Pauline Hanson says she represents the battlers. So why do so many of her policies hurt them?

The battlers.

The forgotten.

The Australians who work hard, pay their taxes and supposedly get nothing in return.

It is an extraordinarily effective political message because there really are millions of Australians who feel that the political system has forgotten them.

They are struggling with mortgages and rents. They are watching grocery bills rise. They are worried about electricity prices. They are trying to get their children into a home. They are working two jobs. They are wondering whether their wages will ever catch up with the cost of living.

And they are angry.

Pauline Hanson understands that anger.

But there is an important question that deserves rather more attention than it receives:

What if the policies being offered to the battlers don’t actually make their lives better?

Because once we move beyond the slogans about immigration, multiculturalism and “putting Australians first”, One Nation’s economic and social policies start to look rather different.

And, rather awkwardly for a party that claims to represent working Australians, some of those policies appear to favour the interests of employers, higher-income households and the fossil-fuel industry rather more than they favour the people at the bottom and middle of the income ladder.

Let’s take a look.

The workers who apparently need protecting – from their own wages

Perhaps the clearest example is industrial relations.

One Nation has been increasingly vocal about the need to overhaul Australia’s workplace laws.

At her National Press Club address in June, Hanson complained that businesses were unable to sack workers and described some employees as “lazy”. She has also questioned workplace entitlements and suggested that some protections could be wound back. One Nation has opposed recent improvements to workplace rights, including wage-theft legislation and same-job-same-pay laws.

That is an interesting position for a party supposedly devoted to the battler.

Because the battler is rather more likely to be the person receiving the wage than the person signing the pay cheque.

If you are a nurse, cleaner, truck driver, teacher, factory worker, childcare worker, retail assistant, builder, hospitality worker or aged-care employee, workplace protections are not an abstract ideological issue.

They are the difference between having bargaining power and having very little.

And when the Fair Work Commission awarded a 4.75 per cent increase to modern award wages and a 6 per cent increase in the national minimum wage from July 2026, One Nation was on the wrong side of that argument. The increase affects millions of Australian workers.

That matters.

A politician doesn’t become a champion of working people simply by calling them “battlers”.

At some point, you have to ask whose side they are actually on when the pay packet is being negotiated.

What about the family on $80,000?

One Nation’s proposed tax system provides another fascinating example.

The party wants couples with at least one dependent child to be able to combine their incomes and split them equally for tax purposes.

On the surface, that sounds wonderful.

More money in the family budget!

But there is a catch.

Income splitting disproportionately benefits households where one person earns substantially more than the other.

Imagine a household in which one parent earns $200,000 and the other earns nothing. Splitting that income between the two parents before tax is calculated can produce a substantial tax saving.

Now compare that with two parents each earning $50,000.

There is little or no equivalent windfall.

In other words, the larger the disparity in household incomes, the greater the potential benefit.

One Nation itself gives an example of a single-earner household on $120,000 saving $9,533 a year under its proposal. That sounds impressive until you remember that many Australian battlers do not have a $120,000 single income to begin with.

The policy has also been estimated to cost around $32 billion over four years.

So we have a rather peculiar definition of helping battlers:

Give the biggest tax benefits to households with the greatest taxable incomes, while the government forgoes tens of billions of dollars in revenue.

That money has to come from somewhere.

Which brings us to the next problem.

The great $90 billion spending cut

One Nation says it can find enormous savings in government spending.

The party has talked about cutting Commonwealth expenditure by around $90 billion a year.

That sounds fantastic if you imagine government spending as nothing more than politicians throwing money into a furnace.

But governments spend money on things:

• Hospitals.
• Medicare.
• Schools.
• Aged care.
• Disability services.
• Defence.
• Roads.
• Public servants.
• Social security.
• Health research.
• Childcare.
• The NDIS.

And a thousand less visible things that people only notice when they disappear.

If you promise to remove $90 billion from the budget, the obvious question isn’t:

“Wouldn’t it be nice to save $90 billion?”

It is:

“Which $90 billion?”

One Nation has not provided anything remotely resembling the level of detailed costing required to demonstrate that such cuts could be made without affecting services ordinary Australians depend upon.

And that becomes even more difficult when we consider another of its proposals.

One Nation wants to spend more on defence

One Nation wants defence spending increased to 3.5 per cent of GDP.

That is an enormous commitment.

It is also rather difficult to reconcile with the promise to slash government spending.

The economic analysis reported by the ABC notes that One Nation’s major commitments – including increased defence spending, income splitting, indexing tax brackets to inflation and pursuing zero net migration – could create enormous budgetary pressures.

