Pauline Hanson returned to frontline Australian politics in 2016, just months before Donald Trump was elected president the first time round.
And almost from the moment Trump first appeared, Hanson has been stealing his material and copying his combative, “fake news” approach to politics, to the delight of her growing band of supporters.
One Nation has, up to a point, benefited from comparisons to Trump’s “Make America Great Again” movement (some of Hanson’s supporters even wear copycat “Make Albanese Go Away” caps to rallies).
But now that US voters have turned on Trump, it’s time to ask if there are lessons for Hanson in his defeat.
As soon as the extent of Trump’s electoral rout became clear, One Nation mysteriously deleted a blog post on its website comparing Hanson’s party with the MAGA movement.
The article deleted from the blog, titled “Want Trump’s action and style, then it’s One Nation you need”, was published on January 23, 2025, just days after the president’s second election win in November 2024.
The Trump agenda and the One Nation agenda have a lot of overlap: immigration cutbacks, climate and culture wars, a knack for appealing to the resentments of the working class.
They even share a billionaire enthusiast and supporter in the form of mining magnate Gina Rinehart.
Which is why – though they’re unlikely to admit it – Hanson, deputy Barnaby Joyce and party national director James Ashby will be scrutinising the defenestration of the Republican Party with at least a modicum of concern.
There are a few obvious lessons for One Nation, and other parties of the populist right, to take away from the election result. Voters in the United States really, really don’t like data centres, and that Australians are also growing to hate them.
It’s a fair bet that One Nation, which already opposes the fast-tracking of new data centres and wants to restrict where these giant humming warehouses can be built, will ramp up its rhetoric in the weeks and months ahead.
Beyond that, and more significantly, the message voters sent Trump was that they were fed up with the rising cost of living – and the hit from the president’s tariffs – and they expect their leaders to focus on alleviating these concerns.
One Nation has the advantage of not being in government, so it does not have to cop the blame for cost-of-living issues in this country. Expect the party to redouble its focus on kitchen table issues here.
A third lesson that One Nation should learn, as Nationals leader Matt Canavan pointed out in the wake of Trump’s thrashing, is that the midterms were a “complete rejection of another failed Middle East war”.
In contrast, Canavan said, “Pauline Hanson said that the conflict in Iran was our problem and that we should help Trump stamp out the evil that is happening throughout the world.”
The Nationals’ leader is right. Australians didn’t want any part in Trump’s Middle East mis-adventure, which is a big reason why Anthony Albanese gave that war a wide berth.
The fourth and final lesson for One Nation comes from the 2025 Australian election, rather than the US election. It’s this: Australians actually don’t like Donald Trump and his brand of nativist, isolationist, America-alone policies.
Former opposition leader Peter Dutton suffered badly from comparisons to Trump during the 2025 campaign, and who could forget Jacinta Nampijinpa Price’s “Make Australia Great Again” moment. One Nation should keep this in mind.
While Trump has his fans in Australia, there are fewer of them than avid One Nation supporters may think – and the president is starting to look like yesterday’s news.
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James Massola is Chief Political Commentator. He has previously been National AffairsEditor and South-East Asia Correspondent, and has won Quill and Kennedy awards and is the 2026 Press Gallery Journalist of the Year. Connect securely on Signal @jamesmassola.01Connect via X or email.
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