On 3 August 2026, Pauline Hanson unveiled the eight candidates leading One Nation's upper house tickets for the November 2026 Victorian state election. The slate mixes party loyalists with recruits from local government, the creative sector, and even rival parties (The Guardian).

Warren Pickering, One Nation's Victorian president, will lead the campaign and run for the eastern Victoria region. Colleen Harkin, who previously sat on the Liberal party's administrative committee, will contest the South-Eastern Metropolitan region. Mark Nicholson, co-founder of the animation studio Stepmates Studios — which produces Hanson's cartoon web series Please Explain — will run in the northern metropolitan region. Chris Burson, a Geelong councillor and former police officer, will contest western Victoria (The Guardian).

Hanson said the party had selected candidates for up to 76 of Victoria's 88 lower house seats, chosen from 1,200 applications (Instagram). The party maintains an official candidates page listing its contenders across Australia (One Nation). A meet-the-candidates event featuring Hanson and the Victorian ticket was held in Hawthorn on 3 August 2026 (One Nation Victoria).

The launch was tightly controlled in its media access. Hanson denied reporters from the ABC, The Age, and The Guardian the time and location of the press conference (The Guardian). Excluding mainstream outlets from a candidacy announcement is a known tactic for parties that position themselves against established media. It works as both a practical filter and a signal to the party's base that it stands apart from traditional press.

The polling numbers give the effort real weight. Recent surveys showed between 19 and 27 percent of Victorians were considering voting for One Nation at the November election (The Guardian). An ABC News analysis from June 2026 assessed that One Nation could win a substantial number of Victorian seats and potentially enter government within six months (ABC News).

Victoria's Legislative Council — the upper house of state parliament — is elected by proportional representation across eight regions, each returning five members. Under this system, a party doesn't need a majority of votes to win a seat; it needs roughly a quota (a share of the vote in a given region). That means a party polling in the high teens or low twenties can plausibly win upper house seats without the much larger vote share typically required to win a single-member lower house district. One Nation's ticket composition reflects this calculation: candidates with name recognition, local government experience, or media production skills are placed in regions where preference flows (the redistribution of votes from eliminated or lower-polling candidates) and concentrated minor-party support can build toward a quota.

The candidate mix also points to a recruitment strategy reaching across traditional party lines. Harkin's background in the Liberal party's administrative committee suggests an effort to draw in disaffected Coalition-aligned voters. Burson's policing and local council profile targets regional areas where law-and-order messaging and frustration with the political establishment overlap. Nicholson's candidacy, rooted in the party's own media operations, reflects One Nation's focus on building in-house communications that bypass mainstream press channels.

The broader context here is whether One Nation can convert polling interest into actual seats under Victoria's electoral system. That 19–27 percent range measures voter consideration rather than firm intention, and the gap between the two can be substantial. But even at the lower end, that level of support would reshape how preferences are distributed in both houses of parliament. In the lower house, One Nation preferences could decide outcomes in marginal seats — the closely contested districts where elections are often won or lost — whether or not One Nation wins them outright. In the upper house, the party would be positioned to negotiate with whichever side forms government, a scenario the ABC's June analysis identified as a path to possible inclusion in a coalition arrangement.

The November election will test whether the candidate lineup and polling numbers translate into parliamentary seats. One Nation's last significant Victorian campaign fell short of expectations, and the party's organisational strength in the state has historically been thinner than in Queensland or Western Australia. The scale of this effort — candidates for up to 76 lower house seats and structured upper house tickets across all eight regions — is a more comprehensive Victorian campaign than One Nation has previously mounted. Whether excluding mainstream media from the launch helps or hurts depends on which theory of the electorate the party is backing: one where energising the base through alternative channels outperforms broad press coverage, or one where conventional media visibility still shifts undecided voters in the final weeks.