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April 23, 2026 — 5:00am
On a lazy, mid-summer morning, about 20 people walked into the Waterfront Cafe at the Hastings marina for the first meeting of the Flinders branch of One Nation. Most of them were new to organised politics and didn’t know quite what to expect.
It is a scene being repeated around the state as people best described as One Nation-curious venture to their local pub, RSL or football and netball club, jot down their names and contact details and kick the tyres of an idiosyncratic political movement that, one way or another, will have a big influence on the November state election.
At the Waterfront Cafe, the two people running the meeting were Mike Brown, a local business owner who stood for One Nation in Flinders at last year’s federal election, and Jason Smart, a construction manager who started the campaign as Clive Palmer’s candidate but finished it, after a dispute over preferences, handing out for Brown.
Smart spoke passionately about One Nation’s prospects, delivering what one person at the meeting described as a “fight them on the beaches” speech which, while topographically appropriate for the Mornington Peninsula, seemed a little over-eager for a Wednesday morning in January.
It was what Smart allegedly said afterwards, in conversations to at least two people at the cafe, that troubled some in attendance. One lodged a formal complaint with One Nation founder Pauline Hanson. Another was so disturbed, they provided a sworn statement documenting their account of what was said.
“He stated he read a lot about great past leaders,” the statement reads. “After mentioning the names Churchill and Kennedy, he casually dropped in Hitler and stated he not only admired his leadership skills, but also believed Australia should follow his example to turn the economy around.”
Smart denies saying these things and having any admiration or sympathy for Hitler. He describes the allegations as vile and untrue.
Whatever was said at the cafe, it planted doubt in the minds of the two would-be Hanson recruits. Initially, the pair had joined a small team of volunteers chosen to help run the party’s campaign for next weekend’s Nepean byelection. Over the next six weeks, they witnessed up close the shambolic, top-down manner in which One Nation Victoria, a state division tightly controlled by president Warren Pickering and secretary Bianca Colecchia, selects candidates, makes campaign decisions and treats people inside the party.
They have now quit the party and regret ever getting involved. This too is a pattern likely to be repeated around Victoria as people drawn to One Nation discover for themselves the party’s inherently undemocratic nature and empty promises it is willing to make.
As an example, consider One Nation’s candidate for Nepean, Darren Hercus. Hercus, the owner of a struggling fabrication business that recently had to lay off staff, was selected by Pickering to contest the May 2 byelection without any input from members of the local Flinders branch or Nepean campaign committee. There was no local ballot. Not even a discussion.
Members of the committee were invited at short notice to attend a meeting at the Dromana Community Hall where – they thought – they would interview prospective candidates. Instead, there was only one. Pickering told the meeting he had spoken to Hercus on the phone, listened to his story about being inspired by Hanson’s animated movie and decided he was their man for Nepean.
One of the former committee members, in a resignation letter to Hanson, later wrote: “I cannot, in good conscience, continue my involvement when the principles of transparency, fairness, and member participation are not upheld.”
How is Hercus going? His big ticket item is for a new hospital to be built in Rosebud to replace the current, dilapidated one. On Saturday, he said the hospital would be built and run as a private public partnership.
Building a hospital through a PPP is not a new idea. The new Footscray hospital is a PPP project, as is the new hospital being built in Melton. The Royal Women’s Hospital was delivered this way.
What’s novel about Hercus’ policy is his fundamental misunderstanding of how PPPs work.
His notion is that, at a PPP hospital, public health services are provided alongside private health services. This is not quite right. The private side of the partnership is to build the hospital, maintain it and provide non-clinical services over a long-term contract – normally about 25 years. Within these privately built wards, all health services remain public.
A new Rosebud hospital is Hercus’ signature policy. People living on the peninsula need reliable access to public health services. They also deserve an MP who knows what they are promising. Hanson is never troubled by such details. She merely says that Rosebud needs a “damn new hospital”.
The pressing question here is whether enough people can twig to One Nation’s true nature before it gains a significant foothold in the Victorian Parliament.
The latest Resolve Political Monitor survey published this week indicates that popular support in Victoria for Pauline Hanson’s party has more or less stabilised, with one in five respondents indicating an intention to vote orange.
Within this group, there is a small, hard core of Hansonites who have been voting One Nation for years. The party has also harvested whatever low-hanging fruit there is on the disaffected tree – Palmer’s patsies, anti-vax conspiracists, sovereign citizens, would-be Trumpers and keen readers of “bike boy” stories.
There are also plenty of ordinary, rational people who believe Labor has forgotten how to govern, the Liberal Party has forgotten how to win, and that just maybe, One Nation is worth a go.
Some of these people are still kicking the tyres. Let’s hope they know how to spot a lemon.
Chip Le Grand is state political editor.
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