GetUp will spend at least $600,000 trying to stop Pauline Hanson’s One Nation from converting its extraordinary surge in Victoria into parliamentary power, launching a targeted campaign across five Labor-held electorates ahead of November’s state election.
But buried inside the progressive campaign group’s warning about One Nation is an unusually candid admission.
The political establishment has failed to deal adequately with the economic pressures confronting many working Australians.
And simply dismissing Hanson voters as racists or “deplorables” will not bring them back.
GetUp’s new “Stop One Nation” campaign will concentrate money, organisers and volunteers in Melbourne’s southeast, where the organisation believes Hanson’s party has a realistic chance of breaking into traditionally Labor territory.
The five seats in its sights are Frankston, Cranbourne, Carrum, Narre Warren North and Narre Warren South.
The campaign represents one of the clearest signs yet that progressive organisations are treating One Nation not merely as a protest party, but as an electoral force capable of reshaping Victoria’s parliament.
GetUp calls One Nation a ‘unique threat’
GetUp acting chief executive Paul Ferris has used uncompromising language to explain the organisation’s decision.
He describes One Nation as a unique threat to Australian democracy and places Hanson’s rise within a wider international trend of populist political movements challenging established parties.
GetUp draws comparisons with the movements surrounding Donald Trump in the United States and Nigel Farage in Britain.
Its argument is that One Nation’s growth should not be treated as an ordinary fluctuation in party politics.
The organisation believes Hanson’s party needs to be confronted directly before it acquires enough seats to exercise significant leverage over government.
But this campaign is different from simply attacking Hanson
Ferris is simultaneously warning progressives against one of their most familiar responses to One Nation.
Do not assume everyone considering voting for Hanson is racist.
Do not treat them with contempt.
And do not imagine moral condemnation will address the reasons voters are abandoning the major parties.
That is an important change in emphasis.
For decades, much of the political response to Hanson concentrated on the offensiveness or divisiveness of her rhetoric.
GetUp now acknowledges that this alone does not explain One Nation’s expanding vote.
Economic frustration is at the centre of the new strategy
Housing affordability.
Rents.
Wages.
Childcare.
Healthcare.
Cost of living.
These are the issues GetUp intends to discuss with voters on the ground.
That reflects its conclusion that the battle against One Nation cannot be won by talking only about Pauline Hanson.
It has to address why voters are listening to her.
Ferris says the establishment has failed those voters
One of the most consequential aspects of GetUp’s campaign is its acknowledgement that dissatisfaction with mainstream politics is not imaginary.
Many Australians have experienced substantial increases in housing and household costs.
Some feel wages and essential services have failed to keep pace.
Others believe governments have prioritised political arguments far removed from their immediate financial problems.
GetUp’s position is that One Nation is exploiting those grievances.
But recognising the grievances themselves as legitimate represents a significant distinction.
That distinction matters in working-class electorates
One Nation’s recent growth has challenged an old assumption about where Hanson’s support comes from.
The party is competing not only for conservative voters dissatisfied with the Liberal and National parties.
It is increasingly targeting outer-suburban and regional voters who have historically supported Labor.
That makes Melbourne’s southeast particularly important.
These communities contain precisely the voters both Labor and One Nation need if they are to perform strongly in November.
GetUp is targeting Labor seats, not Liberal heartland
That is perhaps the most revealing feature of the campaign map.
Frankston.
Cranbourne.
Carrum.
Narre Warren North.
Narre Warren South.
All five are currently held by Labor.
GetUp’s concern is therefore not primarily that Hanson will cannibalise the traditional conservative vote in wealthy Liberal electorates.
It fears One Nation can penetrate communities that once formed part of Labor’s electoral foundation.
Victoria is becoming a three-way political contest
Recent polling has transformed expectations surrounding the November election.
Instead of a conventional Labor-versus-Coalition contest, One Nation has emerged as a serious third force.
Recent reporting has placed the three major blocs in roughly the same territory on primary votes, at around one quarter of voters each.
That does not mean One Nation will necessarily win a comparable share of lower-house seats.
Australia’s preferential electoral system and the geographic distribution of votes matter enormously.
