

During the picnic an Irishman named Henry James O'Farrell, who had a long history of mental illness, walked up and fired a pistol at the prince at close range. The bullet hit him in the back and glanced off his ribs, leaving only a slight wound. O'Farrell was nearly lynched by the crowd before he was arrested, and the prince was nursed by Lucy Osburn, the newly arrived Lady Superintendent of Sydney Hospital.

What followed was ugly. The Dictionary of Sydney describes a wave of anti-Irish and anti-Catholic feeling, with nearly 20,000 people at a Sydney meeting the next day and "indignation meetings" all over the colony. Henry Parkes's government rushed through the Treason Felony Act on 18 March, which, among other things, made it an offence to refuse to drink to the Queen's health. The prince himself suggested O'Farrell's sentence be referred to the Queen, but clemency was refused. O'Farrell was convicted of attempted murder despite his obvious mental instability and hanged at Darlinghurst Gaol on 21 April 1868.

The good that came out of it is still standing in Camperdown. The people of New South Wales raised money for a hospital to mark the prince's recovery, and it became the Prince Alfred Hospital, now Royal Prince Alfred.

Henry James O'Farrell in Darlinghurst Gaol, a pencil drawing made in 1868. Francis Newry, 1868, via Wikimedia Commons (Public domain).

Warwick, 1917: the egg that started a police force

Not every attack has involved a gun. On 29 November 1917, Prime Minister Billy Hughes was in Queensland campaigning for a yes vote in the second conscription referendum. When his train stopped at Warwick railway station, protesters were waiting with eggs, and they let fly. According to the Australian Federal Police's own history, what really got under Hughes's skin was what happened next. The Queensland Police on the platform wouldn't arrest the egg-throwers under federal law.

Hughes went back to Parliament and drafted legislation for a Commonwealth Police Force. The AFP calls the "Warwick Incident" the last straw for a Prime Minister who was already at odds with the Queensland Government. That force lasted only two years, but the AFP traces its own origins to that morning at Warwick.

Warwick railway station around 1905, a few years before Billy Hughes was egged on its platform. Queensland State Archives, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 4.0).

The telegram Billy Hughes sent about the Warwick egg incident, 29 November 1917. Queensland State Archives, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 4.0).

Riverton, 1921: Percy Brookfield

The way Percy Brookfield died says a lot about the man. Labour historian Paul Robert Adams, writing for the Australian Society for the Study of Labour History, tells us Brookfield was born in Wavertree in Lancashire in 1875, went to sea as a boy, got off the windjammer Godiva in Melbourne in November 1894, and spent years prospecting before landing in Broken Hill as a miner.

He came to notice in the 1915 strike for the 44-hour week, then led Broken Hill's anti-conscription "Labor's Volunteer Army", which earned him the nickname "General Brookfield". He was fined more than £700 under the War Precautions Act and was in gaol when his mates talked him into standing for the state seat of Sturt. He won it in 1917. Adams describes him as "Red Flag Brookfield", one of the most despised men in the country to conscription supporters, and after the 1920 election he held the balance of power in the NSW Legislative Assembly as the lone Industrial Labor Party member.

Percy Brookfield, MLA for Sturt, photographed in Broken Hill. C. H. Conlon, before 1921, via Wikimedia Commons (Public domain).

On 22 March 1921 Brookfield was on his way back to Sydney from Broken Hill, via Adelaide. The Broken Hill express stopped at Riverton, north of Adelaide, for breakfast. The Adelaide Register's report the next day says nearly 200 passengers were on the train. As they were getting back on board, a young Russian named Koorman Tomayeff (the spelling varies, and Adams uses Tomayoff) pulled out a .32 Spanish automatic pistol and started firing up and down the platform.

The Register says Brookfield borrowed a revolver, ran out into the open while everyone else was sheltering in the refreshment rooms, and fired several shots at the gunman. Tomayeff fired back and hit him twice in the stomach. A goods clerk named J. Minns then hit Tomayeff over the head with a rifle butt, and Mounted Constables Woodhead and McLaren put the cuffs on him. Asked later why he had done it, Brookfield said, "I did it for the women."

Riverton railway station in South Australia, about 1929. State Government Photographer, via Wikimedia Commons (CC0).

The sources don't all tell it the same way. The Register reported 42 cartridges fired and five people shot. Adams says 40 shots and four people wounded before Brookfield stepped in. The National Archives of Australia says "at least 40". On when he died, Adams says it was later that same day in Adelaide Hospital, while the Celebrating South Australia chronology says he died in Adelaide "the following day". The National Archives adds that a second man, William Crowhurst, died of his wounds in hospital the following day, while the SA chronology puts that second death a week later.

Was it an assassination? Nobody really knows. While on remand Tomayeff is recorded as saying, "You no forget to tell Judge I get one hundred pounds to shoot Brookfield", but he also said he was sorry he shot Brookfield and not sorry about the others. The National Archives points out that he had lodged in Broken Hill with Russian Bolsheviks whose politics were much like Brookfield's own. Other accounts say he was grieving over the death of a woman he'd been close to. What happened in court is also told two ways. Adams says three doctors declared him of unsound mind, he was never actually prosecuted, and he was committed to Parkside Mental Hospital. The National Archives says he was tried in the Supreme Court in Adelaide and found insane by the jury. Both agree he spent the rest of his life locked up, and the National Archives says he died in 1948.

Broken Hill gave Brookfield the biggest funeral it had ever seen. Adams describes a rider on a black horse carrying a red flag at the front, 127 vehicles, and most of the town's 24,000 people turning out. According to the National Archives, the bullet holes are still in the walls of the Riverton refreshment rooms.

