Progressive campaign strategists in Australia have told activists to stop personally attacking One Nation leader Pauline Hanson ahead of Victoria’s state election in November, arguing that character-based attacks backfire.
The advice was delivered to campaigners and unionists asked to hold one-on-one conversations with One Nation supporters. Separate training sessions run by the Victorian Trades Hall Council and the campaign group GetUp warned members that failing to engage respectfully with voters’ economic concerns may be pushing them toward the party.
“As best as you can, I know it’s hard, don’t make it personal,” a GetUp strategist told hundreds of members on a Thursday night video call. “Going after Pauline Hanson personally and calling her a racist, or going after her character, although very tempting, just confirms what people already believe: that she is an outsider and the establishment is attacking her.”
The reset follows research by polling company Redbridge conducted after the Farrer byelection, which One Nation won comfortably. GetUp had spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on ads personally attacking Hanson and deputy leader Barnaby Joyce, linking the pair to Donald Trump. The ads had little impact.
The shift responds to One Nation’s rise in public support and recent wins in state and federal byelections and in South Australia.
Oscar Kaspi-Crutchett, a senior researcher at Trades Hall, said prospective One Nation voters shut down when they perceive personal attacks on the party’s leadership that ignore their concerns. He argued campaigners should present Hanson’s racism as a political device rather than a personal flaw.
“For many people, simply ignoring her racism is not going to be possible or desirable,” he said. “We need to make it very clear that Hanson’s racism isn’t merely a character flaw but a sophisticated political device.”
Campaigners were also told not to lead with attacks on Hanson’s ties to mining billionaire Gina Rinehart, with GetUp advising that raising it directly reads as a standard partisan attack. The group had earlier published ads describing Hanson as a “wannabe billionaire” flying in “mummy Gina’s” private plane.
Kaspi-Crutchett said organisers should listen for economic concerns underlying opinions on immigration, crime or culture, and redirect conversations toward the economy rather than fact-checking conspiracy theories. “Don’t listen to the lyrics, listen to the beat of what they are saying,” he said, adding that discussions often end with voters saying “my kid can’t afford a house.”
In June, Trades Hall Council head Luke Hilakari rebuked 23 state Labor MPs and candidates for holding “zero conversations” with constituents over two weeks, saying they needed to work harder to stop One Nation. The Victorian election is scheduled for November.