Federal · on current polling

One Nation’s public funding federally

One Nation banked about $6.1m in public funding for its 2025 federal result and $140,107 for its win at the 2026 Farrer by-election. If Newspoll (YouGov)’s numbers hold, the Commonwealth’s new electoral-funding laws put it on track for about another $57.3m across the 2028 election and the cycle that follows.

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§ 1 — The 2025 result

One Nation’s 2025 result

At the May 2025 federal election, Pauline Hanson’s One Nation was a minor party with a national footprint: 991,814 first-preference votes (6.4%) in the House of Representatives and 899,296 (5.7%) in the Senate. That vote won it no House seats at the election, but Senate seats in three states — New South Wales, Queensland and Western Australia — its widest Senate result since 2016.

The chart shows combined first-preference vote shares across both houses at the 2025 election. Labor and the Coalition lead; One Nation is the band near the bottom, behind the Greens. The sections that follow apply current polling to that starting point.

§ 2 — Public funding (2025)

Per-vote public funding (2025)

The Commonwealth pays parties public money for first-preference votes. At the 2025 election the rate was $3.386 for every vote — in either house — but only for candidates who cleared 4% in a contest (each Division in the House; each state or territory in the Senate) or won it.

One Nation cleared that bar in most contests where it mattered. Applied to its eligible 2025 votes, the public funding it earned for that election comes to $6,078,750. On this wall, where each brick is worth $20,000 and a row is 25 bricks, that is already several courses — millions of dollars.

One Nation later won a whole seat: the May 2026 Farrer by-election paid it $140,107 for a single contest — the band above the 2025 courses, a separate one-off payment. The rate then rises under the new law.

§ 3 — Admin funding, 2027–28

Administrative funding, per member

The Electoral Legislation Amendment (Electoral Reform) Act 2025 — the largest rewrite of the funding rules in forty years — adds a second payment. From 1 January 2027 it pays administrative assistance funding: a flat grant of $30,000 a year for every member of the House and $15,000 for every senator, paid quarterly in advance, with no cap on the number of members.

One Nation already has a party room of 2 House members and 4 senators, so from 2027 to the 2028 election it draws $183,000 — those bricks. That is the wall as it stands on the eve of the next election. The following sections apply current polling.

§ 4 — Newspoll — Jun 2026

The polling projection

The Newspoll (YouGov) poll (1–4 Jun 2026) put One Nation at about 31.0% of the first-preference vote — about 5.1× its 2025 result.

The model takes those polled shares at face value, scales 2025 to a 2028-sized electorate, distributes the swing across all 150 Divisions and eight Senate contests, and runs the same preferential and proportional counts the Australian Electoral Commission uses. The next section sets out what 31% returns.

§ 5 — If the poll holds: seats

73 projected seats

On this polling the model projects One Nation winning 58 of 150 House seats and 12 of the 40 Senate seats up for election — which, with the 3 senators not facing the voters until 2031, leaves it 15 senators in all.

Single-member seats reward One Nation unevenly — its vote runs strongest in the regions and outer suburbs (where the model concentrates it) and thinnest in the inner cities. The funding formula, however, does not read seats. It reads votes — and on votes, One Nation’s projected result is large.

§ 6 — Public funding (2028)

Per-vote public funding (2028)

The 2025 Act made two changes at once. It lifted the per-vote rate from $3.386 to $5.00 — a 48% rise — and it took effect as One Nation’s vote rose. Applied to its projected 2028 vote, the entitlement is about $50.7m, paid in the months after the election.

The value of your “1” vote will now ramp up to $5. Effectively that’s $10 per elector, as you get both a House and Senate vote.
Graeme Orr · Professor of electoral law, University of Queensland

Those courses are 8× the whole of One Nation’s 2025 public funding — the rate increase and the polling rise combined. The money tracks votes, not seats: whatever One Nation wins in Parliament, the value of the vote itself is large.

§ 7 — Admin funding to 2031

Administrative funding to 2031

The post-2028 party room — 73 members in all — resets the administrative funding at $30,000 per House member and $15,000 per senator, indexed each year. Fresh blocks land each financial year through to the 2031 election — about $6.3m across the term, on top of the public funding below.

§ 8 — The whole wall

$63.5m in all

In total, One Nation banked about $6.2m in public funding for its 2025 result and the 2026 Farrer by-election. If the Newspoll (YouGov) numbers hold, it is on track for about another $57.3m under the new electoral-funding laws — a total of $63,479,862 in public and administrative funding from the 2025 election to 2031.