Thomas Ley: the "Minister for Murder"

Thomas Ley's story is the strangest on this list, because he's the politician people suspect of the violence, not the victim of it. The Dictionary of Sydney says Ley was born in Bath in 1880, came to Sydney as a boy, left school at ten, and worked his way up to become a solicitor in 1914. He was a teetotaller and temperance campaigner, nicknamed "Lemonade Ley". He won the state seat of Hurstville in 1917 and served as NSW Minister for Justice from 1922 to 1925, where he made a name for himself as a hard man, notably refusing clemency for Edward Williams, who was hanged in 1924.

Thomas Ley in 1925, the year he won the federal seat of Barton. Romney Studios, 1925, via Wikimedia Commons (Public domain).

In 1925 Ley ran for the federal seat of Barton against the Labor member, Frederick McDonald. The Dictionary of Sydney says allegations were made that Ley tried to bribe McDonald to pull out of the race. Wikipedia goes further, saying the offer was a £2,000 share in a Kings Cross property. Ley won the seat, McDonald went to court to have the result overturned, and then, the Dictionary of Sydney says, on his way to see Premier Jack Lang about it, McDonald disappeared without trace. With McDonald gone, the court case collapsed.

Then came Hyman Goldstein. He was a conservative politician and one of Ley's loudest critics over the shady dealings of Ley's law firm, Ley, Andrews and Company. The Dictionary of Sydney says Goldstein was found dead at the bottom of the cliffs at Coogee on 3 September 1928. Wikipedia says he was found after apparently falling from "Suicide Point". It also mentions Keith Greedor, a former Ley associate hired by businessmen to look into Ley's affairs, who fell overboard and drowned on a boat to Newcastle.

It's worth being clear about what was and wasn't proven. Ley was never charged over McDonald, Goldstein or Greedor. Wikipedia sums it up as Ley being "widely suspected" of involvement in a number of deaths, and the Dictionary of Sydney calls him a "self-made politician whose opponents mysteriously disappeared". The bribe was an allegation that never got tested in court, and so were the deaths.

Thomas Ley speaking at a rally in Macquarie Place before the 1928 federal election, which he lost. Fairfax Corporation, 1928, via Wikimedia Commons (Public domain).

Ley lost Barton in 1928 and sailed for England with his mistress, Maggie Brook. The Dictionary of Sydney notes that her husband had also died in unexplained circumstances. In London Ley was convicted of black-marketeering during the Second World War. Then, in 1946, he became convinced that a barman named John McBain Mudie was having an affair with Brook. He persuaded two labourers that Mudie was a blackmailer, and Mudie was killed and dumped in a chalk pit on Woldingham Common in Surrey. That's where the name "Chalk-pit Murder" comes from. This time there was a conviction. In March 1947, at the Old Bailey, Ley and Lawrence John Smith were both sentenced to death. Ley was declared insane and sent to Broadmoor, where, the Dictionary of Sydney says, he died four months later. Wikipedia gives the date as 24 July 1947.

One thing worth sorting out is the dates. The 1925 election was the one that brought the bribe claim and McDonald's disappearance. Goldstein's death came later, and both the Dictionary of Sydney and Wikipedia put it in 1928.

Mosman, 1966: the shot at Arthur Calwell

On the evening of 21 June 1966, Opposition Leader Arthur Calwell spoke at an anti-conscription meeting at Mosman Town Hall during the Vietnam War. The Museum of Australian Democracy at Old Parliament House says he left at about a quarter to eleven and got into his car. A young man walked up, and Calwell, assuming he was a well-wisher, started to wind the window down to shake his hand. The man was 19-year-old Peter Raymond Kocan. He fired from point-blank range.

The window was still partly up. The National Film and Sound Archive says the bullet was deflected by the glass and lodged in Calwell's lapel, and his chin was cut by flying glass. MoAD's Campbell Rhodes puts it bluntly: had the window been down, as it would have been moments later, Calwell would have been dead. The sources differ on the gun. NFSA calls it a sawn-off rifle, MoAD calls it a sawn-off shotgun, and the Wikipedia account, quoting the Canberra Times of the time, says a sawn-off .22 calibre rifle. Calwell, bleeding, went back inside to ring his wife so she wouldn't panic. MoAD says Kocan was chased down by Wayne Haylen, son of Labor MP Les Haylen and Calwell's own godson, and anti-conscription campaigner Barry Robinson.

Arthur Calwell in 1966, the year he was shot at in Mosman. Australian News and Information Bureau, via National Library of Australia and Wikimedia Commons (Public domain).

Kocan pleaded guilty to attempted murder and was given life. As quoted in the Canberra Times, Justice Leslie Herron said, "Public men in Australia must be free to go about their important affairs of State without fear of danger to life or limb." According to the Canberra Times report of his trial, as quoted on Wikipedia, Kocan told police he wanted to stop being "a nobody" and that disagreeing with Calwell's politics "made it easier to choose him". He was moved to the Morisset psychiatric hospital, and MoAD says he was released in 1976 and went on to become an award-winning poet and author.

What people remember most is what Calwell did next. He was a devout Catholic, and he forgave Kocan, wrote to him, and in reply to Kocan's apology offered to help with "the mitigation of your sentence". Talking to Channel 9 at Essendon airport, as the NFSA footage shows, he pointed to the hole in his lapel and said the only other assassination attempt he knew of in Australia was the one on the Duke of Edinburgh in 1868.

