Pauline Hanson has begun One Nation’s push for the Victorian election in earnest by announcing the party’s state leader at a news conference from which she banned the ABC, The Guardian and The Age.

Warren Pickering, 43, who has been state president of the party, will, as leader, contest the lower house seat of Pakenham, a Labor electorate held by backbencher Emma Vulin, on a tiny margin of 0.4%. At the 2022 election One Nation received 3.4% in the seat, which includes outer eastern and south eastern suburbs of Melbourne and some rural areas.

Vulin is not recontesting. In 2022 Labor won 33.8% of the primary vote and the Liberals polled 32.4%. Historically, this was a Liberal seat.

In the embargoed press release from One Nation, Pickering was listed as One Nation’s “leading Legislative Council candidate for the Eastern Victorian region”. This was the initial plan.

Colleen Harkin, a former member of the Liberal Party’s state administrative committee before recently defecting to One Nation, will run for the South-Eastern Metropolitan district in the Legislative Council. She works for conservative think tank the Institute of Public Affairs.

The Victorian election in November will be a major test for One Nation, which has enjoyed surging support this year and won the May Farrer byelection in New South Wales, the first time it has won a House of Representatives seat. (Barnaby Joyce, who holds its other House of Representatives seat, defected from the Nationals.)

Victoria in the past has been seen as hostile territory for One Nation.

Early next year, the New South Wales election will be another big test – and opportunity – for the party, ahead of the federal election in 2028.

The party has also announced key moves nationally. James Ashby, the power behind the Hanson throne,........

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