One Nation's Victorian launch: treaty, pepper spray and regional payroll tax
One Nation has launched its Victorian election campaign promising to abolish Victoria's treaty with Indigenous people, legalise pepper spray for personal use and scrap payroll tax in regional Victoria.
The launch also promised to scrap the proposed Suburban Rail Loop and lift penalties for violent young offenders if the party is elected in Victoria, as reported by ABC News.
The official launch was held at Crown Casino in Melbourne on Saturday, according to The Guardian. Pauline Hanson fronted the event as One Nation leader. Warren Pickering fronted it as Victorian leader and state president.
At the launch the party unveiled candidates for the upper house and for all 88 lower house electorates. That is a full lower-house slate. It gives the party how-to-vote coverage in every seat.
The party also circulated a 63-page policy document described as its platform and "The Real Deal for Victoria". It bundles the treaty, pepper spray, regional payroll tax, rail and youth justice commitments together. The pledges are pitched as actions on election, not administrative changes already made.
Looking at what this means for the campaign, the full slate matters as much as the slogans. Contesting all 88 seats is about more than winning. For a minor party it means presence on every ballot paper, volunteers at more booths and leverage in preference negotiations. It forces Labor, the Coalition and the crossbench to factor One Nation into their how-to-vote maths, seat by seat.
The broader context here is the choice of ground. Treaty, pepper spray, youth penalties and the Suburban Rail Loop sit in very different portfolios. Put together, the pitch is fairly plain. Canberra would call it law-and-order plus cost-of-living plus culture war. In Spring Street terms, it is one message on crime and personal safety in the outer suburbs and regions, and another on tax and big-project spending, and a hope the two reinforce each other.
In my view, the regional payroll tax pledge deserves a closer read than it will get. Payroll tax is core state revenue, the regular money that helps pay the bills. Carving out regional Victoria sounds simple on a stage. Administering it is not. Voters should look for the definition of regional, the threshold, the anti-avoidance rules and the budget offset. A 63-page platform has room for that detail. If it is missing, Labor and the Coalition will say so, loudly.
What is worth watching here is the path for pepper spray and treaty. Both are easy to state in a speech. Both require a change to the statute book. Both would need numbers in both houses. That is why the upper-house ticket matters. Victoria's upper house is where minor parties live or die, and where a protest vote can turn into real bargaining power over government legislation. A party can win no lower-house seats and still shape outcomes from the crossbench.
On the venue question, Crown will raise eyebrows. It always does. Parties pick function rooms for capacity and cameras. Still, for a party pitching itself to battlers against big-city elites, a casino launch is bold stagecraft. Expect opponents to make that joke before the week is out.