Letter bombs, 1975

In November 1975, in the middle of a bitter federal election campaign, someone tried to kill by post. The Age reported on 20 November 1975, in a story the SMH republished in 2019, that a letter bomb addressed to Queensland Premier Joh Bjelke-Petersen exploded on the 14th floor of the government executive building in George Street, Brisbane, about 40 metres from his office. It went off in the faces of two postal clerks. Keith McFarlane, 24, had metal taken out of his right eye in a three-hour operation, and Gary Kross, 34, had face, chest and stomach injuries. A few hours later a second bomb, addressed to Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser, was picked up by an X-ray machine in Canberra and defused.

Both envelopes were marked "Press Release Kit". One was posted in Drummoyne and the other in Five Dock, here in Sydney's inner west. Queensland police said they were treating it as an assassination attempt. Fraser said it was one of several threats on his life in the past six weeks, and Gough Whitlam said he condemned "absolutely any form of violence in our political life".

The Hilton bombing, 1978

Just after midnight on 13 February 1978, Sydney had what the NFSA calls the first major terrorist incident in Australia. Delegates were gathered at the Hilton on George Street for the first Commonwealth Heads of Government Regional Meeting. A bomb hidden in a garbage bin outside the entrance went off as the bin was tipped into a council truck. Garbage collectors Alex Carter and William Favell were killed, and Constable Paul Birmistriw, who was on duty at the hotel, died later in hospital. That's how the AFP spells the names. The Catholic Leader gives them as Alec Carter and Paul Burmistriw. Eleven others were hurt.

The Hilton on George Street, Sydney, where the 1978 bomb went off outside the entrance. Sardaka, 2025, via Wikimedia Commons (CC0).

The court side of the story took years and still causes arguments. In 1989 a former Ananda Marga member, Evan Pederick, walked into a Brisbane presbytery and confessed to Father Jim Browne, as the priest told the Catholic Leader in 2020. Pederick said the target was the Indian Prime Minister, Morarji Desai. In September 1989 he pleaded guilty and got 20 years for three counts of murder and one of conspiracy. He also named Tim Anderson, who was convicted and sentenced to 14 years. In June 1991, though, the NSW Court of Criminal Appeal cast doubt on Pederick's evidence and quashed Anderson's conviction, and Anderson went on to lecture at the University of Sydney. Pederick was released in 1997 and still stands by his confession. The NFSA notes the bombing remains "shrouded in controversy", with conspiracy theories about government and ASIO involvement aired over the years. The AFP says the Hilton bombing was a big reason it was formed on 19 October 1979.

The memorial to the three men killed in the 1978 Hilton bombing. Bookish Worm, 2023, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).

Cabramatta, 1994: John Newman

This is the one people mean when they say Australia's first political assassination. John Newman was born on 8 December 1946, and the Dictionary of Sydney gives his birth name as Naumenko. He was a trade unionist before becoming the Labor member for Cabramatta in the NSW Legislative Assembly on 1 February 1986, and the ABC described him as an anti-crime campaigner.

On the night of 5 September 1994 he came home from a Labor branch meeting. ABC's Lateline reported that his fiancée, Lucy Wang, was helping him put a cover over his car when the shots rang out, and he was hit twice in the chest. Police found him slumped across his front verandah. The ABC also reported it wasn't the first attack on him. His car had been paint-bombed outside his home and he'd received threatening anonymous letters.

It took years to get anyone into court. Lateline says no arrests were made until almost four years later, around the time of the inquest, when three men were charged, and a fourth, David Dinh, was arrested in 1999. On 29 June 2001 a jury found former Fairfield councillor Phuong Ngo guilty of murder for organising the killing. The accused gunman, David Dinh, and the accused driver, Tu Quang Dao, were acquitted. The sources disagree on how many trials it took. ABC News in 2009 said Ngo was convicted at his third trial, after the first was aborted and the second hung. Lateline in 2001 described it as coming after three previous trials, two aborted and one hung.

On 14 November 2001 Justice John Dunford sentenced Ngo to life. As reported by the ABC's The World Today, he said Ngo was driven by "naked political ambition", wanting Newman's seat, and that the killing was "a direct attack on the system of democratic government". Ngo has always maintained his innocence and still has supporters. In 2008 the Chief Justice ordered an inquiry into the conviction. It reported in April 2009 that "nothing casts doubt upon, or creates a sense of unease or disquiet in respect of the conviction of Mr Ngo", and he stayed in prison.

Electorate offices under attack

More recently, a lot of the trouble has landed on electorate offices, the shopfronts where locals go for help with Centrelink or a visa. On 19 June 2024 the St Kilda office of federal Labor MP Josh Burns had its windows smashed and was daubed with slogans including "Zionism is fascism". The Guardian reported that Burns, who is Jewish, called it a "politically motivated attack", and that Victoria Police later charged an 18-year-old woman and a 17-year-old boy with burglary and criminal damage. The AFP's 2024–25 annual report says that during the 2025 federal election campaign there was criminal damage to electorate offices and campaign material, harassment, and people using deception to get into events.

Wangaratta, October 2026: Helen Haines

And then, this month, the thing MPs had been warning about for years. On Monday 19 October 2026, at about 3.35pm, independent MP Dr Helen Haines was hit by a four-wheel drive on Murphy Street in Wangaratta, outside her own electorate office. The BBC and the Sydney Morning Herald report she was getting things out of the boot of her car at the time. She is the member for Indi, a former nurse, midwife and public health researcher who has held the seat since 2019, and she's known for pushing for the National Anti-Corruption Commission.

