Hanson likes to go after minorities. But she’s found two new and surprising targets

June 20, 2026 — 3:00am

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Far-right populists typically generate attention and support by attacking minorities. It worked for Jean-Marie Le Pen’s National Front in the 1970s to Donald Trump in 2015, and everyone in between.

The two-part formula is, first, to attack the establishment and, second, to identify an out-group to scapegoat.

Le Pen started with Arabs, Trump with Mexicans. And, in between the two chronologically, came Pauline Hanson in 1996. She started with Asians and Indigenous Australians.

Over time, when they needed to generate new energy, these provocateurs targeted additional minority groups to keep the hate fresh. Le Pen went after Jews, Trump after Muslims. Hanson attacked Muslims too.

It works as a source of power for the far right. Because the left typically campaigns in favour of minorities. But when it oversteps the mark of common sense and reasonableness, the right – or far right – steps in to mobilise the majority. The majority prevails. It’s pretty simple. The right advances, the left is forced to retreat.

This is the standard playbook. This week, in her first appearance at the National Press Club, Hanson tossed the playbook into the bin. Yes, she pursued her prejudices against various minorities: transgender, Muslim and Indigenous people, for instance.

But the big breach with the far-right formula is that she went after majorities too. Workers, for starters. She’s long campaigned to make it easier for bosses to sack staff. But this week she switched from targeting the system to attacking workers themselves.

“Industrial relations, I can assure you, needs a complete overhaul because it’s not working,” she said. “Businesses also tell me you can’t sack people these days. They’re on their phones, they don’t work, they don’t turn up, they actually are lazy, and businesses are tied to it, they’ve had enough.”

Lazy. Undeserving. Sack them. And this from the woman who portrays herself as the battler’s best friend.

Australia has about 18 million enrolled voters. How many of these are employed? Fourteen million. That’s three-quarters, an overwhelming majority. And she smeared them all.

Labor likes to point out that Hanson has always opposed benefits for workers – she’s critical of increases in the minimum wage, laws against wage theft, protections for gig economy workers, the policy of........

© WA Today