The money front-loads: about $59.2m — 93% of the whole — will have been paid by a year after the 2028 election, when the 2028 entitlement falls due. The 2025 Act also creates scope to pay some of it in advance, before the election — but that power depends on regulations that have not been made, so it is left out here. With it in effect, the cash would land sooner still.

Funding sourceAmount
Public funding — 2025 election$6,078,750
Public funding — 2026 Farrer by-election$140,107
Admin funding — 2027–28 (current party room)$183,000
Public funding — 2028 election$50,728,444
Admin funding — FY29$2,064,478
Admin funding — FY30$2,116,090
Admin funding — FY31$2,168,992
Total over the period$63,479,862
…the taxpayer will be funding over half of the cost of major party election campaigns.
Bill Browne · The Australia Institute

One Nation has long been run by Pauline Hanson as a small organisation rather than a large party apparatus, and its funding here flows from a framework designed primarily for the major parties. The 2025 Act was described as reducing the role of large private money in politics; for a party that polls well, it increases the public money received.

More in this series

One Nation: public funding

How much public money One Nation receives from each contest, March 2026 to mid-2031.

Methodology

Vote and seat projections start from the AEC’s 2025 federal results (150 House Divisions, eight Senate contests). For the selected poll the model rakes the per-division vote (iterative proportional fitting) so the national first-preference total lands exactly on the poll’s published figures — distributing One Nation across divisions by its AEC demographic class (Inner / Outer Metropolitan, Provincial, Rural), concentrating its surge where the party is strongest rather than spreading it evenly. Vote counts are scaled to a 2028-sized electorate for the funding dollars: the 2025 vote grown by enrolment growth to 2028 (about 1.6% a year, matching the AEC roll’s observed 2022–2025 increase), on the assumption that formal-vote growth tracks enrolment growth.

The House is counted by instant-runoff; the Senate replicates each state’s House projection and is allocated by Droop quota with party-level preference transfers — an approximation of how voters spread their own preferences, since group voting tickets no longer decide the flows (they were abolished in 2016). The vote charts show first preferences for both houses combined; because the polls measure House voting intention, the projection takes the Senate vote as following the House.

The 2025 crossbench — the community independents, Bob Katter, and the lone Greens seat — is modelled as concentrated local candidates rather than smeared into the national “other” vote, so each holds its seat by default; but each is still decided by a real preference count, and a strong enough One Nation / Coalition surge can unseat the most marginal of them. A polled party vote doesn’t measure a named local independent, so their personal vote is held near its 2025 level and eased down only under adverse national pressure — One Nation can take Coalition and Labor seats, and the thinnest crossbench seats, but it does not simply inherit the entire crossbench.

The Coalition is modelled as a single bloc — federally its vote is counted as one Coalition figure, so Lib and Nat are not split out and recombined as on the Victoria page. And because the Senate is not separately polled — each state’s Senate vote follows its House projection — One Nation’s projected Senate seats, which set its post-2028 admin-funding party room, are approximate.

Funding applies the Commonwealth Electoral Act 1918 as amended by the Electoral Legislation Amendment (Electoral Reform) Act 2025: the new $5.00-per-vote rate (up from $3.386 at the 2025 election), the 4%-or-elected eligibility test per contest, and the new flat administrative assistance funding ($30,000 per House member, $15,000 per senator, from January 2027).

The 9 May 2026 Farrer by-election is a separate, one-off public-funding payment, paid at the indexed $3.499 rate (the seat was won before the reforms commenced). It is counted once, inside the federal total above — distinct from the same seat’s share of the 2025 general-election funding, and from the administrative funding its member now draws (already counted). See the Farrer story for the full result.

Public funding is treated as paid after each election (the standing automatic-payment and claims mechanism); the Act’s advance-payment power (Schedule 7, Part 3) is not modelled because it depends on regulations that have not been made. The new regime commences 1 January 2027 and first applies at the next election (~2028). Dollar amounts are entitlements claimed in full — the historic cap that limited public funding to a party’s actual electoral expenditure is treated as non-binding.

These figures are a point projection, not a forecast: the model takes the selected poll at face value and shows what the funding rules would pay if the 2028 election reproduced it — no margin of error or probability is attached.

Written, designed and coded by Simon Holmes à Court.