Helen Haines, independent member for Indi, at the 2022 declaration of the poll. Alison Newman, 2022, via Wikimedia Commons (CC0).

Locals ran straight in. The BBC reported that a barber, Ricky Jefferies, pulled the driver out of the car and took a knife out of his pocket, and that another bystander sat in front of the still-rolling vehicle. Victoria Police said a highway patrol unit was on the scene within eight seconds of the call. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said, "This wasn't an accident." The SMH reports that Helen's husband, Phil Haines, revealed she had lost both legs, as surgeons at the Alfred battled to save her life.

A 43-year-old Tarrawingee man, Brendan Nugent, has been charged with dangerous driving causing serious injury, intentionally causing serious injury, and the Commonwealth offence of causing harm to a Commonwealth public official. The ABC reports cannabis charges were added as well. Police say they will allege the attack was targeted, and Victoria Police Chief Commissioner Mike Bush said further serious charges weren't ruled out. These are allegations only. Nugent hasn't entered a plea, nothing has been proven in court, and the case is next due in Wangaratta Magistrates' Court on 4 February 2027. His father and his father's partner said they had been friends with Helen Haines for more than 20 years and called the attack "devastating and unfathomable". The AFP said that at this stage it appeared to be an isolated incident with no known threats connected to it, and the ABC noted it was too early to say whether it was politically motivated.

Helen Haines's electorate office on Murphy Street, Wangaratta, photographed in 2022. Alison Newman, 2022, via Wikimedia Commons (CC0).

As of 28 October her team said her Wangaratta and Wodonga offices were reopening three days a week, and Parliament has granted her a leave of absence. The SMH reports the federal government is now weighing stronger police protection and help with home security for MPs.

The threats: what the numbers say

Violence like this is rare. Threats aren't. The AFP counts every report of "harassment, nuisance, offensive and threatening" communications involving federal parliamentarians, high office holders, electorate offices and protected places. Then-Commissioner Reece Kershaw gave Senate Estimates the run of figures on 27 March 2025:

• 2021–22: 555 reports
• 2022–23: 709 reports
• 2023–24: 1,009 reports, a 42 per cent jump on the year before according to the AFP
• 2024–25: 951 reports, according to the AFP's statement of 20 October 2026
• 2025–26: 1,067 reports, according to the same statement

So 2024–25 actually came in a bit lower than 2023–24, even though Kershaw had predicted in March 2025 that it would pass the year before. The ABC worked out that the 2025–26 figure is a 12 per cent rise on 2024–25 and almost double 2021–22. The AFP is careful to say not every report reaches a criminal threshold, and the figures cover more than just MPs and senators.

Parliament House, Canberra. Thennicke, 2017, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).

Kershaw told the senators the targets were "across the political spectrum, live throughout Australia and are of different backgrounds". He also said threats against women MPs were "particularly troubling", and that some male offenders seemed to be targeting women "because they are women". The ABC reported he had revealed some male politicians had been sent bullets in the mail. In the 13 weeks before his statement, the AFP had charged six men over five incidents of threatening parliamentarians. During the 2025 election campaign, from 28 March to 3 May, the AFP received 51 reports, four people were charged with state election offences, and threats to candidates were up 17 per cent on 2022. Since the AFP set up its National Security Investigations teams in October 2025, it says 41 people have been charged over threats to federal MPs and high office holders.

Some examples from the reporting: in November 2025 the SMH reported that neo-Nazi Stefan Eracleous was charged with harassing Senator Lidia Thorpe, and a leader of the National Socialist Network was arrested for allegedly urging supporters to target independent MP Allegra Spender. A 29-year-old Tamworth man was charged over alleged online threats to the Prime Minister. In October 2026, the ABC reported that Labor minister Anne Aly said she'd received 19 death threats in a week, and that Liberal MP Andrew Hastie had faced threats serious enough for extra security at his home and office. Those cases are all charges or claims and haven't been proven in court.

Pauline Hanson and One Nation

A lot of people ask how many threats Pauline Hanson gets. The honest answer is that no official count has been published. The AFP releases totals for all parliamentarians, not for individual MPs or parties, and I couldn't find any AFP, police or parliamentary figure for Hanson or One Nation on their own. What the public record does show is a run of court cases and Hanson's own descriptions.

Pauline Hanson, leader of One Nation, in 2016. jfish92, 2016, via Wikimedia Commons (CC0).

• October 2022: news.com.au and 9News reported the AFP charged a 27-year-old Brunswick West man, Ibrahim Koshin, with two counts of using a carriage service to make a threat to kill and one of using a carriage service to menace, harass or cause offence. The charges were over online threats to a senator in September and October 2022. Police didn't name the senator, but both outlets confirmed it was Hanson. The reports cover the charges only, and I couldn't find a published outcome.
• July and August 2026: the ABC and The West Australian reported that Bayswater man Anton Raymond Illich, 47, was charged with two counts of using a carriage service to make a threat over three Facebook posts on 3 July 2026, one saying he would "hunt her down and kill her". He told the court it was "stupid, crazy", said he never meant it, and indicated he would plead guilty. The matter was heading to the District Court.
• August 2026: One Nation said one of its staffers, a woman in her 60s, was punched and suffered a broken rib at the Ekka in Brisbane. The ABC reported that Queensland Police were aware of the allegation but hadn't received a formal complaint at that stage.

