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Anyone who’s not the coalition knows that One Nation is now effectively His Majesty’s Most Loyal Opposition. As such, it’s entirely appropriate that Pauline Hanson gets to deliver a budget reply speech of her own, even if it’s ‘unofficial’.
More than that, it’s the next essential step if One Nation want to be taken seriously as a contender for government. The party’s weak spot – at least, so far as the legacy media who have clearly never bothered to browse their website are concerned – has always been a supposed lack of policy detail. Hanson’s budget reply is her chance to shove that one in the legacy media’s faces.
She’s come through with flying colours.
Pauline Hanson has vowed to “abolish divisive cultural departments and race-based programs” in a budget reply that promises to undo the current “political culture” of government dependency while raising living standards, expediting fossil fuel projects and restoring pride in the defence force.
Fresh off a historic win in Farrer, where One Nation claimed nearly 40 per cent of the primary vote, Senator Hanson used her budget reply to accuse Labor of “resenting aspiration and success” in its economic policies and hiding behind the “spin” of intergenerational inequity to break election promises.
The wide-ranging blueprint of One Nation’s policies, which include a gas plan to be unveiled next week, spanned commitments from ending bracket creep and slashing immigration to ditching net zero and banning foreign ownership of farmland and water assets.
It was a speech that cut through the usual Canberra waffle like a chainsaw through wet cardboard. Senator Hanson has laid out a vision that speaks directly to the millions of Australians sick to death of the uniparty’s managerial decline. While Labor lectures about ‘intergenerational equity’ as cover for breaking election promises, and the coalition runs bleating after them, crying, ‘Us, too!’, One Nation is speaking the language of the battlers: reward aspiration, end the racial grievance industry, secure energy and borders and put Australian families first.
It’s a speech with echoes of Robert Menzies’ epochal “Forgotten People” speech of 1942. “The kind of people I myself represent in parliament – salary-earners, shopkeepers, skilled artisans, professional men and women, farmers and so on… the backbone of the nation.”
More importantly, like Donald Trump (whom the legacy media will also shriek and point to, for all the wrong reasons), Hanson has hit the nail on the head: it’s not just the economy, stupid. Culture matters. Nation matters. Who we are matters. So Hanson saved the real big guns for lobbing pure oratical HE at the uniparty’s fortress of managerialism.
“We will abolish divisive cultural departments and race-based programs that divide Australians by skin colour or ancestry. Every Australian will be treated as equal under one flag and one culture,” she said.
“Help will be given on the basis of genuine need – not race.
“Equal rights for all, and special rights for none. No more taxpayer-funded Welcome to Country rituals. Unity builds strength. Division destroys it.”
No more taxpayer-funded Welcome to Country rituals. No special rights based on ancestry. Help on the basis of genuine need, not race. “Equal rights for all and special rights for none.” It’s the simple, unifying principle that the uniparty abandoned decades ago in favour of imported identity politics and endless division.
Economically, the contrast with Jim Chalmers’ class-war budget was stark. Hanson slammed Labor’s changes to negative gearing and capital gains tax as policies that will dampen investment, push rents higher and reduce housing supply: exactly what happened when Paul Keating, Treasurer Zippy’s golden idol, tried the same thing in 1985. One Nation’s alternatives are practical: slash GST to zero on building materials for homes up to $1 million for five years, income splitting for families with dependent children and let aged pensioners and veterans work as much as they like without losing benefits.
On energy, the indispensible backbone of a prosperous and secure nation, Hanson was unequivocal: back coal and gas, support nuclear, slash approval times for major fossil fuel projects to six months maximum, axe the Climate Change Department and exit Paris and redirect the savings into real infrastructure: coal-fired power, irrigation, freight rail, ports and roads.
“One Nation will reallocate the resources from the fool’s errand of Australia changing the weather to invest in coal-fired power, nuclear, irrigation, freight rail, ports and roads.”
While fools like Albanese and Bowen chase net zero fantasies that deliver blackouts and sky-high bills, One Nation wants reliable, affordable power for Australian industry and households.
Defence and national pride got a welcome boost too. Hanson, who has been a consistent defender of Ben Roberts-Smith, spoke of restoring pride in the ADF after years of woke undermining and political witch-hunts. This isn’t abstract: it’s the lived experience of outer-suburban and regional voters who are watching their country being run down while the political class virtue-signals.
Again tipping the hat to Menzies, Hanson valorised the lifters, not the leaners.
By contrast to the political elite, Senator Hanson said One Nation had attracted “practical Australians with real-world experience … These are men and women who have built things, employed people and delivered results outside the Canberra bubble” […]
“We will never pretend we know better than you how to run your own lives. We will reward hard work and aspiration, restore fiscal discipline, and put Australian families and businesses first once again.”
This is the message resonating in seats like Farrer, where One Nation stormed to nearly 40 per cent of the primary vote. It’s the message that crushed the Liberals in Victoria’s Nepean by-election. Australians are exhausted by the major parties’ consensus on mass migration, net zero zealotry, racial division and ever-expanding welfare dependency. They want a government that treats citizens as adults, not cash cows or racists-in-waiting.
Hanson closed with the line that cut straight at serial liar Anthony Albanese:
“One Nation’s word is our bond – and we have three decades of unwavering policy consistency to prove it.”
That consistency is their greatest strength. While the coalition talks tough in opposition then folds once in government, and Labor doubles down on the same failed orthodoxies, One Nation has held the line on borders, energy, sovereignty and fairness for ordinary Australians. Time and again, people tell pollsters that, whatever her faults, Pauline is clear what she stands for – and she means it.
The budget reply wasn’t just a list of policies: it was a declaration that the uniparty era is ending. Voters disenchanted with the major parties now have a clear alternative: a party that puts Australia and Australians first, without apology. Whether that translates into seats in Victoria and beyond will depend on organisation and candidate quality. But the message is landing. The legacy media can sneer all they like, but you can bet that the Forgotten People are listening.
