GetUp pivots to a two-year offensive against One Nation after press-club protest

During Pauline Hanson’s first National Press Club address, a banner accusing her of taking a $100,000 pay rise while opposing workers’ raises was unfurled, quickly removed and led to a police investigation that restricts what GetUp’s acting chief executive Paul Ferris can disclose. Ferris, who returned from a decade of left-wing campaigning in Sweden with the Swedish Greens and the Reform Society, argues that Australian media and politicians have treated One Nation as a circus act, missing the party’s growing influence.

The protest boosted GetUp’s fundraising, delivering its highest monthly donations since 2022 and adding 1,500 new donors, while the clip amassed over 10 million social-media views. Post-Farrer by-election analysis showed 48 percent of One Nation voters had settled on their choice weeks before any GetUp advertising, confirming Ferris’s view that electoral battles are fought in the years leading up to an election. As a result, GetUp intends to devote the next two years to exposing One Nation’s voting record on wages, healthcare, cost of living and workers’ rights, rather than concentrating spend in six-week election windows.

The approach has been lambasted by One Nation’s Barnaby Joyce, who called the tactics “dopey,” and by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and former Labor strategist David Feeney, who argue the stunt may generate sympathy for Hanson. Ferris maintains the shift is essential to counter populist movements and plans to test the strategy in the upcoming Victorian state election.