One Nation’s 2022 result
At the 2022 Victorian state election, Pauline Hanson’s One Nation was a minor presence. It contested a handful of lower-house seats and the Legislative Council, receiving 8,077 first-preference votes (0.2% of the formal vote) in the lower house and 76,734 (2.0%) in the upper house. It won no seats in the lower house. Victoria’s group voting ticket system, which lets parties trade preferences above the line, turned 3.7% (less than a quarter of a quota) of the vote in the Northern Victoria region into a single Legislative Council seat.
The chart shows the proportion of first-preference votes received at the 2022 Victorian state election across both houses. Labor and the Coalition are the largest shares; the Greens are third; One Nation is the thin band near the bottom.
Per-vote public funding
Victoria pays parties public money for first-preference votes. At the 2022 election the rate was $6.49 for each lower-house vote and $3.24 for each Council vote, but only for candidates who cleared 4% in a contest, or won it.
One Nation received 8,077 lower-house votes and 76,734 Council votes in 2022, but the 4% threshold excluded nearly all of them: only 2,648 in Morwell and 2,597 in Bendigo East cleared the bar. Only the two contests they cleared, plus the Northern Victoria region they won, counted. The public funding they received after the 2022 election came to $90,111. On this wall, where each brick is worth $20,000, that is a small number of bricks.
Advance funding for 2026
There is also an advance. A party that qualified last time is paid an advance toward the next election, worth 100% of its previous entitlement and disbursed in 4 instalments (40% up front, then 20% a year).
One Nation’s small 2022 result sets that advance at $90,111 for the 2026 cycle — a second small number of bricks. The significance of the formula becomes clearer in the sections that follow.
Administrative funding to the 2026 election
There is a second stream. Parties with members in Parliament also draw administrative-expenditure funding — an annual grant per member. One Nation holds that single Legislative Council seat — the one its group-ticket deals won in 2022 — and it earns $215,865 in admin funding in the run-up to the 2026 election — those blocks.
That is the wall as it stands today: a small amount of public funding and a single seat’s admin grant. The next sections apply the current polling.
Current polling
The Freshwater Strategy poll put One Nation at about 25.0% of the first-preference vote — out in front on these numbers, comfortably ahead of the Liberals.
The model takes those polled shares at face value, distributes them across districts and regions on One Nation’s observed geographic pattern, and runs the same preferential and proportional counts the Victorian Electoral Commission uses. The following sections set out what 25.0% is worth in funding.
Freshwater Strategy poll of Victorian state voting intention for the Herald Sun, fielded 5–8 June 2026 (n=1,034): ALP 23, Coalition 27, One Nation 25, Greens 14, Independents/Other 11. Two-party-preferred 53–47 to the Coalition. We take these first-preference figures as published. Freshwater published no regional breakdown, so One Nation's vote is distributed on its observed geographic concentration (the same metro-to-rural shape as the April Roy Morgan poll), scaled to the 25% statewide figure — assuming a flat distribution would wrongly hand it no lower-house seats.
42 projected seats
On this polling, the model projects One Nation winning 30 of 88 seats in the Legislative Assembly and 12 of 40 in the Legislative Council — 42 members across the two chambers, from a starting point of one.
The charts show both houses, with Liberal and National kept separate rather than folded into a single Coalition bar. Seats are a point projection, not a forecast, but they are what the funding formula reads off. From here the wall grows substantially.
Public-funding top-up
After the election, the advance is reconciled against the actual result. One Nation’s 25.0% earns a 2026 entitlement of about $11.0m; subtract the small advance already paid and the Commission tops them up by $10,895,963.
Those top-up courses are more than a hundred times the number One Nation received after the 2022 election. Further funding follows.
Advance funding for 2030
The same rule that gave One Nation almost nothing in 2026 now works substantially in its favour. Its 2026 result becomes the basis for the 2030 advance — another 100% of the 2026 entitlement, $10,986,075, paid across 2027–2030 before a single 2030 vote is cast.
In total, public funding alone runs to about $22.1m over the period — the 2026 entitlement effectively paid twice over, once reconciled as a top-up after the election and again advanced for 2030.
Administrative funding to 2030
The 42-member party room also resets the admin-funding stream — at the rates in the new law: $300,000 for a party’s first member, $100,000 for the second, and $55,000 for each of the third to 45th, indexed each year. Because its members are sworn in only after the November 2026 election, FY27 is a part-year — admin funding starts in January 2027 — and then fresh blocks land each financial year through FY30.
About $9.7m in admin funding across the cycle, on top of the public-funding courses below (each year is itemised in the table at the end).
Advance funding for 2034
The wall does not stop at 2030. The 2030 election is barely counted before the cycle begins again: a party that qualified is paid an advance toward the next election — 2034 — on the same 40/20/20/20 schedule. The first 40% tranche is payable in the first months of 2031, within months of the 2030 vote.
For One Nation that opening tranche is $4,394,430 — further courses laid on top, alongside the new party room’s first admin quarters, before the period is over. The funding does not stop at the 2030 election; it continues across the next five years and beyond.
$38.6m in total
In total, One Nation’s 2022 result earns it about $396k — the 2022 public funding, the advance for 2026, and a single seat’s admin grant. If the Freshwater Strategy polling holds, about another $38.2m follows it — a total of $38,612,756 in public and administrative funding over the cycle, from a party that began the cycle with a small number of bricks.
Victorians were told donation caps would level the playing field, but they have done the opposite.Bill Browne · The Australia Institute
The funding also arrives early. Nearly half of it — about $17.0m, 44% of the whole — is paid by April 2027, within months of the November 2026 election: the post-election top-up and the first instalment of the 2030 advance both fall due in the new year.
| Funding source | Amount |
|---|---|
| Public funding — 2022 election | $90,111 |
| Advance public funding — 2026 election | $90,111 |
| Admin funding — to the 2026 election (Legislative Council seat) | $215,865 |
| Public-funding top-up — after the 2026 election | $10,895,963 |
| Advance public funding — 2030 election | $10,986,075 |
| Admin funding — FY27 (part-year, from Jan 2027) | $1,332,500 |
| Admin funding — FY28 | $2,731,625 |
| Admin funding — FY29 | $2,799,916 |
| Admin funding — FY30 | $2,869,914 |
| Admin funding — FY31 (post-2030 party room, to the window's close) | $2,206,246 |
| Advance public funding — first tranche, 2034 election | $4,394,430 |
| Total over the cycle | $38,612,756 |
…major party spending was barely affected but minor parties and independents face an uphill battle.Bill Browne · The Australia Institute
One Nation’s funding follows from the structure of Victoria’s electoral funding regime: a per-vote entitlement, an advance paid before each election and reconciled afterward, and an administrative grant that scales with a party’s numbers. A result that returned a single seat in 2022 produces, on the current polling, funding at the scale set out above, drawn from the state budget.