A One Nation Staffer Allegedly Pretended to Be a Progressive Meme Page to Trick Protesters on Camera

A One Nation staffer has been accused of pretending to be from a progressive social media page while filming undercover videos at rallies against Pauline Hanson, according to a Guardian Australia report published on 14 August 2026.

The page in question is called Toilet Paper Australia. It's a political meme and commentary account with 128,000 Instagram followers. The owners say followers tipped them off that a One Nation representative had been showing up at rallies in Brisbane and other cities, telling protesters he was "from Toilet Paper Australia" when asking for interviews (Guardian Australia).

Toilet Paper Australia regularly criticises One Nation. The owners received multiple reports from followers before going public.

One Nation has been posting a series of videos on Instagram, TikTok and X, on pages run by both the party and Senator Hanson herself. In the videos, a young male host goes to leftwing protests and tries to make protesters look silly in filmed interviews. Hanson appears to back the videos.

Guardian Australia spoke to three people who were at a Brisbane rally in June, organised by a group called Campaign Against Racism and Fascism. All three said the host in the One Nation videos approached them and claimed to be from Toilet Paper Australia.

One of those protesters, Che Janz, ended up in a One Nation video. He said the host walked up to him and his friends and said: "I'm from Toilet Paper Australia and I'm doing some interviews here." Janz said he didn't think anything of it at the time, because people filming at rallies for social media is pretty common.

In one of the One Nation videos, the host says on camera: "I'm going undercover to protest against my boss, Pauline Hanson."

The party has been openly promoting the undercover operation on its own channels for weeks. On 30 July, One Nation posted a video on its official Facebook page titled "That did not go down as well as they hoped it would…" The party said it "went undercover to an anti-Pauline Hanson march" and claimed a feminist rally had "backfired" when Hanson's supporters flooded it (One Nation Facebook).

An earlier video went up on Pauline Hanson's Facebook page on 15 June, titled "While protestors were trying to shut us down in Melbourne, One Nation went undercover." Hanson appeared on Sky News Australia's The Kenny Report to defend the tactic. Sky News host Chris Kenny had already reacted to the staffer's undercover infiltration of an anti-One Nation event by mid-July (Hanson Facebook; YouTube).

So the party was happy to boast about going undercover at its opponents' rallies. What it didn't tell anyone was that its interviewer was apparently pretending to be a progressive content creator, one whose actual owners are hostile to One Nation, to get protesters to lower their guard.

Here's why that matters. There's a difference between a political party filming at a public rally, which anyone is allowed to do, and a party staffer lying about who they work for to get people to speak freely because they think they're talking to a friendly outlet. The second one is a form of deception that uses the trust an independent page has built up with its audience.

For Toilet Paper Australia, the risk goes both ways. The page is openly anti-One Nation. If its name is being used to trick protesters into unguarded moments that get edited for the party's social media, the owners have a real grievance that goes beyond protecting their brand. Their audience might be scared off engaging with anyone who claims to represent the page at future events.

The broader context here is the increasingly blurry line between political campaigning and social media content in Australia. Minor parties and independents now run polished multi-platform operations that mix party messaging with entertainment. One Nation's undercover video series fits right into that trend. It's made to be shared widely, designed to mock political opponents, and put on the platforms where younger voters get their political content. What's new is not the tactic itself but the alleged impersonation of someone else's brand to pull it off.

There's also the issue of who polices parliamentary staffers. Labor, the Coalition and the Greens all have standards or rules for their staff, though how well they're enforced varies. Minor parties, especially ones built around a single dominant figure, mostly set their own rules. One Nation has not publicly addressed the impersonation allegation. Whether the Senate's privileges committee or any other parliamentary body takes an interest is a question for others to answer.

What we know for sure is this: a One Nation staffer went to anti-Hanson rallies, told protesters he was from a page that routinely attacks the party, filmed the interviews, and the party published the footage on its social media with Hanson's apparent backing. The owners of the page whose name was used say they had nothing to do with it.