What Trump’s midterm defeat means for One Nation

The US elections show the far-right can be beaten, but derailing One Nation requires more work

By Jeff Sparrow – writer, editor and broadcaster

Credit: Gage Skidmore - US Vice President JD Vance blamed the war on Iran for the Republican losses in the US midterms

“Want Trump’s action and style, then it’s One Nation you need.” That’s the promise on the website of Pauline Hanson’s party – or, at least, it was until yesterday.

As a keen-eyed Redditor noted, after Donald Trump’s midterm crashout, One Nation secretly removed its boast that “the actions of current U.S. President Donald Trump echo strongly with [sic] the principles and policies of Pauline Hanson’s One Nation.” That 2025 page now returns a 404 message, presumably because party strategists realise that pledging to “uphold the principles of Trump’s presidency” might not be the selling point they once imagined.

We’ve been here before.

Remember Trumpet of Patriots, the attempt by billionaire developer Clive Palmer to capitalise on Trump’s victory in 2024? No, neither does anyone else. Palmer imagined that a party name invoking Trumpism would convince local Deplorables to propel his candidates into office. But after the ‘Liberation Day’ tariffs of 2025, Australians turned decisively against Trump – and, in the 2025 election, Palmer’s MAGA-branded outfit flopped everywhere, despite some $60 million spent on advertisements and spam texts.

Liberal leader Peter Dutton was also dazzled by Trump’s return to office, and ran his campaign accordingly. Dutton pledged to overturn ‘woke’ curriculums at schools and universities; he promised to slash federal spending, appointing Jacinta Price (remember her?) as shadow minister of government efficiency, a nod to Elon Musk’s cost-cutting DOGE efforts. Price duly told rallying supporters she would “make Australia great again” – and then, immediately, claimed she didn’t remember using the phrase, as the Liberals belatedly tried to dispel claims Dutton was a ‘Temu Trump’.

It was, according to a subsequent internal party report, “the worst campaign the party has ever fought”.

In 2025, Pauline Hanson was also riding the Trump train. Unlike Palmer and the Liberals, she never got off. The One Nation website still records her visit to Mar-a-Lago, a pilgrimage it celebrates as “taking her message of patriotism and political courage to the world stage”. Since then, the Hansonites have assiduously copied Trump’s stunts. After he banned hostile media outlets, One Nation began excluding the Guardian and the ABC from its events. At the ON launch event for the Victorian election a few weeks back, ON candidate Mark Nicholson promised to jail former premiers Daniel Andrews and Jacinta Allan, in an obvious echo of MAGA’s anti-Clinton ‘lock her up’ slogan.

So will Trump’s current woes bring One Nation undone?

Most likely, no – or, at least, not immediately.

Pauline Hanson predates by decades the current global wave of right-wing populism. By the time Trump ran for the Republican presidential nomination in June 2015, Hanson had already won (and then lost) a lower house seat, founded One Nation, been expelled from it, gone to prison and returned as ON leader. That makes her one of the country’s most identifiable politicians: unlike Palmer, she doesn’t need the Trump name for attention.

Hanson, Trump differences

One Nation’s recent surge owes a great deal to the trauma of Covid. The lockdowns particularly affected Hanson’s core constituency – tradespeople, small businessmen and blue-collar workers in regional towns and the outer suburbs of cities. It alienated them from the major parties and fuelled their rage against those they saw as a white-collar urban elite, a group that emerged comparatively unscathed from the pandemic.

Yet Hanson never abandoned the old-fashioned racism on which she built her career.

In an old clip from the mid-nineties, you can find Hanson’s mother Norah Seccombe outlining her family philosophies. “I was always taught,” Seccombe says, “the yellow race will rule the world. And if we don’t do something now ... I’m afraid, yes, the yellow race will rule the world.” That was the sentiment that Hanson channelled in her infamous maiden parliamentary speech. Over the years, she’s adapted her slurs to suit political fashions: in the mid-nineties, she never mentioned Muslims; in the 2000s, Islamophobia became her stock in trade. But the old tropes remain – and, because of the centrality of anti-Asian, anti-Indigenous nationalism to a settler colony, they provide One Nation with a degree of stability.

We might also note the difference between Hanson’s political persona and Trump’s. A friend explained the distinction by noting that Trump boasts about his wins, while Hanson whines about losing. Trump swaggers and Hanson complains: she’s “had a gutful,” she tells us.

During the 2016 election, Trump positioned himself as the wrecking ball, the outsider who would make stuff happen. Hanson’s populism centres less on change than on misery: she’s an ordinary battler ostentatiously sharing the victimhood of other battlers. That also underpins her longevity: she promises nothing – and she delivers it.

The crisis besetting Trumpism will not immediately engulf One Nation. Yet the party’s decision to cleanse its website of pro-Trump rhetoric does hint at future tensions.

Trump’s fracturing base

Trump’s electoral success held together an unlikely coalition, with MAGA bringing together traditional Republicans keen to cut taxes and government funding; protectionists seeking to restore American industry through tariffs; tech bros pushing crypto and AI; evangelicals who saw Trump as fighting a spiritual war against literal demons; culture warriors obsessed with wokeness; and overt white nationalists and fascists. In the aftermath of the midterms, the antagonism between those factions is likely to develop into an internecine war.

Already, JD Vance has published a long social media post blaming the result on the conflict in Iran. The statement represents Vance’s attempt to re-position himself ahead of a possible presidential run, but it also expresses the deep hostility between MAGA isolationists opposed to entanglements abroad, and neoconservatives keen to use American military power to overturn hostile nations.

That split has obvious implications for Australia. A pivot back to an America First posture (as per Vance’s tweet) would probably mean the collapse of AUKUS, as well as a broader withdrawal of the US from the Asia Pacific region. American isolationism would throw into disarray the foreign policy consensus of the major parties, both of which see the US alliance as fundamental.

But Vance’s disavowal of the Iran war hints at a deeper struggle within MAGA – a profound schism over Israel. The US joined Benjamin Netanyahu to attack Iran, a collaboration that enraged many MAGA loyalists. Some on the American Right have been genuinely horrified by the Gaza genocide. But Trump’s willingness to court white nationalists has also attracted a sizeable group of antisemites. The so-called ‘Groypers’, for instance, are youthful, articulate and deeply, deeply bigoted. They’re perfectly positioned to recruit from a disintegrating MAGA coalition.

Hanson’s Islamophobia led her to (quite literally) wrap herself in the Israeli flag, vocally supporting the slaughter in Gaza. But one suspects that many younger One Nation supporters, who follow US politics closely, will find Groyper-style antisemitism deeply appealing. A fragmentation within MAGA might well have consequences here, but probably not for some time.

The Republican rout in the midterms does show that the far-right can be beaten. But it won’t, in and of itself, derail One Nation. We can’t rely on on Trump’s problems to defeat Australian racists. That’s something we have to do ourselves.