In recent years, the far Right One Nation party has transitioned from the political margins to the electoral mainstream. One notable explanation for their growing popularity seems to be a perception that they represent the concerns of less affluent Australians adversely affected by cost-of-living pressures.
Mon 12 Oct 2026 13.42 AEDT
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In recent years, the far right One Nation party has transitioned from the political margins to the electoral mainstream. One notable explanation for their growing popularity seems to be a perception that they represent the concerns of less affluent Australians adversely affected by cost-of-living pressures.
Indeed, an August 2026 address to the National Press Club by Pauline Hanson implied genuine compassion for low-income renters experiencing housing stress, and other Australians reliant on forms of emergency relief from charities such as the Salvation Army. Yet to date, there has been little critical examination of the Party’s views on the welfare state, and particularly their attitude to disadvantaged groups such as people who are unemployed or living with a disability or sole parents who are reliant on social security payments.
Internationally, commensurate ultra-right parties in Europe and other Global North jurisdictions have increasingly adopted what is called a ‘welfare chauvinist’ approach.
Unlike neoliberal free market advocates, welfare chauvinists are not opposed to the welfare state per se, and in some cases propose generous assistance for those disadvantaged citizens they term ‘deserving’. However, they actively exclude new immigrants and refugees from this ‘deserving’ category on the grounds of religion, race or ethnicity. They may also exclude Indigenous populations who are presented as inferior to the majority culture or national group.
The only empirical study of One Nation’s views on social welfare was completed in 2019 by myself and colleagues at the Monash University Department of Social Work. Based on a content analysis of 80 public statements from 1997-2019, our study reported that One Nation shared the assumptions of welfare chauvinism that new immigrants and refugees should not be entitled to social welfare assistance. They particularly disparaged Muslim Australians as undeserving, alleging that they were disproportionate claimants of social security, and deceitfully exploited the Australian welfare system, including defrauding the NDIS. Additionally, they stigmatised First Nations Australians whom they labelled as intergenerational users of social welfare programs that unjustly received benefits on the basis of race rather than genuine need.
However, in contrast to the welfare chauvinists, One Nation demeaned most low-income Australians as undeserving of greater help and reserved their benevolence for a small set of favoured deserving groups such as aged pensioners and occasionally recipients of the Disability Support Pension.
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Since that time, One Nation’s distinction between deserving and mostly undeserving welfare recipients has remained constant. In particular, their public statements indicate an overwhelming hostility to programs that target First Nations disadvantage. For example, they oppose the federal government’s Closing the Gap programs on the grounds that they allegedly fail to advance individual responsibility or reduce the prevalence of family violence, substance abuse and child neglect in remote communities. They also opposed the unsuccessful proposal for an Indigenous Voice to Parliament on similar grounds.
More generally, they oppose any measures to lift the rate of the Jobseeker Allowance for the unemployed or other working-age social security payments, framing disadvantage as the result of bad individual choices and behaviour such as work shyness. One Nation instead favour a tougher eligibility system whereby welfare recipients can only claim payments for a limited period of time – proposed to be a total of two out of every five years.
One Nation also extends undeserving status to other vulnerable groups such as victims of family violence. Reflecting a long-standing political alliance with the anti-feminist men’s rights movement, Pauline Hanson has described family violence as a ‘two-way street’, attacked the family law system and child support scheme for alleged anti-male bias, and insisted that men are victimised just as often as women by controlling behaviour.
Additionally, One Nation supports old-style prohibitionist approaches to illicit drug use and rejects evidence-based harm reduction measures such as the medically supervised injecting room in North Richmond, and the Victorian Pill Testing Service.
Overall, One Nation’s approach to economic and social disadvantage seems to be informed by a punitive form of social conservatism that ignores structural and systemic causes of deprivation, and simplistically attributes hardship to flaws of individual character. Their policies apply a blame-the-victim judgement which frames members of vulnerable groups such as unemployed Australians, First Nations communities, Muslim Australians, illicit drug users, and survivors of family violence as undeserving of support. They have duplicated the ethno-chauvinist views favoured by their European counterparts but display only limited empathy for most disadvantaged Australian citizens.
Professor Philip Mendes is the Director of the Social Inclusion and Social Policy Research Unit in the Department of Social Work at Monash University. His most recent book is From Resistance to Reform: Case studies of long-term social justice advocacy in Australia: https://bookstore.emerald.com/from-resistance-to-reform-hb-9781835497210.html
