One Nation unveils Victorian candidates ahead of state election

A former high-profile Liberal who quit after suing her own party and the inner-city animator behind Pauline Hanson’s controversial “anti-woke” movie are among eight Victorian upper house candidates One Nation will formally unveil on Monday.

Warren Pickering, One Nation’s Victorian president, will run as the party’s leader in the Victorian upper house. Pickering ran the party’s campaign in the 2022 election, before an unsuccessful tilt as a Victorian senator for One Nation at the federal election last year.

Colleen Harkin, a former member of the Liberal Party’s administrative committee, is also running for an upper-house seat. Harkin led a Supreme Court challenge against the Liberal’s decision to grant John Pesutto a $1.55 million loan after he lost a defamation case against Moira Deeming. The grant spared Pesutto from bankruptcy, which would have forced a by-election in his seat of Hawthorn.

Harkin resigned from the party and quit the administrative council in June. After resigning, she said she would join One Nation and that she would consider standing as a candidate in the election.

Mark Nicholson, co-founder of animation house Stepmates Studios, which creates Pauline Hanson’s cartoon web-series Please Explain, is also on One Nation’s upper-house ticket. Nicholson also created, with Hanson and One Nation, A Super Progressive Movie, a controversial “anti-woke” film.

One Nation’s only current upper-house MP, Rikki-Lee Tyrell, will also recontest her Northern Victoria seat. In her maiden speech to parliament in 2023, Tyrell said One Nation’s policy of net zero immigration falsely saw her party branded racist.

“It is not about race or culture, it is about numbers. It is a resource policy,” she said.

Geelong councillor and former police officer, Chris Burson, will contest Western Victoria. In 2022, Burson ran unsuccessfully for the Angry Victorians Party.

The remaining candidates on One Nation’s ticket – Fiona Lopez, Aaron Sandford and Natalie Adams – are relatively unknown. The party will hold a press conference on Monday.

It comes amid a shake-up of Pauline Hanson’s national leadership, with her long-time chief-of-staff promoted to One Nation’s national director. Ashby spent more than a decade as Hanson’s closest adviser and helped to professionalise the party.

Ashby will be replaced by Chris Taylor, who recently worked as chief of policy at the Australian Banking Association.

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