Pauline Hanson stepped off a Virgin flight at Perth Airport today and walked into a Channel Nine trip hazard. The reporter read her questions off an iPhone. ''Why didn't you fly on Gina's jet'', and ''did you fly cattle class.'' Hanson declined to answer, told the reporter to get some credibility, and posted the video herself within the hour.
By the 34 minute mark the clip had 19,000 views, 1,200 likes and 239 replies on her page.
A Channel Nine reporter reads her very important questions from her phone as Pauline Hanson arrives at Perth Airport. Video: Senator Pauline Hanson via X.
What happened at the airport
In the video Hanson posted to X, the Nine reporter reads from her phone as the senator walks through the terminal. The questions on the recording were "why didn't you fly Gina's jet" and "did you fly cattle class". Hanson's response was that she wasn't answering stupid questions, and that the reporter should get some credibility as a journalist and learn some respect.
Her caption described them as disrespectful questions and added: "This is why mainstream media have lost much of the respect from the public." Crikey
The flight itself isn't in dispute. Hanson's own post says she came off the Virgin flight to Perth, and the footage shows her in the domestic terminal with the rest of the travelling public.
Where the jet question comes from
The jet has a genuine backstory, so let's deal with it. In April the Australian Financial Review reported that Hanson travelled on Gina Rinehart's $78 million Gulfstream G600 for a One Nation fundraising dinner, with ten donors paying $15,000 a seat and Barnaby Joyce also aboard. Later that month One Nation announced it had received its own aircraft, a Cirrus G7 worth a reported $2.1 million, from a donor at a fundraiser. Two employees of companies within Rinehart's Hancock group have each donated $500,000 to the party.
Rinehart's money moves across the right of politics more broadly too. AEC disclosures show Hancock Prospecting gave $204,000 to the Liberal Party in 2024 to 25, on top of $150,000 the year before, and she was the largest donor to the campaign group Advance in the same period at $895,000. Every dollar of it has been reported and sits on the public record, which is the only reason the reporter knew to ask about it. Nobody from Nine appears to have doorstopped a Liberal frontbencher at an airport about it.
Which is what makes the exchange odd. The question of how Pauline Hanson got to Perth was answered before the reporter finished reading it off her phone. She was walking off a commercial Virgin service on her way to a $70 a head community event in Midland. If the story is that the leader of a surging party sometimes accepts a lift from a billionaire and sometimes flies the same airline as everyone else, the second half of that story was standing in front of the camera holding her own luggage.
Why she's in Perth
Hanson is in town to headline the Sundowner with Senator Pauline Hanson tonight at the Crooked Spire, 71 Victoria Street, Midland, with tickets at $70. One Nation has been busy in Western Australia. The party holds two seats in the WA Legislative Council, won at the March 2025 state election, with Rod Caddies sitting as the party's WA leader alongside Phil Scott. It opened a new branch in Fremantle in late May.
There's a reason the party draws both the crowds and the protesters. The most recent DemosAU MRP projection put One Nation at up to 58 seats in the House of Representatives if an election were held now, which would make it the second largest force in the Parliament. The next federal election isn't due until 2028, but those numbers explain why a One Nation leader landing in Perth is suddenly worth sending a camera crew to the airport for. Red Flag
A sold out room and a protest up the street
The Sundowner sold out. Footage from inside the Crooked Spire shows a packed room, standing room at the back, and Hanson working a catwalk stage flanked by orange balloons. For a midweek party event in suburban Midland, that's a number the major parties would notice.
Outside, the WA Socialists held their advertised rally at Midland Train Station from 5:30pm, promoted as endorsed by The Greens, with an advertised speaker lineup that included sitting Greens MLC Sophie McNeill alongside WA Socialists members and activists. It was pushed through Perth community Facebook groups in the days beforehand, with one post urging members to show Hanson and her party they weren't welcome in Perth and warning that One Nation couldn't be allowed a foothold in the city. Pearls and Irritations
It didn't get much of one on the night. Police kept the protesters well up the street from the venue, and footage from outside shows the group behind traffic cones at a distance, filmed by passersby, while the event carried on inside without disruption. A sitting member of the WA Parliament lent her name to a rally aimed at keeping another party out of Perth, and the other party's response was to fill the room.
Footage courtesy of Hon. Rod Caddies MLC. Protesters confront attendees outside Pauline Hanson's sold-out One Nation event in Midland, Perth, as supporters gather inside.
The respect line
Hanson's caption argued the mainstream media has lost public respect, and today's tape won't hurt her case. A federal party leader arrives in a state where her party is opening branches, drawing organised protests and selling tickets to a suburban sundowner, and the question the network's reporter had prepared, on her phone, was about which seat the senator sat in on the plane.
Both the Sundowner and the protest run tonight in Midland. Nine got 20 seconds of footage, and 19,000 people watched it on Hanson's page instead of the network's bulletin.
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