Hanson wasn't there for Press Club. She was there for Fight Club

analysis Pauline Hanson wasn't there for the National Press Club. She was there for Fight Club Wed 17 Jun 2026 at 5:21pm When Pauline Hanson started out in politics, the only way to reach a national audience was through the mainstream media. It was a stage on which — back in 1996 — she felt belittled, wrong-footed and patronised. This is a long time ago now. Donald Trump, at that time, was buying the Miss Universe franchise and still had a lengthy period as a registered Democrat to go before he even started thinking about a run at the presidency as a renegade Republican. But Pauline Hanson cottoned on extremely quickly to something significant: When interviewers made a special effort to make her look foolish or out of step, it worked for her in a whole new way among voters who also felt out of step. Thirty years later, technology has allowed One Nation to build its own platforms. Senator Hanson's party can fundraise directly from supporters on its social media networks. It can communicate with them unhampered by media interlocutors, or pick the media organisations it likes and ban the others. So why — now that Pauline Hanson officially and demonstrably no longer needs the megafauna of the parliamentary press gallery — would she step for the first time in 30 years over the threshold of the National Press Club? The answer became abundantly clear over the course of this afternoon's event. Hanson wasn't there for Press Club. She was there for Fight Club. Because the spectacle of the One Nation leader having a blue with journalists — or indeed anyone even vaguely associated with Canberra incumbency — is catnip for the Hanson algorithm. And the lady is not stupid. A Banksy-style interruption A group of "Canberra Socialists" started things off satisfactorily by picketing the building. And once behind the lectern, the guest of honour sailed majestically — even Trumpily — beyond the set time limit of 30 minutes. At a normal Press Club lunch, speakers are kept pretty rigorously to time. But Hanson was allowed to continue. It may be that intervention was rendered tonally impossible on this occasion by the slow, mechanised unfurling halfway through her speech of a Banksy-style poster so obviously preloaded that horrified National Press Club staff plunged in to tear it down. The Press Club's management announced an immediate inquiry. Activist group GetUp swiftly claimed responsibility for the poster, which reminded the daytime TV audience that Pauline Hanson had voted against pay rises. It didn't seem noticeably to bother Hanson, for whom the stunt almost certainly achieved extra air-time and who at any rate has spanked an estimated $200,000 on a "Fire The Liar" ad in tonight's State of Origin broadcast, funded by her party's squillion-dollar fundraising drive. As Senator Hanson galloped through the 45-minute mark, the event's moderator — Sky's Tom Connell — squeaked out a request that she please proceed to her conclusion. "I've only got a few pages left," she snapped. "It's very important." 'They know you've come after me' Over the course of the speech, the One Nation leader called for many things. An end to the "immigration crisis". The installation of a monoculture. The sacking of the Sex Discrimination Commissioner. The nuking of SBS and the ABC. The building of actual nukes. The abolition of the climate change and "Aboriginal affairs" departments. An end to the "transgender insurgency". And she concluded by addressing the press gallery directly with an accusation that the "earthquake that is changing the political landscape in Australia and other countries" was as much to do with the media as it was to do with the two-party system: They know you've come after me, even happy to see me put in prison. They know what you've been saying about me, and many of them no longer believe you. They've watched you first dismiss One Nation's rise as a blip. As the polls progressed, they watched you confidently say it would fall apart. Then they watched as you started saying it was a concern, but only for the Coalition. Later you said it was a worry, and then they watched as you actively tried to stop it with your usual double-standard attacks. Yes. I am talking about sections of the Australian media. They watched as they said the support wouldn't hold up. And with every attack, our support just keeps growing. While the One Nation leader averred during her remarks that she "hadn't changed in 30 years", that claim is demonstrably untrue. This is a politician who knows a lot more than she did back then about what works for her. Please explain? It was in October 1996 that a shaky-voiced Pauline Hanson, the newly-elected Independent Member for