Hanson's own account is that things are getting worse. In June 2020 she posted violent messages on Facebook with the words "Here's the rot my office and I have to put up with". In a radio interview after the Haines attack she said she now has federal police protection wherever she travels "because the level of threat that has escalated and the death threats against me". She also said people ring her office threatening to kill her, white powder has been sent there, and her mail is searched. Those are her words, and she didn't give a number. The ABC also reported in October 2026 that Hanson has spoken publicly about threats against her and her family.

Where that leaves us

Put it all side by side and a pattern shows. Clontarf, Riverton, Mosman, Cabramatta and Wangaratta were each followed by a round of soul-searching about whether we'd lost something. Calwell said at the airport in 1966 that this sort of thing was very rare in Australia. Malcolm Fraser said in 1975 that it "has not in the past been part of Australia's political life". Sixty years later the AFP is fielding more than a thousand reports a year. The people on these pages came from every side of politics: a royal visitor, a wartime Prime Minister, a red-flag socialist, a Labor leader, a Liberal Prime Minister, a Queensland Premier, a Labor backbencher, an independent and the One Nation leader. The violence has never belonged to one side, and you'd hope the decency that follows it, the barber who ran in at Wangaratta and Calwell writing to the young man who shot at him, doesn't either.

Pauline Hanson and One Nation: From an Ipswich Fish and Chip Shop to the Senate, 1954 to 2026

Love her or loathe her, and most Australians seem to land firmly on one side or the other, Pauline Hanson has been part of the furniture of our politics for 30 years now. She went from a fish and chip shop in Ipswich to Federal Parliament in a matter of months, started a party that rattled both sides of politics, lost it all, did time in a Brisbane prison for a conviction that was later thrown out, danced on Saturday-night television, ran and lost election after election, and then came back to the Senate in 2016. A decade on, the party she started in 1997 is winning lower house seats. This is how it all happened, told as plainly as the sources allow, with the opinions left to the people who hold them.

Brisbane, Ipswich and the fish and chip shop

Her Parliament House biography records that Pauline Lee Hanson was born in Brisbane on 27 May 1954, and that before Federal Parliament she was a mother of four and a small business owner from 1978 to 1997. When she stood up to give her first speech in 1996 she put it in her own words: she came there "not as a polished politician but as a woman who has had her fair share of life's knocks", and said her views came from "commonsense, and my experience as a mother of four children, as a sole parent, and as a businesswoman running a fish and chip shop."

That shop was in Ipswich, the old railway and coal city west of Brisbane. The ABC's 2011 timeline of her career opens with her simply as "fish and chip shop owner Pauline Hanson", and by the time she came back to lead One Nation in 2014 she was living at Coleyville, in the Scenic Rim south of Brisbane, according to the ABC.

Brisbane Street, Ipswich. The fish and chip shop and the council seat that started it all were in and around this city west of Brisbane. Photo: Kgbo, 2020, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).

A seat on Ipswich council

Her first taste of elected office was on Ipswich City Council. The Parliament House biography lists her as a councillor from 1994 to 1995, and the ABC's 2011 timeline says she was elected as an independent in 1994. The ABC's 2016 timeline tells it a little differently, putting the start of her council career at 11 March 1995 and saying she was voted out "the following year". It also gives her reason for running: Labor councillors had thrown out the Labor mayor, David Underwood, and she asked, "How can a handful of people throw out a man elected by the people?" Whatever the exact dates, the ABC's 2016 piece says that after losing her council seat she joined the Liberal Party.

Picked by the Liberals, dumped by the Liberals

The Liberals chose her to run in Oxley, the Ipswich-based federal seat, at the March 1996 election. On paper it was hopeless. According to the ABC, the sitting Labor member, Les Scott, held it by 12.58 per cent after three terms.

Then came a letter to the editor. On 6 January 1996, the ABC reports, the Queensland Times published a letter from her about Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, which said in part: "How can we expect this race to help themselves when governments shower them with money, facilities and opportunities that only these people can obtain no matter how minute the Indigenous blood is that flows through their veins and that is what is causing racism." On 14 February, just over two weeks before polling day, the Liberal Party under John Howard disendorsed her. The ABC says the Queensland branch president told her she could keep her posters if the references to the party were covered up, and that she left the meeting in tears.

The twist was that the ballot papers had already been printed. Voters in Oxley still saw her name listed as the Liberal candidate. On 2 March 1996 she won the seat, the same day Howard swept to power, and because the party had dumped her she took her seat as an independent. The Parliament House record lists her as an independent from 2 March 1996.

"Swamped by Asians": the first speech

On 10 September 1996, a little after 5 pm, the new Member for Oxley rose in the House of Representatives. Hansard records her opening: "I won the seat of Oxley largely on an issue that has resulted in me being called a racist. That issue related to my comment that Aboriginals received more benefits than non-Aboriginals."

The line everyone remembers came later. "I believe we are in danger of being swamped by Asians," she said, adding that between 1984 and 1995 "40 per cent of all migrants coming into this country were of Asian origin. They have their own culture and religion, form ghettos and do not assimilate." She also spoke about youth unemployment in her electorate, the national debt and what she called "cooking the books" on the jobless figures.

A month later, on 13 October 1996, came another moment that has never gone away. The ABC records that when 60 Minutes reporter Tracey Curro asked if she was xenophobic, she replied, "Please explain."

Parliament House, Canberra, where the new Member for Oxley gave her first speech in September 1996. Photo: jjron, 2008, via Wikimedia Commons (GFDL 1.2).

