One Nation unveils Victorian candidates ahead of state election

A former high-profile Liberal who quit after suing her own party and the inner-city animator behind Pauline Hanson’s controversial “anti-woke” movie are among eight Victorian upper house candidates One Nation will formally unveil on Monday.

Warren Pickering, One Nation’s Victorian president, will run as the party’s leader in the Victorian upper house. Pickering ran the party’s campaign in the 2022 election, before an unsuccessful tilt as a Victorian senator for One Nation at the federal election last year.

Hanson said Pickering had served the party well as state president. “I have every confidence he will be an effective leader of the team we are taking to the Victorian election,” she said in a statement.

Colleen Harkin, a former member of the Liberal Party’s administrative committee, is also running for an upper house seat. Harkin led a Supreme Court challenge against the Liberals’ decision to grant John Pesutto a $1.55 million loan after he lost a defamation case against Moira Deeming. The grant spared Pesutto from bankruptcy, which would have forced a byelection in his seat of Hawthorn.

Harkin resigned from the party and quit the administrative council in June. After resigning, she said she would join One Nation and that she would consider standing as a candidate in the election.

Mark Nicholson, co-founder of animation house Stepmates Studios, which creates Hanson’s cartoon web series Please Explain, is also on One Nation’s upper house ticket. Nicholson also created, with Hanson and One Nation, A Super Progressive Movie, a controversial “anti-woke” film.

One Nation’s only current MP in the upper house, Rikki-Lee Tyrrell, will also recontest her Northern Victoria seat. In her maiden speech to parliament in 2023, Tyrrell said One Nation’s policy of net zero immigration meant her party was falsely branded racist.

“It is not about race or culture, it is about numbers. It is a resource policy,” she said.

Geelong councillor and former police officer, Chris Burson, will contest the upper house seat of Western Victoria. In 2022, Burson ran unsuccessfully for the Angry Victorians Party.

The remaining candidates on One Nation’s ticket – Fiona Lopez, Aaron Sandford and Natalie Adams – are relatively unknown. The party will hold a press conference on Monday morning.

Hanson also said there would be more announcements to come, as One Nation would stand candidates in every single seat.

“We have a talented team of people intent on restoring Victoria and kicking out the tired and toxic Labor government which has run this state into the ground, getting away with it thanks to a weak Liberal opposition,” Hanson said.

She said Victorians were fed up with violent crime, corruption, immigration rates, high taxes and Labor’s net-zero rollout. She said One Nation would dismantle the government’s treaty legislation.

“One Nation will go to this election with the policies needed to turn Victoria back in the right direction. Victorians are crying out for change, and for leadership which puts their interests first.”

The development comes amid a shake-up of Hanson’s national leadership, with her long-time chief of staff, James Ashby, promoted to the role of the party’s national director. Ashby spent more than a decade as Hanson’s closest adviser and helped to professionalise the party.

Chris Taylor, who recently worked as chief of policy at the Australian Banking Association, will become Hanson’s chief of staff.

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