Pauline Hanson has revealed One Nation has candidates locked in for up to 76 of Victoria's 88 seats ahead of the state election on 28 November, after the party fielded about 1,200 applications from people wanting to stand.
Speaking at the News24 special event Paul Murray Live: Pauline Hanson, Please Explain, the One Nation leader said the candidates would be announced either Friday or next week.
"We have locked in about 74 to 76 seats at the moment of the 88. So we've got our candidates," Ms Hanson said.
"We're going to be announcing the candidates and we'll have a suite of policies to go with that. So you will have a One Nation representative that you can vote for in Victoria."
It's a pitch aimed squarely at the gap the major parties have left. The Liberals go to the election under Jess Wilson, who at 36 has led the party for barely eight months, has sat in parliament for less than four years and has never held a ministry, a thin record for someone asking to run the state. Labor's new Premier Ben Carroll offers the opposite problem: he's been at the cabinet table since 2018, voted with the government on every one of its decisions through the debt blowout and the Big Build overruns, and never once spoke out against any of it.
Whoever wins in November, the person running Victoria will either be new to the job or complicit in the last eight years of it. That's the opening One Nation is moving into.
Hanson calls Victoria a "basket case" as Labor changes premiers four months out
The announcement lands in the middle of Victorian Labor's leadership chaos. Jacinta Allan resigned as premier on Tuesday, stepping down about half an hour before a leadership ballot was due, with Deputy Premier Ben Carroll taking over as Victoria's 50th premier.
Ms Allan had been under internal pressure for months over the party's position heading into the election. A June poll found 62% of Victorians wanted her gone, and the Opposition had already given notice of a no confidence motion against her government.
The numbers back Pauline Hanson in. A RedBridge poll of 6,500 Victorians, conducted for Victorian Trades Hall in July, puts One Nation in front on 27% of the primary vote, up three points and one clear of the Coalition and Labor, tied on 26%. The Greens sit on 12%. A separate DemosAU mega poll published this week found One Nation could form government in Victoria, with Labor's majority already gone.
Pauline Hanson described the state of Victorian politics as a "basket case" and said voters needed an alternative.
Darren Hercus pulled 24.5% in Nepean, and now the party wants all 88 seats
The Victorian push isn't starting from zero. One Nation pledged in April to contest every Victorian seat, declaring that "years of mismanagement have taken their toll" and it was "time for a government that puts Victorians first."
The party got an early test at the Nepean by-election on 2 May, where its candidate Darren Hercus, a Safety Beach small business owner, polled 24.5% of the primary vote, second only to the winning Liberal, Anthony Marsh, on primaries. Hercus slipped to third after preferences, but a near quarter of the primary vote in a first outing put the party's Victorian support on the record.
The party already has a foothold in Spring Street. Rikkie-Lee Tyrrell, a dairy farmer of 16 years before entering politics, became One Nation's first ever Victorian MP when she won a Legislative Council seat for Northern Victoria in 2022, and she's talked up the party's chances of holding the balance of power in both houses after November. The 76 seat push is still the party's biggest tilt at the state to date.
Hanson says One Nation can win Lower House seats in 2028, and she'll vet every Senate candidate herself
Pauline Hanson also revealed One Nation is vetting candidates for the 2028 federal election, with about 1,500 applications received across the 150 federal seats.
"It hasn't been easy for the party over a period of time because the last (federal) election we got about six and a half per cent (of the national vote). This time around, there's a real chance that we can actually win seats in the Lower House and the Senate."
She said the party has strengthened its candidate selection process to make sure anyone representing One Nation is properly vetted.
"The process that we've got now is a system that we've put in place that it really has a thorough look at the candidates. If you've got something that you've done somewhere else in the world, it'll find you. It'll tell us if you've got a criminal offence internationally. It'll tell us if you've been a bankrupt, if you owe money to the tax (office), it'll tell us if ... on Facebook that you made some stupid comment."
Senate hopefuls will face one final gate: Pauline Hanson herself.
"If you stand for the Senate, you will come before me. I'll be the judge in that. It's very important to me to have the right people in that position, because you're winning a seat for six years, you need to know that you've got the right calibre of person. They (must) have a background in something to bring and offer and put on the table that we're going to be able to counteract, because we're a small team. We have to work twice or three times as hard as the others to get our point across and working for the people."
The candidate push comes as One Nation looks to expand beyond its four upper house seats and two lower house seats federally. The Victorian names, and the policies that come with them, are due within days.