There is nothing inherently wrong with wanting a stronger defence force.

But if you’re going to tell a pensioner that government spending needs to be slashed, a young family that it needs to tighten its belt and a worker that wage increases are too expensive, you probably need to explain why defence suddenly gets a very large exception.

Housing: the problem isn’t solved by shouting “immigrants”

One Nation has made immigration central to its housing argument.

The party proposes an annual migration cap of around 130,000 and argues that lower migration will reduce pressure on housing and infrastructure. It also wants to prevent foreign ownership of residential property and has proposed measures including changes to GST on building materials.

There is a legitimate discussion to be had about the relationship between population growth, housing supply and infrastructure.

But immigration is not the entire housing crisis.

And telling Australians that the housing shortage can essentially be solved by stopping foreigners from buying houses is politically convenient but economically incomplete.

The more interesting One Nation proposal is its plan for 30-year fixed mortgages at 5 per cent through Australia Post, funded by abolishing the government’s $11.5 billion Housing Australia Future Fund.

Economists have questioned the risks of putting those mortgage risks onto the government’s balance sheet, particularly during a housing downturn.

Again, the battler deserves more than a slogan.

If the government takes on enormous financial risk to make mortgages cheaper, taxpayers ultimately carry that risk.

And taxpayers include the battler.

Cheaper petrol sounds wonderful. Until you ask what happens next.

One Nation wants to halve the fuel excise.

That is easy to understand.

Petrol is expensive.

Cutting the tax should make petrol cheaper.

Excellent.

Except that fuel excise is also government revenue.

And if you simultaneously promise enormous tax cuts, huge spending cuts, increased defence expenditure, cheaper mortgages and cheaper energy, somebody eventually has to produce the calculator.

One Nation also wants to scrap net zero, abolish the Department of Climate Change, withdraw from the Paris Agreement and dramatically expand Australia’s use of coal and gas.

The party says this will reduce energy prices.

But the important question is not whether coal and gas are cheaper to produce.

It is whether that automatically translates into permanently cheaper electricity for Australian households.

One Nation has promised a 20 per cent reduction in energy prices but, according to the ABC, has not provided a detailed timetable or mechanism capable of demonstrating how that target would be achieved.

And there is another issue.

The people most vulnerable to rising energy costs are generally not the wealthy.

They are the people living in older houses, renting, struggling to pay their bills and least able to absorb another price increase.

Climate policy isn’t just about polar bears and carbon dioxide.

It is also about the future cost of electricity, insurance, food, water, infrastructure and housing.

The gas industry gets a very different kind of battler treatment

One Nation’s latest gas policy is particularly revealing.

It proposes giving oil and gas exploration a 30 per cent rebate while allowing the Commonwealth to take an equity stake in projects. It also wants to abolish the Petroleum Resource Rent Tax for new projects and replace it with a royalty.

There is an argument for Australians receiving a greater share of the wealth generated by Australia’s natural resources.

In fact, that is an argument I suspect many Australians would support.

But there is a difference between ensuring Australians receive a fair return from their resources and providing substantial incentives to the companies extracting those resources.

One Nation’s proposal would see taxpayers sharing both the profits and the risks of investment.

And if the Commonwealth is going to become an equity partner in gas projects, Australians aren’t merely collecting a cheque when things go well.

They are also exposed when things don’t.

It is worth asking why the party that worries so much about government spending is so enthusiastic about government becoming a business partner in the fossil-fuel industry.

And then there is health

One Nation’s health policies should concern anyone who believes government has a responsibility to protect Australians from unsafe medicines and medical products.

The party wants to abolish the Therapeutic Goods Administration, the national regulator responsible for approving medicines and therapeutic goods.

It also wants to review around $3 billion worth of medicines approved for the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme during the pandemic.

There is certainly nothing wrong with scrutinising government agencies.

But abolishing the country’s principal medicines regulator is a rather more radical proposition.

For the battler, the question is simple:

Who do you want standing between you and a pharmaceutical company selling you a medicine?

A regulator accountable to the Australian public?

Or the market?

The same question applies to One Nation’s position on abortion.

The party describes itself as pro-life, wants to reduce gestational limits and has supported attempts to restrict access to abortion.

People can have legitimate moral disagreements about abortion.

But the point is that these policies affect ordinary women, particularly those who cannot afford to travel interstate or overseas to obtain healthcare.

Again, the battler is not necessarily the person making the policy.

They are the person living with it.

