Hanson’s personal attacks and offensive comments are straight out of the populist playbook. But they come with risks
- Written by: Weekend Times
The latest round of media attention on One Nation leader Pauline Hanson has focused on a string of controversial comments she has made, two of which were very personal in nature, and
all of which have caused offence in some way.
The first of these was against Liberal frontbencher and decorated former soldier Andrew Hastie. In a cartoon from One Nation’s long-running series “Please Explain”, Hastie was referred to several times as a “traitor”. One Nation has been targeting Hastie for some time over his testimony against former SAS soldier Ben Roberts-Smith, who is facing criminal proceedings for alleged war crimes.
Read more: Make ‘em laugh: how One Nation uses comedy to normalise harmful ideas
It also emerged Hanson had made disparaging comments about Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s mother on Karl Stefanovic’s podcast in February.
Hanson made mock crying gestures and criticised Albanese’s mother for a lack of work ethic for spending decades living in public housing, without acknowledging the debilitating rheumatoid arthritis she suffered.
On a separate podcast in September 2025, Hanson also made derogatory remarks that labelled First Nations people “the most primitive race on Earth” among a range of other pejorative statements.
These attacks drew rebukes from across the political spectrum. While attacking opponents can be seen as part and parcel of party politics, Hanson is following a working directly from the right-wing populist playbook in going crass and personal.
Us vs them
A key component of populist-radical right cut-through comes from transgressing norms of communication. Traditional politicians tend to present in a polished manner with carefully crafted communications. Populists, however, use crass, blunt messaging and overall “bad manners” to cut through to a public jaded with the traditional political establishment.
Read more: Grattan on Friday: it’s taken Hanson’s overreach on Hastie to put some spine into Liberals
US President Donald Trump is the quintessential exemplar of this style. From giving his opponents insluting nicknames such as “Crooked Hillary”, “Sleepy Joe Biden” and “Pochahontas”, to physically mocking a disabled reporter, Trump popularised using not just an outspoken style, but one that deliberately mocks and demeans opponents.
This mocking style feeds into another trope used by populist actors, known as Manicheanism. Manicheanism is a term with origins rooted in ancient religious practice. It views the world in terms of a binary struggle between good and evil.
The term is used in academic works to capture how populists paint themselves and their opposition. Populists are defined by creating an “us vs them” binary. They construct a downtrodden people who have been taken advantage of by a corrupt, malicious elite and promise to upend that system.
Politicians such as Hanson and Trump frame their opponents as not just mistaken in terms of policy, but as having poor moral character and malicious intent towards “the people”. This serves as powerful motivating rhetoric for their support bases. It also drives polarisation and societal division. Elections become not just contests of policy ideas, but battles for the moral future of society itself.
Should the enemy win, society will crumble – a crisis only a strong populist leader, promising to “drain the swamp”, can stop.
The left does it, too
Perhaps the most colourful example of this good-and-evil binary comes from a very different kind of populist on the far left of the political spectrum. Former Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez commonly invoked himself as a Christ-like revolutionary, while disparaging his domestic opponents as mere instruments of an evil foreign power:
Let no one forget that we are confronting the Devil himself […] at the ballot box we will confront the imperialist government of the United States of North America […] that is our real adversary, not these has-beens here, these lackeys of imperialism.
Here Chavez is framing his re-election contest in Manichean terms to up the stakes and motivate his supporters.
The impact this kind of rhetoric had on Chavez’s followers was immense – illustrated by the depth of feeling evident in the widespread mourning and displays of grief following his 2013 death. His ill-fated successor, Nicolas Maduro, labelled himself an “apostle” of Chavez, reinforcing the idea of Chavez as a messianic figure.
While Hanson does not invoke the high theology of Chavez, these attacks reveal her attempts to frame her opponents as morally deficient. The “Please Explain” cartoon paints Hastie as self-serving, and Hanson’s podcast comments suggest Albanese lacks a work ethic and overstates his working-class childhood. These aren’t policy differences – Hanson constructs a fundamental conflict between good people, and immoral establishment representatives.
The end of decency?
Westminster democracy has long relied on norms of mutual respect. While government and opposition may disagree on policy, there has been a long-held belief that both sides act in good faith.
For Hanson and her supporters, it is these norms of tolerance and handling disagreement through democratic processes that have led Australia down the wrong path. So now, the thinking goes, the political elite embodied in the so-called “uniparty” have distorted the will of the people in service of their own interests. Hanson argues she is merely speaking “common sense” that has for too long been ignored or deemed unsayable by the “woke” elite.
Whether approximately a third of the electorate continue to respond to this rhetoric remains to be seen. Australian is not the United States and is certainly not Venezuela.
Hanson offered equivocal apologies about her remarks about First Nations people and Albanese’s mother.
Combined with Barnaby Joyce’s apology to Hastie over the cartoon, this suggests One Nation is sensitive to how the electorate will view these character attacks.
One Nation’s recent polling ascendancy subjects the party and its actions to additional scrutiny. What is acceptable from a minor party of protest may not be what voters want to see from a potential government.
Josh Sunman does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
