Hanson is just the tip of the oligarchs’ far-right iceberg

Pauline Hanson is a Sunny Boy.​​ A bright orange triangle of highly flavoured ice that delights immature palates. She is a nostalgic block that tempts people to long for their simple memories of warm (and White) Australian summers past. Those old enough to remember the iconic Sunny Boy, however, will know that once we’d sucked out that sharp plastic flavouring, the rest was fairly drab and tasteless ice.

More to the point, Hanson is a frosty orange block functioning as the tip of a much more insidious iceberg.

I’m going to call the iceberg the Gina Machine, because that’s less awful than a local version of the US’s Kochtopus. Nobody needs to read Ginopus. Rinosquid? Cthulhart?

After the News Corp-sponsored Bush Summit, we know that the Gina Machine (with a Hanson/Abbott skin-suit) will mean a big Trumpy orange bulldozer driven through your living standards and protections. It means giving free land and infrastructure to Elon Musk and to Israeli weapons-industrial corporations. While this year’s summit didn’t mention Rinehart’s Special Economic Zone (Andev), because everyone hates it, there is no doubt what this was about. The Zone Rinehart has in mind is tax-free, environmental protection-free and free to exploit workers. A corporate, dystopian hell.

Like in the US, many of us face frightening futures if the Gina Machine can manipulate enough votes in enough seats to form a right-wing minority government. Abortion access and LGBTQIA+ public existence would come under attack. The stripping of First People’s rights would be in discussion. I refuse to link to the Neo Nazi “news” site trumpeting One Nation’s Roberts calling for remigration, the extremists’ term for mass deportation. Climate action and scientific research would be further endangered. 

Pauline Hanson has regularly voted for owner class interests and against the workers. Plutocrats like Rinehart have made out like bandits under the Trump regime, at the public’s expense.

Teasing out the various components of the Gina Machine gets a bit weedsy, but if you don’t see the shape of the iceberg, you can’t see what we are colliding into.

Treasurer Jim Chalmers described Pauline Hanson recently as a “wholly owned subsidiary of Gina Rinehart.” The mining magnate has been flying Hanson and colleagues around the country and to MAGA events in the US. Her company donated a plane. Two of her employees donated half a million dollars each to One Nation.

It’s worth noting that Rinehart is a dedicated Trump fan who said in 2012 that Australian workers needed to compete with African workers on $2 a day. Even adjusted for inflation, we’d all be dead. (This embarrassing tribute to Donald Trump is sampled by Friendly Jordies so you don’t need to watch the wince-worthy whole.) Gina is a lifelong Ayn Rand groupie, too, and that’s just cringe.

Rinehart has long been the only major public donor to the think tank the Institute of Public Affairs (IPA) after its corporate donors fled, embarrassed to be tainted by its climate denial and culture war extremes. The Murdochs may well still be donating, given that Rupert’s father was a cofounder in 1943, but they donate in-kind by providing platforms to the body and affiliate organisations.

The IPA is a partner organisation to the Atlas Network, the collection of roughly 600 partnered neoliberal front groups in over 100 countries. These lobby for low tax and no regulations constraining the rich, by manipulating public opinion. They also function as PR for polluting industries like fossil fuel and tobacco. Read this linked ABC account to understand how influential the operation (and its masters at the Mont Pelerin Society – MPS) have been, transforming the world against democracy for the wealthy since 1947. (Rupert Murdoch was a partner board member at Charles Koch’s libertarian Cato Institute in the 90s.) Koch was MPS from 1970. The Atlas Network pitches itself as fighting for liberty* (*for the rich).

This week IPA Distinguished Fellow Tony Abbott, as new Liberal Party President, declared that preference deals with One Nation were on the cards. (Abbott remains officially declared as a foreign government influencer by the Attorney General’s register. He continues to be an operative in defeated Hungarian President Viktor Orbán’s far right influence operation. That is Atlas-linked too. He spoke at arch-Zionist Bari Weiss’s fake uni in Texas recently. He performed at the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship’s Christofash confab in London last week.)

In March, Tim Wilson, MP and Shadow Treasurer, refused to rule out that the Liberal Party might form a minority government with One Nation should an election result promote the parties into that position. Wilson was shortlisted for the highest Atlas Network prize in his tenure at the IPA for trashing the carbon price. While he was out of office, he returned to an IPA-led operation at RMIT to commence doctoral research.

It is not strange that the Liberal Party should be so closely connected to the IPA. They were linked from the party’s founding two years after the think tank’s.

Another Atlas-connected organisation is Advance, which follows the astroturf model of Atlas partner operations. That is, fake “grass roots” messaging. Rinehart was revealed as potentially the biggest of the mega donors contributing to that body, with Hancock donating almost $900,000. Advance claims to have flipped Australia against the Voice to Parliament referendum. An undercover auditor at the Advance conference in February was surprised by the deft polling, market research and messaging operation the body boasts.

