A One Nation Staffer Allegedly Posed as a Progressive Meme Page to Film Anti-Hanson Rallygoers

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

The owners of Toilet Paper Australia, a political meme and commentary page with 128,000 Instagram followers, say followers tipped them off that a One Nation representative had been attending rallies in Brisbane and other cities, claiming to be "from Toilet Paper Australia" when approaching protesters for interviews (Guardian Australia).

Toilet Paper Australia regularly criticises One Nation and promotes critical coverage of the party. The page's owners received multiple reports from followers before going public with the accusation.

One Nation has been publishing a series of videos across Instagram, TikTok and X on pages owned by both the party and Senator Hanson herself. In them, a young male host attends leftwing protests and tries to embarrass protesters in filmed interviews. The videos appear to be endorsed by Hanson.

Guardian Australia spoke to three attendees of a June Brisbane rally, organised by Campaign Against Racism and Fascism, who alleged the host in the One Nation videos approached them and claimed to be from Toilet Paper Australia.

One of those protesters, Che Janz, was featured in a One Nation video. He said the host approached him and friends at the Brisbane rally and told them: "I'm from Toilet Paper Australia and I'm doing some interviews here." Janz said he did not suspect anything at the time, noting that people filming at such rallies for social media was common enough not to raise alarm.

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. One Nation posted a video on its official Facebook page on 30 July titled "That did not go down as well as they hoped it would…" in which the party declared 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, posted to Pauline Hanson's Facebook page on 15 June, was titled "While protestors were trying to shut us down in Melbourne, One Nation went undercover." In that post, Hanson appeared on Sky News Australia's The Kenny Report to defend the tactic, and 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 did not disclose was that its interviewer was apparently passing himself off as a progressive content creator, one whose actual owners are hostile to One Nation, to get protesters to lower their guard.

That distinction matters. There is a difference between a political party filming at a public rally, which anyone is entitled to do, and a party staffer misrepresenting their identity and affiliation to elicit candid responses from people who believe they are speaking to a sympathetic outlet. The latter is a form of deception that trades on the trust built by an independent page's brand.

For Toilet Paper Australia, the reputational risk cuts both ways. The page is avowedly anti-One Nation. If its name is being used to bait protesters into unguarded moments that are then edited for the party's social media channels, the owners have a legitimate grievance that goes beyond brand protection: their audience could be discouraged from engaging with anyone claiming to represent the page at future events.

The broader context here is the increasingly blurry line between political campaigning and social media content creation in Australia. Minor parties and independents now run sophisticated multi-platform operations that blur the line between party communications and entertainment. One Nation's undercover video series fits squarely in that trend, produced for maximum shareability, designed to ridicule political opponents, and distributed across the platforms where younger voters consume political content. The novelty is not the tactic itself but the alleged impersonation of a third-party brand to execute it.

For the crossbench, the episode is a reminder that the absence of a binding code of conduct for parliamentary staffers leaves parties to set their own lines. Labor, the Coalition and the Greens all operate under ministerial standards or caucus rules of varying enforceability. Minor parties, particularly those with a single dominant figure, are largely self-regulating. One Nation has not publicly addressed the impersonation allegation. Whether the Senate's privileges committee or any other parliamentary mechanism takes an interest is a question for others to answer.

What is on the record is this: a One Nation staffer attended anti-Hanson rallies, identified himself to protesters as being from a page that routinely attacks the party, filmed the resulting interviews, and the party published the footage across its social media with Hanson's apparent endorsement. The owners of the page whose name was used say they had nothing to do with it.