On health and child care, Labor might have found Pauline Hanson's kryptonite

analysis Against an unfamiliar enemy, Labor is preparing a familiar campaign on health and child care Sun 21 Jun 2026 at 4:46am Thirteen thousand words were spoken during Pauline Hanson's marathon press club appearance this week. Almost nobody, bar a few political obsessives, will have heard them all. Instead, most people will engage with the speech the way they engage with most political content: on their phones, in the form of bite-sized clips. Professional campaigners know this, and will regard Wednesday's appearance not as a cohesive piece of political theatre, but as a trove of raw source material — as fodder for clips. And while Hanson's own campaign got ample material for her base to like and share online, her enemies also got plenty to work with, as the journalists' questions dragged her into tricky territory. Here she is on child care, for example: "I didn't have a university degree to look after my children. Why do we now expect these childcare centres to have… people with some sort of degree to look after a child? It's just got out of proportion. It's ridiculous." On parental leave: "If women take time off and they are not paid their wages because they're not working, fair enough. Why should businesses pay them if they're not at work?" On health and education: "I'd get rid of… those stupid education and health department duplications, that are duplicated with states. We can cut a lot of spending." It's Hanson, a politician voters assume they know pretty well after 30 years in public life, stating views most would have no idea she held — and many otherwise sympathetic people will disagree with. For Labor in particular, which has built its modern political brand on child care and health care, it is golden fodder, inviting them to use on Hanson the same playbook they use on Liberal leaders. Frontbencher Murray Watt did not miss a beat, telling the Today Show the morning after Hanson's speech: "She wants to cut healthcare funding, which means people would have to pay more to go and see a doctor … She's coming after people who use child care." It's the same approach Labor and the unions have already been using to highlight Hanson's hardline conservative views on workplace relations — as echoed in GetUp's banner stunt. Toy trucks and little green cards But child care and health care may be just as important, if not more so, to Labor's present day appeal than workplace affairs. Expanded childcare subsidies and Medicare Urgent Care Clinics were load-bearing walls in Anthony Albanese's 2022 campaign. Once elected, Labor expanded paid parental leave and tripled the incentive for GPs to bulk-bill, running for re-election on a wave of green Medicare cards and photo-ops at childcare centres. In government, they have substantially expanded the taxpayers' footprint in both areas, but especially in child care, now the third fastest-growing spending category in the federal budget. Another $3.6 billion was added to that tally this week as Labor extended its 15 per cent top-up to childcare worker wages for another two years. This is supposed to be a stop-gap measure, fixing a timing problem created when the Fair Work Commission ruled the sector needed a pay rise, but that it could wait until 2029. Having championed the successful case made by unions that childcare workers had been historically underpaid due to gender bias, Labor felt honour-bound to deliver the pay rise sooner. Its solution was an unprecedented direct intervention in the business model of a sector it has previously funded at arm's length only, by subsidising parents. But it has attached strings, using the wage supplement as a carrot to enforce safety standards and contain fee increases. It may not want to relinquish this, as Jason Clare hinted this week. And despite appearing to cool on free and universal child care in recent months, rumours remain that Anthony Albanese is determined to hitch his political legacy to the idea. Labor can justify the expense, as it can on Medicare, because it sees this as a direct answer to the economic concerns of the young, professional middle class that is its core constituency. Health care is also seen by Labor insiders as the reason the party has kept its iron grip on the "red wall" of outer suburban seats with low-income but culturally conservative voters. Election after election, it makes this case in positive terms — brandishing Medicare cards and toddlers — and in negative terms, telling voters the Liberals are a threat to the care they rely on. LoadingMediscare, orange edition No surprise then that Labor has already seized on Hanson's remarks. They may have been vague, less specific policies and more general vibes of disdain. But as it prepares to fight a politician whose appeal is grounded in vibes over policies, that is more than enough for Labor to use the same playbook it has used to devastating effect against Liberals. In fact, Hanson's disposition appears to be more extreme than the Liberals on both fronts. Tony Abbott championed parental leave, and though Angus Taylor is contemplating redesigning the childcare subsidy, his colleagues have also floated expanding parental leave. And even when his public service efficiency drive was in full swing, Peter Dutton was insistent that "frontline" public servants like those in the health portfolio would not be cut. Labor MPs have already started running their familiar set plays — not just in media interviews, but online. "Pauline Hanson doesn't think our childcare workers deserve a pay rise," Barton MP Ash Ambihaipahar told followers in a video posted on Instagram on Thursday. Cue the clip. "I'm proud of our paid parental leave scheme … This sort of stuff is just such an insult to the millions of Australian mums working their guts out," frontbencher Tanya Plibersek said. Cue the clip. In obvious ways, the next election will look different to any before it. But in less obvious ways, it may also look familiar.