We can’t be sure if Advance, with the original boomer meme warriors at influence operation Topham Guerin, is behind the tsunami of “charitable Pauline” against “Muslim villains” AI slop on Facebook at the moment. This crucial report details the way this looks like the front face of both a billionaire and foreign influence operation, with algorithms being bent to support Hanson.

Abbott was speculated to “step down” from his founding role as Advance advisor on taking the Liberal presidency, but that would be a performative act. Furthermore, party members expressed fear that Abbott would import key Advance strategists to pivotal Liberal party roles.

While all of this is accelerating, none of it is new. Mike Seccombe reported in The Saturday Paper on the degree of obsession with which Rinehart has coopted Liberal politicians in the making since the 1970s, as well as her pursuit of media control to promote her messaging.

Now Rinehart has a share in Channel 7, NineFax is coopted by Murdoch’s people and Murdoch is…well, you know. Channel 10 is owned by Paramount Skydance Corporation that is busily buying up US media majors to spread propaganda for Trump and Israel. 

Tragically, the ABC is occupied territory since John Howard (MPS 2010) put Maurice Newman (MPS 1976) in as Chair. Tony Abbott is likely to be MPS now, but no membership list has been leaked since 2013. He installed the IPA’s Janet Albrechtsen (MPS 2011) to the ABC’s panel that makes appointments. Liberal Mitch Fifield continued the occupation of the ABC in cooperation with the IPA through the twenty-teens.

Recently, the Church and State conference was staged in Brisbane. That is the conference dedicated to putting their God over your government. It devoted its final session to One Nation, featuring Pauline Hanson and Malcolm Roberts, where the latter committed to pursuing a “blanket abortion ban.” Liberal and National Party representatives including Abbott featured at last year’s Pulpits Aflame (yikes), but have been stripped from the line-up. In 2024, the Church and State conference temporarily merged with the regional Atlas Network conference.

Another speaker is embarrassing Young LNP activist Barclay McGain. He appears to be turning into an Atlas partner lifer, although the Liberal Party has felt it important to draw a clear line between themselves and him. He is now a “Christian” political activist stacking the Queensland youth arm of the LNP with anti-abortion Christian radicals to roll back Queensland’s abortion law and attack immigration.

Coercive Christian influencers are making it clear that One Nation is their choice, too. The abortion topic is being elevated, and One Nation’s candidates are intending to wind back access. Bernie Finn who moved to One Nation in Victoria is an abortion abolitionist. Cory Bernardi in South Australia is a stern opponent. Barnaby Joyce is another. He spoke for One Nation at a rally in support of a bill proposed by Libertarian Party’s John Ruddick. And if it seems odd that a Libertarian would aim to strip back liberty, understand that The Libertarian Party was an earlier attempt by the (Atlas) Australian Taxpayers’ Alliance John Humphreys (MPS 2011) to gain political traction for their nefarious goals.

The coercive Christians must not be identified as a risk only according to their Census percentage. They are bulking their numbers with identitarian Christians who use the label as code for White or Western, patriarchal and misogynist. Characters like McGain and Joel Jammal (who represents Turning Point USA’s coercive Christian mission in Australia) are interacting at home and abroad with far right figures creating rank anti-immigrant and reactionary content. They are amongst the influencers fostering animus towards LGBTQIA+ people. They also support One Nation.

Content creators Chris DeBruyne and Scott Challen allowed themselves to be photographed with “associate of the Neo Nazi NSN,” Hugo Lennon, in the US in March. Various groups in the range of Australian “right-wing agitators” were recorded in the US as being trained by Steve Bannon and other MAGA strategists earlier this year.

And, disturbingly, Challen’s partner at the Australian Lobby Group is one of the “right wing agitators” being mainstreamed by Karl Stefanovic on his new interview platform. He is not the only mainstream media figure giving such agitators a microphone. Now, Stefanovic has interviewed Islamophobic street thug  “Tommy Robinson” not long after he almost certainly contributed to an axe attack outside a mosque in Edinburgh.

So, we all need to be cognisant that the Gina Machine includes much more than just One Nation. It is integrated into the local Atlas Network partner operations, including Advance. The Liberal Party is signalling acquiescence. Like in the Trump team’s Project 2025, the Christian Right is uniting with Atlas partners’ neoliberal strategists to create momentum for a radicalising Right mission. Media operations, social media platforms and big donors are on board.

We need to demand that the Albanese government works fast on political transparency and political speech reforms. We need the Australian Electoral Commission fully funded and empowered. 

We need to make sure that our media, academic, activist and political peers are not complacent: Hanson’s Sunny Boy looks ridiculous, but it is only the tip of a well-funded, strategic and coordinating iceberg. If we cannot steer our ship away, it would sink us all.