{"id":800781,"date":"2026-08-03T08:15:16","date_gmt":"2026-08-03T08:15:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/800781\/"},"modified":"2026-08-03T08:15:16","modified_gmt":"2026-08-03T08:15:16","slug":"one-nation-names-eight-victorian-election-candidates-as-hanson-bars-abc-and-guardian-from-press-conferences-victorian-politics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/800781\/","title":{"rendered":"One Nation names eight Victorian election candidates as Hanson bars ABC and Guardian from press conferences | Victorian politics"},"content":{"rendered":"

One Nation has named its first candidates for the upcoming Victorian state election, as the party leader, Pauline Hanson<\/a>, has vowed to ban the ABC and the Guardian from attending her press conferences during the campaign.<\/p>\n

Guardian Australia understands reporters from the ABC and the Age were refused entry to Hanson\u2019s press conference on Monday, where she announced seven of the eight candidates who will lead One Nation\u2019s upper house tickets.<\/p>\n

The Age has been contacted for comment while the ABC declined to.<\/p>\n

Reporters from the ABC, the Age and the Guardian were not told the time or location of the event in advance. One Nation has previously said the ABC and the Guardian were not welcome at the party\u2019s events and press conferences.<\/p>\n

Asked whether all media should have access to press conferences in a democracy, particularly given her ambition to form government in Victoria<\/a>, Hanson replied: \u201cDemocracy doesn\u2019t happen on the ABC at all.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sign up for the Breaking News Australia email<\/a><\/p>\n

She said it was not the first time she had excluded the national broadcaster, claiming she denied ABC journalists access to her events for \u201ceight months\u201d in 1996.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe same will go with the Guardian,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m not putting up with the spin, gotcha moments, wanting to have a go at me \u2026 [and they] treat us totally different to what you do the other major political parties. Enough is enough.\u201d<\/p>\n

In a later follow-up question, another reporter asked: \u201cAren\u2019t you cutting off your nose to spite your face here? Don\u2019t you need your message to get out to regional Victoria in particular, and you need the ABC, the national broadcaster to be able to carry it?\u201d<\/p>\n

To which Hanson responded: \u201cWe\u2019ve got Rebel News here, I am happy with them.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rebel News Australia is run by Avi Yemini<\/a>, a former Israeli soldier and self-styled investigative journalist.<\/p>\n

Warren Pickering, One Nation\u2019s Victorian president, said the party \u201cexpect and invite a healthy amount of scrutiny of our candidates and our policy positions\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cHowever, any blatant character assassination attempts based on fabrications of our candidates will be met with swift legal action,\u201d he told reporters.<\/p>\n

A Guardian spokesperson said it was \u201cdisappointing that One Nation continues to prevent the Guardian and other news outlets from reporting on its press conferences\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cHolding public figures to account is the role of a free press and an essential part of the democratic process,\u201d they said.<\/p>\n

\u201cJournalists should be able to ask questions in the public interest and not be deterred from doing their job.\u201d<\/p>\n

They added that the Guardian has published important public interest journalism about Hanson and her party, which it stands by.<\/p>\n

Candidates announced<\/p>\n

In a media release prior to Monday\u2019s press conference, Hanson announced Pickering would lead the party\u2019s campaign and run as its candidate for the eastern Victoria region in the upper house.<\/p>\n

But at the event she said he would instead be running in the lower house seat of Pakenham, an ultra-marginal electorate southeast of Melbourne<\/a> where One Nation has set up an office.<\/p>\n

Pickering ran One Nation\u2019s campaign in the 2022 election, where it won 0.22% of first-preference votes in the lower house and 2% in the upper house. He also unsuccessfully contested a Victorian Senate seat for One Nation at last year\u2019s federal election.<\/p>\n

skip past newsletter promotion<\/a>Free newsletter | When needed<\/p>\n

Sign up to Breaking News Australia<\/p>\n

Get the most important news as it breaks<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

But since then, the party has surged in the polls, with latest figures showing between 19 and 27% of Victorians are considering voting for One Nation.<\/p>\n

Colleen Harkin, a former member of the Liberal party\u2019s administrative committee, will contest the south-eastern metropolitan region. Harkin quit the Liberal party in June <\/a>to join One Nation.<\/p>\n

Harkin, who is the director of education at the conservative thinktank the Institute of Public Affairs, has been a vocal supporter of Moira Deeming and led a supreme court challenge against the Liberals\u2019 decision to grant John Pesutto a $1.5m loan<\/a> after he lost a defamation case against the MP.<\/p>\n

She drew controversy during the 2022 federal election campaign<\/a> as the Liberal candidate for Macnamara when she said describing global warming as a climate emergency was \u201calmost\u201d child abuse. She also sought Liberal preselection for the neighbouring seat of Goldstein in 2024 but lost to Tim Wilson<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Mark Nicholson, co-founder of animation house Stepmates Studios \u2013 which creates Hanson\u2019s cartoon web series Please Explain and her satirical, \u201canti-woke\u201d movie \u2013 will stand in the northern metropolitan region, while Geelong councillor and former police officer, Chris Burson, will contest western Victoria.<\/p>\n

Burson, who also has served with the Australian Defence Force, ran unsuccessfully for the Angry Victorians Party<\/a> at the 2022 state election and the Australian Values party at the 2022 federal election.<\/p>\n

He told a podcast in June he worked with the close personal protection team guarding then premier Daniel Andrews and his wife, Catherine, as they faced increased threats during the pandemic.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019d be sitting there kitted up, ready to go in case there was an attack. You\u2019d have your guns ready, you were in your vest,\u201d Burson said. \u201cYou\u2019d be like, \u2018how do we have six [counter-terrorism officers] looking after him and two people looking after the city of Melbourne?\u201d<\/p>\n

One Nation\u2019s only current MP, Rikkie-Lee Tyrrell, will seek re-election in northern Victoria, while Fiona Lopez, Aaron Sandford and Natalie Adams will head the party\u2019s tickets in the western metropolitan, southern metropolitan and north eastern metropolitan regions.<\/p>\n

With Pickering running in the lower house, it remains unclear who will contest the eastern Victoria region for the party.<\/p>\n

Monday\u2019s announcement comes after new Victorian premier, Ben Carroll, introduced legislation to parliament last week that will scrap group voting tickets<\/a> (GVTs). The change means if One Nation maintains its current polling, the upper house candidates in the number one spot on each ticket are the party\u2019s most likely prospects to win seats.<\/p>\n

But Hanson said One Nation will be fielding candidates in every seat at the election, with the party to release policies in coming weeks.<\/p>\n

She also said Yemini should \u201ctake credit\u201d for the decision to scrap GVTs, after he registered the\u201cFree Palestine party\u201d earlier this year, with the intention to funnel votes to conservative parties<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"One Nation has named its first candidates for the upcoming Victorian state election, as the party leader, Pauline…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":800782,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[4,450,451,3,452,453],"class_list":["post-800781","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-breaking-news","tag-breaking-news","tag-breakingnews","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/800781","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=800781"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/800781\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/800782"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=800781"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=800781"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=800781"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}