Pauline Hanson’s most Trumpian affinity is to push buttons with her base just like Trump does. Both resonate with people who feel the government is ignoring them and is not delivering for them. Voters want solutions, and they place their trust in the leader they think will produce the desired result.
Pauline’s One Nation. Trump’s Make America Great Again. The parallels are obvious.
Hanson’s buttons are immigration, Muslims, Asians, transgender issues, abortion, climate change denial, the media, and railing against multiculturalism, political leaders in Canberra and gun control.
Trump covers similar territory: immigration, tariffs, drill baby drill, rigged elections, liberal media, the country being ripped off, abortion, the second amendment’s right to bear arms and Sleepy Joe Biden.
Hanson does inflammatory stunts such as wearing a burqa into the Senate chamber. Trump, the New York billionaire, flips burgers at McDonald’s. The stunts work with their base because the images stick and the language is populist. And they have been saying the same things for decades. Hanson and Trump know who they are reaching – and why.
Hanson hit the National Press Club and the national audience hard on Wednesday. Her message was polarising: Australia cannot be a multicultural country. Too many Australians born overseas. Too much Mandarin and Arabic spoken at home. Immigration pressures are a social cancer. SBS will be terminated and the ABC will become a paid streaming network.
Replying to Sarah Martin from Guardian Australia, Hanson was hostile: “Honestly, you never give up […] You’ve got this obsession with constantly trying to pull down myself, my party, or Mrs Rinehart.” Hanson also told an SBS journalist that she would lose her job if Hanson was in power.
When journalists ask Trump to justify an action or statement, he explodes. Taking questions from reporters in the Oval Office earlier this month, Trump labelled CNN as “crooked as hell” and “corrupt” and lashed out at CNN’s Kaitlin Collins: “I see her standing there with hatred in her eyes … [she] has hatred because we have borders, because we have a strong military, because we cut our taxes, because we do things that everybody wanted, and then we win our election in a massive landslide.”
Hanson is rising in the polls. Trump’s economic approval rating is reaching new lows. Why? It may be because they are at different stages in the political cycle.
Hanson is campaigning to win seats in parliament two years from now and, after some success in South Australia, in upcoming state elections in Victoria and New South Wales. The big moments of truth for Hanson are yet to come.
Trump won government – twice – and is wielding presidential power. Trump peaked in approval – about 50% – on the days he took office in 2017 and 2025. He has gone downhill since and is in structural decline now.
The common denominator for the political landscape in Australia and the United States is still the economy. Hillary Clinton lost the blue-collar industrial states of Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania in 2016, and Kamala Harris lost the 2024 election principally because the Obama-Biden-Harris economies were not delivering the goods on economic security. With a little over two years left in his term, Trump is post-peak.
With the Australian federal election expected to be two years away, Hanson is taking off here partly because of the global economic mess induced by Trump’s Iran war – a crisis so big that the Albanese government is struggling to end the misery. Voters are venting their frustration and anger. Trump is blamed for the same economic setbacks in the US.
Hanson’s governing abilities are not being tested yet. She is in the climbing phase of her quest for power. But she may be on track to peak way too early.
So while it is tempting to focus on Trump and Hanson’s similarities, we should understand where they differ. Yes, they push the same buttons, have an affinity for private airplanes, a love of Mar-a-Lago and friendships with Gina Rinehart.
But while immigration is the signature policy area for both Hanson and Trump, they are sending different messages. Trump’s priority is to deport every illegal immigrant in the United States. Hanson wants the tightest lid on numbers coming in.
On trade, Hanson has surprisingly endorsed Trump’s addiction to tariffs and the harm it inflicts on farmers, rural industries and Australian exporters.
When Trumpy elements have been injected into election campaigns here, such as former Liberal party opposition leader Peter Dutton suggesting policies around cuts to the public service, attacks on diversity and inclusion positions and a Doge-style government efficiency unit – and senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price’s invocation of “Make Australia Great Again” – they have been rejected by voters.
We will see, if the current economic pressures do not recede over the next year, whether more Australians continue to warm up to Hanson’s Trumpism Down Under. But Australia’s true reckoning with Hanson is still an election away.
• Bruce Wolpe is a non-resident senior fellow at the United States Studies Centre. He is author of two books on Trump and Australia. He has served on the Democratic staff in the US Congress and as chief of staff to former prime minister Julia Gillard
