Pauline Hanson’s support for Donald Trump’s war in Iran has become a central battleground in the Farrer byelection, with a big-spending advertising campaign seeking to link the One Nation leader to rising fuel and fertiliser costs hitting regional voters.
Several published polls show Climate 200-backed community independent Michelle Milthorpe and One Nation candidate David Farley running neck and neck, setting up a tight race in the sprawling southern NSW electorate before the May 9 vote.
Left-wing advocacy group GetUp has raised more than $400,000 for an anti-Hanson campaign — spanning television, billboards, radio and digital platforms across regional cities including Albury, Griffith, Barooga and Deniliquin — arguing global conflict has driven up petrol prices and farm inputs, with Hanson’s political alignment with Trump placed at the centre of the attack.
The new anti-Hanson campaign has activated a growing membership base nationwide for the group, which grew by more than 100,000 people last month alone. It is aiming to spend at least $600,000 by the time the polls close – eclipsing its entire 2025 election budget.
The surge has put the activist group in its strongest financial position in years after its poor 2019 election campaign, where it was accused of alienating wavering voters through an obsessive and aggressive focus on climate change policy.
New polling suggests One Nation’s broader momentum may be stalling. The latest Resolve Political Monitor found the party’s primary vote slipped two points to 22 per cent in April — its lowest level since January — even as it remains well above its result at the last election.
GetUp interim chief executive Paul Ferris said One Nation had been cheering on Trump’s “economic recklessness” since the war in Iran began and the people of Farrer were suffering from it.
“It’s the same ‘battlers’ One Nation claims to care about – farmers and families struggling to get by – that are impacted most by the fuel and fertiliser crisis,” he said.
“Our research shows that when soft One Nation voters are shown the actual record of the party and its MPs – voting to cut benefits like the aged pension and let the biggest corporations pay less tax – her support drops significantly.
“Similarly, voters strongly dislike her links to Trump, her billionaire backers and her lavish lifestyle at the public expense.”
Both Labor and Coalition figures such as Nationals leader Matt Canavan and Liberal MP Andrew Hastie have increased attacks on One Nation since its remarkable result at the South Australian election, where it won 22.9 per cent of the vote and four lower house seats.
Milthorpe, a 47-year-old teacher who whittled retiring MP Sussan Ley’s lead down to just 6.2 per cent at last May’s federal election, has warned her potential donors that she risks being outspent by One Nation’s advertising campaign, linking Hanson with mining magnate supporter Gina Rinehart and pushing back on suggestions she is affiliated with the inner-city “teal” independent movement.
GetUp’s push includes 20 billboards across the electorate, television advertisements focused on cost-of-living pressures and the Albury hospital, and video-on-demand placements aimed at younger voters.
Targeted radio advertising has also begun, while the campaign has spread into metropolitan areas with additional billboards and bus stop placements. More than 40,000 anti-One Nation stickers were distributed nationwide within 24 hours, according to the group.
One Nation MP Barnaby Joyce blamed “bad press” surrounding One Nation’s employment of convicted rapist Sean Black for the minor party’s slide in both Resolve and The Australian’s Newspoll.
He said GetUp was never going to say anything other than “you’ve got smelly socks, One Nation”.
“No one takes GetUp seriously as being, sort of, a discerning, balanced view,” Joyce told ABC TV, while also dismissing the idea that Trump’s unpopularity was an issue for One Nation. “When they hear GetUp, they go ‘here goes a whole heap of bile’.”
“We’re still polling higher than the Coalition, by the way, but it’s a lot of work. You’ve got to remember we’ve got one member of parliament and four senators. So we’ve got a lot of work and a small number of people.”
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Rob Harris is the national correspondent for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age based in Canberra. He is a former Europe correspondent.Connect via email.