But a primary vote at anything approaching those levels would make One Nation impossible to ignore.
The Legislative Council could be even more important
One Nation does not necessarily need to win government to transform Victorian politics.
A strong performance in the upper house could give the party significant influence over legislation.
If neither Labor nor the Coalition controls the Legislative Council, minor parties and crossbenchers can determine whether contested bills pass.
That is why GetUp is talking about stopping One Nation from acquiring the balance of power.
It fears Hanson could gain leverage disproportionate to the number of lower-house electorates her party ultimately wins.
But balance of power is a possibility, not an established outcome
Polling months before an election should be treated cautiously.
Primary-vote numbers can move.
Campaigns matter.
Candidates matter.
Preferences matter.
And support spread broadly across Victoria may translate into seats differently from support concentrated within particular electorates.
One Nation’s polling surge therefore establishes electoral opportunity, not an inevitable result.
GetUp’s $600,000 campaign is designed precisely to change that result.
There is another reason the figure $600,000 stands out
GetUp has been here before.
Earlier this year, the organisation spent roughly the same amount attempting to stop One Nation in the federal seat of Farrer.
The result was painful.
One Nation won.
GetUp lost.
Badly, by its own admission.
Farrer was supposed to stop One Nation’s momentum
The organisation poured approximately $600,000 into a six-week campaign around the by-election.
Its operation included advertising and substantial campaigning designed to prevent One Nation from converting its polling strength into an actual House of Representatives seat.
The effort failed.
David Farley won Farrer for One Nation, giving Hanson’s party another important demonstration that its support could be converted into lower-house representation.
The result forced GetUp to reconsider its strategy.
Ferris publicly acknowledged the scale of the defeat
Writing after Farrer, Ferris did not attempt to disguise what happened.
GetUp had spent $600,000.
It had campaigned for six weeks.
And, as he put it, the organisation “lost, badly”.
That admission is significant because the Victorian campaign is not simply a repeat of Farrer.
GetUp says it has learned from the defeat.
The lesson was that advertising alone cannot defeat a protest vote
One Nation’s appeal is rooted partly in dissatisfaction with institutions.
That creates a problem for campaigns dominated by establishment warnings about Hanson.
If voters already believe political institutions do not listen to them, being told by another political organisation that their preferred candidate is dangerous can reinforce rather than weaken their resentment.
GetUp’s response in Victoria is to put greater emphasis on direct conversations.
Door knocking.
Local organisers.
Volunteers.
Polling booths.
Community engagement.
The $600,000 will fund a substantial ground operation
GetUp plans to mobilise thousands of volunteers and deploy paid organisers across its target electorates.
The grassroots effort will be accompanied by social-media campaigning and advertising.
That means voters in the five targeted seats can expect a sustained campaign extending from their phones to their front doors.
Rather than relying exclusively on national messaging about Hanson, organisers intend to talk about local economic concerns.
That represents an implicit concession about One Nation’s message
If voters were moving to Hanson solely because of racial or cultural politics, GetUp’s response could focus overwhelmingly on those issues.
Instead, the organisation is preparing to campaign on material living standards.
That tells us something important about its own assessment of One Nation’s electorate.
Economic insecurity is part of the story.
One Nation has increasingly linked migration to those economic pressures
Hanson’s party argues Australia’s rapid population growth has intensified competition for housing.
It says infrastructure has failed to keep pace.
It links migration to congestion, rental pressure and stretched public services.
One Nation wants net overseas migration reduced to 130,000 annually.
Its opponents dispute both its diagnosis and aspects of its proposed solutions.
But the political effectiveness of the message is obvious.
It gives frustrated voters a simple explanation connecting immigration policy with problems they encounter every day.
GetUp needs an alternative explanation
Simply telling those voters that Hanson is wrong is unlikely to be enough.
GetUp’s Victorian strategy therefore attempts to redirect anger towards economic policy.
The organisation wants voters thinking about healthcare, wages, childcare and household costs rather than accepting One Nation’s explanation that migration and cultural change are at the centre of their problems.
That is a much more difficult political contest than running an anti-Hanson advertisement.
