Seventeen minutes into Pauline Hanson’s first address to the National Press Club, a yellow banner slowly unfurled behind the stage.
asserted
banner → unfurl → stage
“I opposed a pay rise for workers while I took a $100,000 pay rise for myself,” it read, alongside an image of her wearing eight-bit sunglasses – a staple of online “thug life” memes.
asserted
her → oppose → memes
The crowd gasped.
asserted
crowd → gasp → ?
Security moved quickly.
asserted
Security → move → ?
The poster was removed and Hanson continued, with little more than a wry grin and a shake of the head.
asserted
Hanson → remove → head
Amid the lampooning, blacklisting and condemnation since, the GetUp acting chief executive believes Australia is making the same mistake that reshaped politics across Europe and the United States: underestimating populism until it is too late.
asserted
it → act → populism
Ferris returned to Australia last year after more than a decade working on left-wing campaigns in Sweden, including for the Swedish Greens and the Reform Society, convinced that Australia was not immune to the forces reshaping Europe.
“This isn’t an Australian phenomenon,” Ferris says.
asserted
Ferris → return → Europe
“You only need to look at recent elections in the US; you only need to look at what’s happening in the UK; you only need to have spent some time, as I have, looking at what’s been happening politically in Europe for a number of decades now to realise that this is real, and this isn’t going away anytime soon.”
asserted
this → need → decades
His diagnosis is that Australia, and much of the mainstream media, has treated Hanson and One Nation as a circus act rather than a serious political force.
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Australia → treat → act
That Press Club “stunt”, he says, had method and strategy.
asserted
he → say → method
“Our research is pretty clear that, in particular, on Pauline Hanson’s record on workers’ rights and industrial relations, when some of her newest and softest supporters see that record, they really don’t like what they see,” he says.
asserted
he → see → what
A police investigation into the incident means he’s hamstrung about what he can say.
asserted
he → mean → what
“If you sort of look past the noise of the coverage and the noise of the discussion about GetUp specifically, there is a powerful message there, which did reach millions of people who are not going in and closely examining the parliamentary voting record of politicians and parties.”
asserted
who → look → politicians
The stunt has re-energised GetUp’s activist base.
asserted
stunt → re → base
More than $1 million in donations has flowed in since, its highest monthly total since 2022, while it added 1500 new monthly donors — the highest growth in more than a decade.
asserted
it → flow → decade
It attracted more than 10 million views across social media channels.
asserted
It → attract → channels
That belief now underpins GetUp’s biggest strategic shift in years.
asserted
belief → underpin → years
Research commissioned after the Farrer by-election, where GetUp spent $600,000 on an anti-Hanson message to no avail, found 48 per cent of One Nation voters had settled on their vote in the first weeks of the campaign, before GetUp had run a single advertisement.
asserted
GetUp → commission → advertisement
For Ferris, the finding confirmed something he had already come to believe.
asserted
he → confirm → something
“I think we’ve passed the era where an election is won during the course of an election campaign itself,” he says.
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he → think → campaign
“It is about the ground that’s laid in the years leading up to an election.”
asserted
that → lay → election
Instead of concentrating spending during six-week campaigns, GetUp wants to spend the next two years prosecuting One Nation’s parliamentary record on wages, healthcare, cost of living and workers’ rights.
asserted
GetUp → concentrate → living
“The question at this point isn’t whether or not to engage with One Nation,” Ferris says.
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Ferris → engage → Nation
“It’s what that work looks like.”
asserted
work → ’ → what
Whether that strategy succeeds may determine more than GetUp’s own future.
uncertain
succeeds → succeed → future
Barnaby Joyce, the star One Nation recruit, has ridiculed and mocked the organisation’s tactics and missteps for years.
asserted
Joyce → ridicule → years
He called them “dopey” for wasting resources targeting conservative MPs without luck.
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He → call → luck
When they announced they’d fight the Farrer by-election, he could barely hide his delight.
uncertain
he → announce → delight
“No one takes GetUp seriously as being, sort of, a discerning, balanced view,” Joyce said at the time.
asserted
Joyce → take → time
“When they hear GetUp, they go ‘here goes a whole heap of bile’.”
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heap → hear → bile
After the Press Club protest, he went further, asking what if the banner had been a bomb?
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banner → go → protest
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese described the interruption as “counter-productive”, adding politicians should be free to make a speech without stunts.
Former Labor campaign strategist and MP David Feeney was even more critical.
asserted
Feeney → describe → stunts
In a discussion on the Socially Democratic podcast, he called GetUp a “bunch of amateurs” who are “no use” to the progressive movement.
asserted
who → call → movement
“This is a bunch of lefties sitting on a couch trying to justify their existence so that some idiot continues to send them $20 a month,” he said.
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he → sit → 20
Feeney said the stunt had generated sympathy for Hanson.
asserted
stunt → say → Hanson
But his co-host Jessie McCrone, a long-time senior aide to former Victorian premier Daniel Andrews, disagreed.
asserted
- → disagree → Andrews
She says: “There would have been a debate in GetUp whether they go with a ‘you’re a racist, Pauline’ message and I frankly think that it’s good they went with the economic one.”
asserted
they → say → one
She says it was “elegantly done” and “not some Trot with half her head shaved and, like, a nose ring, storming the stage to do it.”
asserted
head → say → it
For much of the past two decades, GetUp has become one of Australia’s most influential progressive campaigning organisations, mobilising supporters on issues from the Iraq war, climate policy and marriage equality to refugee rights.
GetUp’s fortunes shifted after 2019, when it threw enormous resources into defeating Coalition MPs while campaigning against the proposed Adani coal mine.
asserted
it → become → mine
Scott Morrison’s surprise election victory triggered a reckoning.
asserted
victory → trigger → reckoning
…and 30 more, not listed.
The Aporia