One Nation is born

Within months she had a party. The ABC's 2016 timeline dates its formation to 23 February 1997, with co-founders David Oldfield and David Ettridge. It notes that Oldfield had still been working as an adviser to the Liberal backbencher Tony Abbott when he began helping her in 1996. The official launch was on 11 April 1997, which is the date the ABC's 2011 timeline uses as the founding ("April 1997"), so the two ABC accounts differ by a couple of months depending on whether you count the formation or the launch. The Parliament House record shows her sitting as a member of Pauline Hanson's One Nation from 27 June 1997.

Registration in Queensland would matter a great deal later on. The Court of Appeal judgment records that on 15 October 1997 she presented an application to the Queensland Electoral Commissioner to register "Pauline Hanson's One Nation" as a political party. The law required the names of 500 members who were electors. Ettridge arranged the list. The party was registered on 4 December 1997.

Pauline Hanson's 1998 campaign portrait. Queensland State Archives, via Wikimedia Commons (CC0).

1998: eleven seats in Queensland, then defeat

The Queensland state election of 13 June 1998 was the party's high-water mark. The ABC reports that One Nation took 22.68 per cent of the primary vote, more than the Liberal Party, and won 11 seats. When Hanson came back as leader in 2014, the ABC described that peak as 11 of the Queensland Parliament's 89 seats.

That success came with public money. After the 1998 state election the Electoral Commissioner paid her, as agent for the party, $225,071.07 on 2 September 1998 and $273,566.24 on 25 September 1998, according to the Court of Appeal judgment. Those two payments would later become criminal charges.

Opponents were already circling. On 2 July 1998, the ABC reports, Tony Abbott declared he would fight to have One Nation deregistered, arguing it was a business rather than a party, and its opponents argued it had never had the 500 members it needed.

At the federal election on 3 October 1998, Hanson switched from Oxley to the new seat of Blair. The ABC says she topped the primary count with 35.97 per cent but lost on preferences to her Liberal opponent, because Labor, the Liberals and the Nationals all preferenced each other ahead of One Nation. The Parliament House biography records her as "defeated at general elections 1998". Nationally, the party won one Senate seat, taken by Len Harris in Queensland.

Parliament House on George Street, Brisbane. One Nation sent 11 members here after the June 1998 state election. Photo: Figaro, 2005, via Wikimedia Commons (Public domain).

The splits

The cracks opened quickly. By 4 February 1999, the ABC reports, three of the 11 Queensland MPs had quit, saying the party administration had too much control. Three more left later that year and formed the City Country Alliance. The ABC adds that the party lost its state registration and the Electoral Commission of Queensland chased it for the $500,000 paid after the 1998 election.

David Oldfield won a seat in the NSW upper house in March 1999. According to the ABC, Hanson expelled him from the party about a year and a half later after a disagreement. He accused her publicly of being irrational and said: "everything including her maiden speech and every word of any consequence that she's said since, has actually been written for her." He then split the NSW branch away from the rest of the party.

The 2001 elections were mixed. The ABC records the party winning three seats in Western Australia in February 2001, then being cut back to three seats in Queensland a week later. That November she ran for a Queensland Senate seat and lost. The ABC's 2014 report says she was "booted from the helm in 2002 by the national executive".

A signed poster and corflutes from her 1998 House of Representatives campaign. Queensland State Archives, via Wikimedia Commons (CC0).

The fraud case and 11 weeks in prison

This is the part of the story where it pays to keep a careful eye on what was alleged and what was proven.

Abbott later admitted to setting up a fund in 1998, called Australians for Honest Politics, to help pay for civil court cases against One Nation. The ABC reports that he described it as a $100,000 fund. One of the cases was brought by a former member, Terry Sharples, who fought to have the party deregistered and was bankrupted in the process. The two men tell it differently. According to the ABC, Abbott said he acted alone and offered Sharples $10,000, while Sharples said that Prime Minister John Howard knew about the fund and that he was offered around $20,000.

The criminal case was separate. On 31 July 2001 Hanson appeared in the Brisbane Magistrates Court charged with electoral fraud. She pleaded not guilty and told reporters, "I do believe that this is a political witch-hunt." The ABC reports that at the trial with Ettridge in 2003, the Crown argued that the 500 people on the registration list were supporters of Hanson, not members of the party, saying members had to have voting rights and that $5 was too little for a membership fee. There were 30 witnesses over 23 days, and the jury took a day to find them both guilty.

On 20 August 2003 both were convicted in the District Court of dishonestly inducing the Electoral Commissioner to register the party, and each was sentenced to three years in prison. Hanson was also convicted on two counts of dishonestly obtaining the two 1998 funding payments, with concurrent three-year terms. The Court of Appeal judgment sets this out. The ABC reports that she shouted, "Rubbish, I'm not guilty... it's a joke," and cried as she hugged Ettridge and her two sons. The ABC's figure for the money is "more than $500,000". The two payments in the judgment add up to $498,637.31.

The sentence drew criticism from unexpected places. Three days later, the ABC reports, Liberal backbencher Bronwyn Bishop said it was something you would expect under Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe, adding: "I've been very critical of her and her party, but... this is someone who has been sent to jail because she spoke her views and that is not acceptable in this country."

The appeal was heard on 5 November 2003. The next day, 6 November, Chief Justice de Jersey, President McMurdo and Justice Davies allowed both appeals, quashed every conviction and directed that verdicts of acquittal be entered. The Chief Justice found that the Crown could not "safely sustain" its case that the people on the list were members only of a separate body, the Pauline Hanson Support Movement, and not of the party. Because a retrial "would in the circumstances be futile", there was none. The ABC reports that she walked out of the Brisbane Women's Correctional Centre that day with her sons. The ABC's 2014 report puts the time she served at 11 weeks.