Ferris is also warning against Hillary Clinton’s ‘deplorables’ mistake
The reference carries obvious international political baggage.
During the 2016 United States presidential election, Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton famously described half of Donald Trump’s supporters as belonging in a “basket of deplorables”.
The phrase became a political gift to Trump.
His supporters adopted it as evidence that liberal elites looked down upon ordinary Americans.
GetUp does not want Australian progressives repeating that mistake.
The warning is simple: attack the politics, not the voters
Ferris argues One Nation supporters need to be engaged respectfully.
That does not mean GetUp accepts Hanson’s policies.
Quite the opposite.
The organisation is spending hundreds of thousands of dollars specifically to defeat her candidates.
But it distinguishes between opposing a political movement and treating everyone attracted to that movement as morally deficient.
That may be the most strategically important element of the entire campaign.
GetUp’s language about Hanson nevertheless remains severe
The organisation is not moderating its assessment of One Nation itself.
It characterises Hanson’s movement as far right and argues it represents a unique danger to Australian democracy.
Its public “Never One Nation” campaign asks Australians to pledge opposition to the party and frames the choice in stark terms.
One Nation naturally rejects that characterisation.
The party presents itself as a democratic challenge to an establishment that has ignored ordinary Australians.
That disagreement will now play out directly in Victorian communities.
There is an obvious democratic tension in the campaign
GetUp is entitled to campaign against One Nation.
One Nation is entitled to campaign against GetUp’s preferred political agenda.
Both can mobilise supporters, spend lawful campaign funds and attempt to persuade voters.
Ultimately, Victorian voters decide.
Calling a democratically participating party a threat to democracy is therefore a substantial political claim, not a neutral description.
GetUp’s argument rests on what it believes One Nation would do with political influence, not on the proposition that its voters lack a democratic right to support it.
One Nation will almost certainly use GetUp’s intervention to its advantage
For Hanson, a $600,000 campaign organised specifically to stop her party provides an obvious political message.
She can portray it as evidence that progressive institutions are frightened of voters abandoning the established political order.
One Nation has long benefited from opposition by organisations its supporters regard as part of that establishment.
Every attack can therefore become proof of the narrative Hanson is already selling.
That was one of the problems exposed in Farrer
GetUp went into Farrer determined to stop One Nation.
One Nation won anyway.
A campaign designed to make Hanson politically toxic did not prevent voters from supporting her candidate.
The lesson GetUp appears to have drawn is not that campaigning is pointless.
It is that campaigning has to begin with voters’ concerns rather than an organisation’s assumptions about those voters.
Victoria provides a much larger test
Farrer was one electorate.
Victoria contains 88 Legislative Assembly districts and an upper-house contest capable of producing complicated crossbench outcomes.
One Nation is attempting to field candidates across most of the state.
The party is targeting vulnerable Labor territory while simultaneously competing with the Coalition for conservative votes.
A strong result could therefore hurt both major blocs.
Labor has perhaps the most immediate reason to worry
GetUp’s target list makes that obvious.
Every seat selected for the initial campaign is Labor-held.
Victoria’s government is attempting to win another term after more than a decade in office.
It faces public frustration over state debt, infrastructure, crime, housing and cost-of-living pressures.
Ben Carroll is trying to present his premiership as a new direction for Labor.
One Nation’s rise complicates that strategy.
Labor can no longer assume dissatisfaction flows directly to the Liberals
That is one of the biggest structural changes in Victorian politics.
Under the traditional two-party model, a voter angry with Labor was expected to move towards the Coalition, directly or through preferences.
One Nation gives disaffected voters another destination.
That makes elections less predictable.
It also means dissatisfaction with Labor does not automatically benefit Opposition Leader Jess Wilson.
The Coalition faces its own danger
One Nation is also competing aggressively for voters who historically supported the Liberals and Nationals.
Hanson’s party argues the Coalition has abandoned conservative positions on immigration, energy and cultural issues.
That places the Liberals in a difficult position.
Move towards One Nation and they risk reinforcing Hanson’s agenda.
Attack her aggressively and they risk alienating voters they need to win back.
The Victorian election is therefore becoming genuinely triangular.