Oxley, agreed to be interviewed on the Nine Network's ratings juggernaut 60 Minutes. During the sit-down encounter, Tracey Curro asked her if she was "xenophobic". Hanson didn't know the meaning of the word. A TV silence gestated between the two women. In her 2017 book on Hanson, author and film-maker Alison Broinowski reconstructed those elongated moments. "Everything's racing through my mind," recalled Hanson. "Do I bluff? What do I do?" Curro, meanwhile, had put the question assuming that "if she's read anything written about her in the past three weeks, she will have come across that word. "So … either she doesn't read the commentary, or if she comes across a big word she just skips right over it." Eventually, Hanson — her then-adviser John Pasquarelli looking on — gritted her teeth and asked "Please explain?" "Pasquarelli is on the couch, and I can see him, and he puts his head down and he shakes his head as if 'My God. What has she done now?' Hanson told Broinowski. Within hours of the interview going to air, it was clear to Hanson and Pasquarelli — and to Curro — that the gaffe had worked in the opposite way from what they'd expected. "The media were a bunch of smart-arses, trying to belittle me," she told Broinowski. "But the more they bashed me or tried to denigrate me, the more public support I got." "Please Explain" is now an unshakeable part of Hanson's brand. It's the title of Broinowski's book. It's also the title of the satirical cartoon her party publishes regularly to rapturous audiences on YouTube. The cartoon's tone is biting and anti-establishment. In September 2023, for instance, it lampooned Prime Minister Anthony Albanese for getting his adult son Nathan into the Qantas Chairman's Lounge and depicted the airline's then-chief executive retaining the prime ministerial testicles as a "lucky charm". Not even three years later, the One Nation leader has accepted the gift of an entire plane from Gina Rinehart, a significant corporate entity. She's floated the idea that her daughter Lee might succeed her as One Nation leader. Does this make Hanson — in view of the bollocking Albanese copped about nepotism and special deals at One Nation's hands — at all awkward about the perception that Mrs Rinehart has any kind of squirrel-grip on One Nation's independence? Not at all. It doesn't work that way, because in this scenario Albanese is the insider, and Hanson is the outsider, and the reviled insiders include the journalists asking questions about the inconsistency. And much as the critics of "woke culture" regularly fulminate over why it's okay to make jokes about Catholics but not about Muslims, the truth is that the differentiation between "punching up" and "punching down" works for political insiders and outsiders in an eerily similar way. LoadingThe scrap she was after The press gallery journalists in attendance were alert, it seemed, to the purpose of Hanson's visit. Questioners largely side-stepped — like joggers avoiding a puddle — the trail of rage-bait Senator Hanson had laid in her prepared remarks. With courtesy, they thanked Hanson for her speech, and asked questions about tax and foreign aid and the independence of the Reserve Bank with the deference due to a person now enjoying the status of Australia's preferred prime minister. They aren't stupid, either. It wasn't until question 11 that the One Nation leader got the scrap she was after. Sarah Martin, reporter for The Guardian (an outlet Senator Hanson said she had banned) asked why the leader's daughter — Lee Hanson, a former and continuing Senate candidate — had been hired as a One Nation staffer, seemingly to campaign on a publicly-funded basis. "Honestly, you never give up," Ms Hanson flared. "I've never seen a person that's such a trashy journalist … what you put out all the time, you've got this obsession with constantly trying to pull down myself, my party or Mrs Rinehart. "I'll answer you this question today, but I'm telling you now, don't come near me for an interview in the future … your articles are constantly bashing One Nation." Without a doubt, these exchanges — and the footage of the protesters — will shortly be rating their socks off on Hanson TV. And clips of the One Nation leader voicing the complaint from Australian small business owners that their employees are too often "lazy … they're on their phones, they don't show up" will exist non-ironically, cheek by jowl, with Hanson's protests that she is "attacked" by major party politicians pointing out how regularly she is absent from the Senate. When the Canberra Times asked what the One Nation leader's impressions were of the nation's capital, she answered tartly: "I try to keep out of it as much as I can." All in all? A successful day out.