One Nation’s Target Changes. But It’s Politics Of Hate Doesn’t.

Pauline Hanson is trying to distance One Nation from homophobia following remarks by a former One Nation candidate who described homosexuality as a “mental illness” and blamed parents for their children’s sexual orientation.

Homosexuality hasn’t been classified as a mental illness in Australia for more than half a century. And even back then, that was wrong. Hanson says the comments don’t reflect her views and his profile has been removed from the One Nation website after the ABC began making inquiries. But here’s the thing, Pauline Hanson can’t be allowed to present this as an isolated problem involving one former candidate.

The real issue is One Nation’s political business model. For three decades, Pauline Hanson has repeatedly singled out minority groups, portrayed them as threats and used public anxiety about difference to build her political support base.

In her first speech to Parliament in 1996, Pauline Hanson talked about Australia being “swamped by Asians”. The after 9/11, her principal target shifted. Muslims became the focus of her hostile rhetoric, including her repeated use of the burqa as a political prop. In 2025, the Senate censured Pauline Hanson after she entered the chamber wearing a burqa in another stunt directed at Muslim Australians. And last month, the Federal Court dismissed her appeal against a finding that she had unlawfully racially discriminated against Senator Mehreen Faruqi. The case concerned Pauline Hanson telling the Australian senator to “pack your bags and piss off back to Pakistan”.

Hanson has also attacked multiculturalism, Indigenous Australians and transgender people. Against this record, One Nation’s attempt to draw a neat boundary around one former candidate’s homophobia is entirely unconvincing.

The target may change, but the political method is consistent: identify a minority, distort the truth about them, amplify public fear and then promise to protect “ordinary Australians” from the manufactured threat. It’s the Donald Trump playbook with an Australian accent.

Trump uses the same strategy against migrants, Muslims, transgender people and other minority groups in the United States. The point is not to solve a real problem. It’s to create an enemy, turn anxiety into anger and convert that anger into votes.

Hansonism and Trumpism depend on a false distinction between minority communities and “ordinary people”. But gay Australians are ordinary Australians. So are Muslims, Asians, migrants, trans people and First Nations people. We’re all Aussies. We go to work. We run businesses. We care for family members. We volunteer, pay our mortgages and taxes, study, create art, play sport and contribute to our communities.

One Nation is entitled to debate immigration levels, government spending and social policy. These are legitimate matters for democratic discussion. But democratic debate requires evidence, honesty and respect for the equal dignity of all human beings and citizens. It shouldn’t depend on caricaturing entire communities or encouraging Australians to fear one another.

There’s also an important test for Hanson’s newfound defence of gay Australians. If she genuinely believes LGBTQIA+ people deserve equality and respect, that principle should be applied consistently. It should extend to Muslim Aussies subjected to religious vilification. It should extend to migrants told they don’t belong. It should extend to Asian Aussies who remember Hanson’s remarks that their presence threatens our country. It should extend to trans Australians whose lives are repeatedly turned into political battlegrounds. And it should extend to First Nations Aussies whose identities and rights are routinely misrepresented.

Human dignity isn’t something politicians should recognise selectively. As a nation, Australia faces serious challenges: climate change, housing affordability, rising inequality, pressure on health services and the need to create secure jobs in a changing economy. None of these problems will be solved by making minorities feel less safe, less equal or less Australian.

If a political movement always needs someone vulnerable to blame, it doesn’t have solutions. It has scapegoats. Pauline Hanson may have changed the subject this week, but Australians should recognise the pattern. The target changes. The politics of division doesn’t. We’re better than that.

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