So the record is clear: she was convicted, she was jailed, and the convictions were quashed and replaced with acquittals. A week and a half after her release she threatened to run against Abbott in his Sydney seat. "I hope Tony Abbott never becomes prime minister. I detest the man," she said, according to the ABC.

The wilderness years

The next decade was a long run of near misses. The ABC's timelines record most of them:

• March 2003: she ran for the NSW upper house as an independent while the fraud case was still going and got 1.9 per cent of the vote. The ABC's 2011 timeline says she had moved to Sylvania Waters in Sydney.
• 2004: she ran as an independent for a Queensland Senate seat and lost.
• 2007: she launched Pauline's United Australia Party on 24 May and again lost a Queensland Senate bid.
• 2009: she ran as an independent for the state seat of Beaudesert and lost. During that campaign, the ABC notes, News Limited papers published photos said to be of her in the 1970s. She denied they were her, and they were later revealed to be a hoax.
• February 2010: she announced she was selling up and moving to the United Kingdom. She came back.
• March 2011: she ran for the NSW Legislative Council and lost.
• 2013: she rejoined One Nation and ran for the Senate in NSW. The ABC's 2016 timeline gives her 1.14 per cent of the primary vote. Wikipedia gives 1.22 per cent.
• February 2015: as One Nation leader again, she contested Lockyer at the Queensland election and lost.

In between came the moment many people remember best. In late 2004 she was on Channel Seven's first season of Dancing with the Stars, partnered with Salvatore Vecchio. The Age reported in November 2004 that she was the highest-scoring competitor once the phone votes were counted, despite getting the lowest tally from the judges in that round. In the final she and Vecchio were runners-up to the Home and Away actress Bec Cartwright and Michael Miziner, according to the ABC and Channel Seven's own Dancing with the Stars press kit.

In March 2007 she published her autobiography, Untamed and Unashamed. On 19 November 2014 she announced her return as One Nation leader. "This time I will be in control, no-one is going to pull my strings, or tell me what to say," she told the ABC. The same report said the party had once reached 18,000 members but had floundered since 2002, and that its six candidates at the 2012 Queensland election had won 2,525 votes between them, about 0.1 per cent.

Launching her autobiography, Untamed and Unashamed, in March 2007. Photo: Velovotee from Sydney, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0).

Judging the fashion parade at the Kurri Kurri Nostalgia Festival in March 2011, the same month she ran for the NSW upper house. Photo: Steve Daggar, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0).

2016: back in Canberra

The comeback came at the double dissolution election of 2 July 2016. The ABC says One Nation ran 27 candidates. During the campaign she called for a ban on Muslim immigration, a royal commission into Islam and a ban on new mosques. The Australian Electoral Commission's final Queensland Senate figures gave One Nation 250,126 first preference votes, or 9.19 per cent, which was 1.19 quotas. She was the third senator elected in Queensland.

She did not come in alone. The AEC's list of senators elected and reports in The Guardian and the Sydney Morning Herald show four One Nation senators: Hanson and Malcolm Roberts in Queensland, Brian Burston in New South Wales and Rod Culleton in Western Australia. The Herald called it "the outcome 'nobody expected'" and noted that the Turnbull Government would need the One Nation bloc to pass bills opposed by Labor and the Greens. In the same piece, election analyst Antony Green pointed to the party's "abysmal record" of keeping its MPs in line.

He was right about that. Culleton was gone from the party by the end of 2016, and Burston quit in 2018 after what the ABC called a prolonged feud with Hanson. In February 2019 he accused Hanson of sexual harassment and was filmed in a scuffle with her chief of staff, James Ashby, at Parliament House. The ABC reports that Hanson denied the claims, calling them "retaliation", and said she "can't stop laughing about it". These were allegations, and they were never proven in court.

In a Jabiru J230 at the Caboolture Air Show in April 2016, a few months before the election that sent her to the Senate. Photo: Aviationbystirling, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).

Senator Hanson in December 2016, her first year in the Senate. Photo: jfish92, via Wikimedia Commons (CC0).

The burqa, twice

On 17 August 2017 Senator Hanson walked into Question Time wearing a full burqa. The ABC reports that her arrival drew audible gasps. She called for the garment to be banned, saying she wanted to highlight security risks. "I am very much against the burka," she told radio 2GB. "It is not a religious requirement. This is brought in by men who want to cover up their women. It is oppressing women."

The Attorney-General, George Brandis, replied close to tears: "To ridicule that community, to drive it into a corner, to mock its religious garments is an appalling thing to do. I would ask you to reflect on that." Labor and Greens senators gave him a standing ovation. Labor's Penny Wong said it was "one thing to wear religious dress as a sincere act of faith, there is another to wear it as a stunt here in the chamber". On the other side, her colleague Malcolm Roberts told Lateline that she was "a woman with courage standing up for women".

She did it again on 24 November 2025, after her bill to ban burqas and face coverings had been blocked. The ABC reports that when she was sanctioned and refused to leave, the Senate President, Sue Lines, suspended the chamber for more than an hour and a half. Online she called her colleagues "hypocrites" and said she would "display this oppressive, radical, non-religious head garb... so that every Australian knows what's at stake." Independent senator Fatima Payman called the stunt "abhorrent and disrespectful". The next day, The Guardian reports, the Senate censured her by 55 votes to five, with only the four One Nation senators and Ralph Babet voting against. The motion said her actions were "intended to vilify and mock people on the basis of their religion". She refused to apologise and was suspended for seven sitting days.

The Senate chamber in Canberra, scene of both burqa episodes, in 2017 and 2025. Photo: JJ Harrison, 2012, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0).

