One Nation has a new leader for Victoria's state election in November 2026. His name is Warren Pickering. The problem? He once told a podcast that the party's big promise to deport people en masse is "not a reality" and "won't happen" — which is the opposite of what party leader Pauline Hanson and federal senator Malcolm Roberts have been saying. Guardian Australia

Pickering was announced as One Nation's Victorian leader on 3 August 2026. He's the party's Victorian state president, a former Senate candidate, and he'll run for the lower-house seat of Pakenham. So the party has put someone who has publicly said its own policy can't work in charge of its campaign.

The comments come from an April 2025 interview on a conservative podcast called WilmsFront. Pickering said he supported One Nation's goals to "abolish multiculturalism" and deport 75,000 people. But he also said he didn't believe mass deportations would happen in any Western country. He said One Nation would "not discriminate against people that are already Australian citizens". On a different podcast that same month, Carly Unfiltered, Pickering said "people have had a gutful of these dinosaurs, these 70-year-old elites in the major political parties" and suggested politicians over 55 should "handball it to the next generation".

The contradiction with Hanson is pretty clear. When Channel Seven asked Hanson about mass deportation, she said "I love it". Senator Malcolm Roberts has pushed for what he calls "remigration" — sending back international students and people who have overstayed their visas. He's said of visa overstayers: "That's 100,000 we would deport, remigrate. Call it what you want." One Nation has never explained exactly how it would carry out a mass deportation policy. Guardian Australia

Pickering's podcast appearances also revealed something else. He admitted that One Nation runs "ghost candidates" — people on the ballot paper who don't really campaign — to boost the party's vote in the upper house. In Australia, parties get public funding based on how many votes they receive, so even candidates who do nothing can bring in money. Guardian Australia has reported that One Nation is known for running these ghost candidates in lots of seats. Guardian Australia

7News and 9News reported on social media that One Nation's ghost candidates have included people who live nowhere near the seats they were contesting. 7News News coverage of the 2026 Victorian campaign found that while many One Nation candidates have online profiles, some ghost candidates have no online presence at all.

The broader context here is a party trying to fight an election on its anti-immigration platform while the man it picked to lead the campaign has said the policy at the heart of that platform won't actually happen. Pickering says he supports the goals — abolishing multiculturalism and deporting 75,000 people — but his insistence that it "won't happen" doesn't sit well with a party that talks up deportation at every turn. Hanson says she loves the idea. Roberts gives specific numbers. Pickering, speaking on a friendly podcast rather than facing a tough journalist, sounds like he's admitting the policy is wishful thinking, not a real plan.

Then there is the ghost-candidate confession. Think of it like entering a team in a competition purely to collect the participation prize. Pickering described running candidates who do basically nothing to boost the party's vote share, which also means more public funding. Victoria's upper house voting system rewards parties for running lots of candidates, and funding is tied to how many votes you get. So running candidates who just exist on the ballot paper makes sense for the party. But it's rare for a leader to say it out loud, especially a party that sells itself as the anti-establishment alternative.

For the Victorian campaign, the question is whether Pickering's comments become a problem or just get lost in the noise of an election where minor-party preferences and upper-house deals will matter more than whether a policy adds up. One Nation voters don't typically back the party for its detailed policy documents. Still, a leader who calls his own party's headline policy unrealistic, and who labels older politicians "dinosaurs" while working under a 72-year-old senator, is not your usual standard-bearer.