Preferences could become decisive
Under Victoria’s preferential voting system, a strong One Nation primary vote does not automatically translate into a seat.
Where preferences flow will matter enormously.
A One Nation candidate finishing second could potentially overtake Labor or Liberal candidates depending on preference distributions.
Conversely, a substantial statewide vote spread inefficiently could produce fewer lower-house victories than headline polling suggests.
This is why electorate-level campaigning matters.
GetUp is not trying merely to reduce One Nation’s statewide percentage.
It is concentrating resources where votes could translate into seats.
And the upper house presents a different calculation again
Minor parties traditionally have greater opportunities to gain representation in proportional upper-house contests.
If One Nation performs strongly enough, it could become an important player in determining which government legislation succeeds.
That is the scenario GetUp most explicitly wants to prevent.
A party does not need to form government to possess political power.
Holding decisive votes can be enough.
GetUp’s campaign is therefore partly about the parliament after election night
The organisation is thinking beyond who becomes premier.
It is asking what happens when the next Victorian government attempts to pass legislation.
Could One Nation demand concessions?
Could it block government bills?
Could it determine the fate of controversial reforms?
Those possibilities explain why a progressive organisation is prepared to invest heavily before the party has actually won those positions.
Yet GetUp’s own diagnosis creates an uncomfortable challenge
If the political establishment has failed working Australians, stopping One Nation does not fix that failure.
A campaign can persuade somebody not to vote for Hanson.
It cannot make their rent cheaper.
It cannot automatically increase their wage.
It cannot shorten a hospital waiting list.
It cannot build a house.
It cannot make childcare affordable.
Those outcomes ultimately require policy and government action.
That may be the central contradiction of anti-populist campaigning
Political organisations can warn voters about the consequences of supporting a populist party.
But if the conditions producing the protest vote remain unchanged, another protest movement can simply take its place.
Ferris appears to recognise that problem.
His comments suggest progressives need to offer a material economic argument rather than relying on condemnation.
One Nation’s opponents are therefore beginning to take its voters more seriously
That alone marks a change in Australian politics.
Hanson has spent much of her career being treated as someone whose support would eventually collapse once mainstream parties confronted her.
In 2026, opponents are spending hundreds of thousands of dollars developing specialised strategies to stop her.
They are hiring organisers.
They are targeting electorates.
They are analysing economic grievances.
And they are warning their own supporters that contempt for One Nation voters is politically self-defeating.
That is not the behaviour of an organisation confronting an irrelevant fringe party.
It is the behaviour of an organisation that believes the electoral threat is real.
The $600,000 figure is consequently less important than the strategic shift behind it
GetUp spent $600,000 in Farrer and failed.
It is prepared to commit at least another $600,000 in Victoria.
But this time it says the campaign will be more deeply rooted in local communities and everyday economic concerns.
The organisation wants to persuade voters that their frustration is legitimate while arguing Hanson is offering the wrong answer.
That is a considerably more sophisticated proposition than telling people simply not to vote for One Nation.
Whether it works is another question entirely
One Nation’s rise is being driven by forces considerably larger than any single campaign.
Cost-of-living pressure.
Housing anxiety.
Migration.
Distrust of political institutions.
Frustration with Labor.
Disappointment with the Coalition.
And Hanson’s unusual ability to present herself as an outsider despite three decades in federal politics.
A $600,000 campaign cannot make those forces disappear.
It can, however, make five Victorian electorates political battlegrounds
Residents of Frankston, Cranbourne, Carrum, Narre Warren North and Narre Warren South are about to become the focus of an organised national activist campaign.
GetUp volunteers will be asking them not to give One Nation power.
Hanson’s candidates will be asking them to reject precisely the political establishment GetUp says has failed them.
Labor will be fighting to keep its seats.
And the Coalition will be trying to prevent itself being squeezed out of a contest that traditionally belonged to two major parties.
November will determine which argument voters find more convincing.
But GetUp has already made one concession that may prove more important than its entire advertising budget.
If progressives want to stop Pauline Hanson, they cannot merely condemn the Australians voting for her.
They first have to understand why those Australians stopped listening to everyone else.