In the Senate since 2016

The Parliament House biography fills in the day-to-day record. She sat on the joint committee on the National Broadband Network from 2016 to 2018, chaired a Senate select committee on lending to primary producers in 2017, and was deputy chair of the joint select committee on Australia's family law system from 2019 to 2021. She was re-elected for Queensland in 2022. The record also shows a change of name: she has been listed as Leader of "One Nation", rather than "Pauline Hanson's One Nation", since 28 January 2026.

In court again: the Faruqi case

In September 2022, on the day Queen Elizabeth II died, the Greens senator Mehreen Faruqi posted that she could not mourn "the leader of a racist empire". Hanson replied on Twitter telling her to "piss off back to Pakistan". Faruqi sued under section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act.

The ABC reports that on 1 November 2024 Justice Angus Stewart of the Federal Court found the tweet was an "angry personal attack", that it was "anti-Muslim or Islamophobic", and that it breached the Act. He ordered her to delete it and pay Faruqi's costs. Hanson had told the court she did not know Faruqi was Muslim, and her lawyers argued the tweet was fair comment on a matter of public interest. Outside court Faruqi called the ruling "landmark". Hanson said she was "disappointed" and argued the decision showed "the inappropriately broad application of section 18C, particularly in so far as it impinges upon freedom of political expression."

She appealed and lost. The Sydney Morning Herald reported on 22 August 2026 that the Federal Court had upheld the judgment and that she would now seek leave to appeal to the High Court. Liberal Party president Tony Abbott backed her, saying section 18C "is a risk to free speech". The Home Affairs Minister, Tony Burke, responded that it was "pretty hard to say we should have more racist hate speech than we currently have."

The vote, 2025 and 2026

At the May 2025 federal election, AEC figures show One Nation winning 991,814 House of Representatives first preferences, or 6.40 per cent nationally, and 899,296 Senate first preferences, or 5.67 per cent. Malcolm Roberts was re-elected in Queensland, and the party picked up the sixth Senate seats in New South Wales (Warwick Stacey) and Western Australia (Tyron Whitten). The ABC reports that Stacey resigned three months later for health reasons. Sean Bell, who had been Hanson's adviser for nine years according to One Nation, was appointed in his place in September 2025, despite objections that he was a Queenslander taking a NSW seat.

On 8 December 2025 the former Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce, who had quit the Nationals, joined One Nation. The ABC reports he would keep his seat of New England until the next election and then run for the Senate in NSW. He cited renewable energy and immigration policy, and said of Hanson: "She has driven the political agenda, she had made us, when I was with the Coalition, react to where she has gone." He later told 7.30 that he saw parallels with Nigel Farage's Reform UK.

At the South Australian election on 21 March 2026, ABC results show One Nation with 22.9 per cent of the lower house vote, ahead of the Liberals on 18.9 per cent. It won four of the 47 House of Assembly seats (MacKillop, Hammond, Ngadjuri and, after a recount, Narungga by 58 votes) and three Legislative Council seats, including former senator Cory Bernardi. Labor won 34 seats and kept government. Hanson said she was "extremely proud" and called the seven MPs a "starting point".

Then came the Farrer by-election in May 2026. Farrer, in southern NSW, had been held by the Coalition since 1949, and by Sussan Ley for the last quarter-century. The ABC reports that One Nation's David Farley led the primary vote with more than 40 per cent and won, giving the party its first ever seat won at an election for the House of Representatives. "We're coming after those other seats," Hanson told the victory party.

Speaking at a rally in November 2025. Photo: The Unshackled, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 4.0).

What she stands for, and what people say about her

In her own words, her platform has always been about saying what others would not. Returning to the leadership in 2014, she said One Nation "was born because many Australians felt they were disregarded by other political parties and their voices were not being heard", and described her approach as "daring to raise issues that were politically incorrect and having a common-sense approach rather than an elitist attitude". In the same statement she criticised the foreign ownership of farmland and housing, halal certification and multiculturalism, which she said was "only segregating us as a nation". The ABC reported in 2016 that One Nation supported zero net migration.

Her supporters see things the way Malcolm Roberts put it after the 2017 burqa episode: a woman of courage. Barnaby Joyce called her a "fellow traveller" who had set the agenda that the major parties then followed. Bronwyn Bishop, no friend of One Nation, called her a political prisoner when she was jailed in 2003.

Her critics put it in very different terms. In the Faruqi case, Justice Stewart said that Senator Hanson "has a tendency to make negative, derogatory, discriminating or hateful statements in relation to about or against groups of people relevantly identified as persons of colour, migrants to Australia and Muslims". During the 2025 censure debate, Faruqi told the Senate that "this parliament drips now in racism", and George Brandis's 2017 rebuke still gets quoted. Even her old ally David Oldfield claimed the words were never really hers. For her part, she has always rejected the label of racist, as she did in the first lines of her maiden speech.

The other side of the coin: a protest against Pauline Hanson in Garema Place, Canberra, in September 2026, with Greens MLA Laura Nuttall speaking. Photo: Nick-D, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).

Thirty years on

When Pauline Hanson stood up in the House in 1996 she was an independent with no party, no staff to speak of and a speech the whole country argued about. Thirty years later her party has members in the Senate, the House of Representatives and the South Australian Parliament, and she is still in the Senate for Queensland. In between there were the 11 Queensland seats, the splits, the conviction and the acquittal, the dance floor and a dozen losing campaigns. Whatever you make of her, there aren't many people who have been written off as often in Australian politics and kept coming back.