Why the health sector can’t ignore Hanson’s growing political influence

One Nation’s Pauline Hanson has used her inaugural National Press Club address to confront the mainstream media, directly challenging the institutions that have long shaped Australia’s political narrative and warning that the old playbook of dismissal may no longer hold.

The populist right-wing party has surged in the polls, with Senator Hanson polling ahead of Prime Minister Anthony Albanese as preferred prime minister in the latest Resolve Political Monitor. Indeed, One Nation’s recent success in South Australia and at the Farrer byelection presages potentially far broader electoral wins.

Her speech was fiery, unfiltered and raw. For the major parties, it signals a growing strategic vulnerability rather than a passing irritant. Efforts to discredit or caricature her are unlikely to carry the same weight in a political environment increasingly shaped by distrust and an era defined by fear, anger and resentment.

“After years of hoping for something different from the political class but getting nowhere, many Australians are looking elsewhere. I am a known quantity for these Australians,” Senator Hanson said.

One Nation has previously pledged to withdraw Australia from the World Health Organisation (WHO) and abolish the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA), transferring its core responsibilities into the Department of Health. It has also committed to establishing a royal commission into the management of the Covid 19 pandemic and vaccine mandates, alongside a proposed review of approximately $3 billion pharmaceutical benefits scheme (PBS) funding of medicines during the pandemic period.

As One Nation’s electoral support continues to expand, so too does its capacity to reshape the boundaries of political debate. For the health industry, the more consequential development is not the policy detail itself, but what it exposes about a widening breakdown in public confidence in institutions and government decision making. The healthcare sector is now confronted with a political reality in which voter sentiment is increasingly determining the direction of future health policy, with implications that extend well beyond the specific proposals currently being advanced.

Radical right political actors such as US President Donald Trump, Reform UK leader Nigel Farage and Italian Prime Minister Georgia Meloni are demonstrating how anti establishment movements can translate public discontent into electoral power and agenda setting influence. A recent Guardian Essential poll shows nearly 60% of Australians would be open to voting for the One Nation party at the next federal election. Even five years ago, that level of appeal would have been considered unthinkable.

At present, the Labor Government is able to pass much of its legislative agenda in the Senate with the support of the Greens alone. After 2028, if Labor or the Coalition were to replicate the 2019 Queensland result across multiple states, that arrangement would no longer be sufficient. The government could find itself dependent on more than eight One Nation senators, or forced into negotiations with the Coalition or independents to secure passage of legislation.

In the House of Representatives, Labor secured nearly two thirds of seats with only 35.6% of the primary vote in 2025. If that level of support were to decline by even a small margin, as current polling suggests is possible, seat losses could accelerate sharply, echoing the Coalition’s experience of winning just 29% of seats on 31.4% of the vote in 2025.

Victoria’s state election in November will provide another significant data point for voter sentiment and is likely to carry implications for federal politics, particularly in the absence of a dominant Labor incumbent shaping the contest.

Taken together, these trends point to an increasingly volatile Australian political landscape with One Nation positioning itself not merely as a protest political party but as a direct challenger to the architecture of the major party system.

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