Immigration: the policy that hides everything else

This brings us to the issue that has propelled One Nation to its current level of support.

Immigration.

One Nation proposes a dramatic reduction in migration, an eight-year citizenship waiting period, changes to student visas, temporary protection visas and withdrawal from the UN Refugee Convention. 

More recently, the party has promoted a 130,000 annual migration cap.

But even here there is an extraordinary degree of uncertainty about exactly what the number means.

Recent reporting has highlighted contradictory statements from One Nation figures about whether the 130,000 figure refers to net overseas migration, permanent visas or something else – and whether some categories of workers would sit outside the cap.

There is a broader economic problem too.

Australia has an ageing population and persistent shortages in particular industries.

A blanket reduction in migration may reduce some pressure on housing demand.

But it can also reduce the supply of workers.

And if you reduce the number of people available to work in industries that already have shortages, wages and prices don’t necessarily behave the way politicians promise.

Sometimes the result is simply fewer workers, higher costs and slower economic growth.

That is why immigration policy needs to be considerably more sophisticated than:

“There are too many immigrants.”

So who exactly is the One Nation battler?

This is the question I keep coming back to because there is a curious contradiction at the heart of One Nation.

The party talks constantly about ordinary Australians.

Yet when it comes to wages, it has opposed measures designed to strengthen workers.

When it comes to taxation, its income-splitting policy offers particularly large benefits to some higher-income households.

When it comes to government spending, it promises enormous cuts while simultaneously proposing enormous new commitments.

When it comes to housing, it offers solutions whose financial risks could ultimately fall on taxpayers.

When it comes to energy, it promises cheaper power without providing a convincing mechanism for achieving it.

When it comes to natural resources, it wants government to become a financial partner to the gas industry.

When it comes to health, it proposes dismantling a national medicines regulator.

And when it comes to migration, it offers a remarkably simple answer to a remarkably complicated problem.

None of this means that every One Nation policy is necessarily wrong: some are perfectly reasonable subjects for debate.

Australians should receive a fair return from their natural resources.

Government waste should be eliminated.

Housing affordability needs urgent attention.

Energy needs to be reliable and affordable.

Immigration needs to be sustainable.

Small businesses do need to be able to employ people and operate profitably.

These are not radical propositions, but politics isn’t about whether the problem exists – it is about who pays for the solution.

And that is where the One Nation brand becomes much more interesting.

The politics of making people angry

Perhaps Pauline Hanson’s greatest political achievement is that she has become extraordinarily good at identifying what makes people angry:

• Immigrants.
• Politicians.
• “Elites.”
• Climate policies.
• Government bureaucracy.
• Political correctness.
• The ABC.
• Multiculturalism.
• The United Nations.

The list is long.

And some of those grievances are shared by millions of Australians, but anger is not an economic policy. Nor is identifying someone to blame.

A battler who is paying $700 a week in rent doesn’t necessarily become better off because a politician tells them an immigrant is responsible.

A worker struggling to pay the mortgage doesn’t necessarily get a pay rise because a politician promises to make it easier for an employer to sack people.

A pensioner doesn’t necessarily become wealthier because the government cuts a department.

And a family struggling with electricity bills doesn’t necessarily become better off because politicians announce that net zero has been abolished.

The battler needs something much less exciting:

• A decent wage.
• A secure job.
• Affordable housing.
• Reliable healthcare.
• Good schools.
• Affordable energy.
• A social safety net when things go wrong.

And a government capable of paying for all of it.

That is much harder than identifying an enemy.

The inconvenient truth

Pauline Hanson may genuinely believe she is standing up for ordinary Australians.

Her supporters certainly do.

But political sincerity isn’t enough.

The policies need to be judged by their consequences.

And when we do that, an uncomfortable possibility emerges.

Perhaps One Nation doesn’t represent the Australian battler nearly as much as it represents the Australian battler’s anger.

Those are two very different things.

One asks:

“Who can I blame?”

The other asks:

“What will actually make my life better?”

The first is enormously powerful politics.

The second is enormously difficult politics.

And if Australians are going to decide whether Pauline Hanson really represents them, perhaps they should do something politicians of every persuasion would rather they didn’t.

• Ignore the slogans.
• Ignore the outrage.
• Ignore the flags.
• Ignore the enemies.
• Ignore the memes.
• Read the policies.

Then ask one very simple question:

“How much better off will I, personally, be if Pauline Hanson gets what she wants?”

For many of the Australians she calls “battlers”, the answer may be considerably less comforting than the slogan.