From climate hoax to immigration: Did Pauline Hanson’s claims actually stack up?

Analysis: Pauline Hanson used Wednesday’s debut National Press Club to position One Nation as the main party of opposition, and her address contained a number of eye-raising claims.

Here are some of the more notable claims.

Climate change is a ‘hoax’

We’ll start with an easy one: Hanson described climate change and global warming as a “hoax”.

This is demonstrably untrue.

The consensus view from the scientific community is that human activity is causing the climate to warm.

The last 10 years have been Earth’s warmest on record, and 2024 was a considerable 1.23 degrees warmer than the 1951-1980 average.

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Energy costs are ‘central source of national poverty’

Keeping on the climate and net zero theme, renewable energy and power prices in general were a repeat talking point from Hanson.

She said the cost of energy is Australia’s “central source of national poverty”, and that “the hoax of global warming which is now climate change… has produced an increase in energy costs which has taken Australia into energy poverty”.

She also promised to unwind rebates for renewables, but said she wasn’t opposed to them being part of the energy mix.

There’s a lot to unpack here.

First up, yes, power prices have increased significantly in the 2020s; household electricity, for example, was up 10.2 per cent in 2022-23 and 7.4 per cent in 2023-24, before a 6.3 per cent decrease due to government rebates in 2024-25 and a 22.5 per cent increase in the 12 months to this April, according to the ABS.

At the same time, surveys are showing Australians are feeling increasingly pessimistic about life at the moment, with economic concerns playing a key role.

Higher prices have been particularly difficult for business and industry, with the government forced into multibillion-dollar bailouts to save energy-intensive sites, such as the Boyne aluminium smelter.

In a global context, Australian household power prices were bang on the OECD average in 2025, according to the Australian Energy Council, and actually slightly below once living costs were taken into account.

As for the role renewables play in all this, solar and onshore wind have been repeatedly identified as Australia’s cheapest forms of energy generation by the CSIRO’s GenCost report.

Similarly, power prices will actually decrease for many Australians on July 1 due to the increased uptake of renewables and battery storage.

Immigration is to blame for Australia’s ‘crisis’

Hanson spent a large portion of her speech discussing immigration and multiculturalism, tying them to the housing crisis and other issues facing the country.

“Undeniably, immigration or immigration policy has our country in a state of crisis,” she said.

“At the centre of this crisis is the utterly flawed policy of multiculturalism. We cannot be a multicultural society.”

Australia has had historically large levels of migration in recent years; 538,000 people in 2022-23, 429,000 in 2023-24 and 305,000 in 2024-25.

However, blaming those record numbers for the issues the country is facing is oversimplistic. 

From 2023-24, for example, Australia went through 21 months of per-capita economic contraction – were it not for population growth, which was driven by high levels of migration, the country would have fallen into recession.

And while migrants do add to housing demand, Australia also requires migrant workers in order to build enough homes due to shortages in our construction workforce.

In a series of research notes on immigration last year, AMP outlined that while chronically poor supply and low interest rates were the main culprits, migration was playing a role in increased home prices.

However, there is a “clear benefit to attracting highly skilled and more productive workers that complement the local population,” economist My Bui wrote. 

“However, this requires a less punitive income tax system and a better designed skilled visa pathway for genuine areas of shortage, such as the construction industry. 

“There is a need to reduce concentration of population in major capital cities, where competition for housing is already intense.”

Hanson ‘opposed pay rise for workers’

This wasn’t a claim made by Hanson, but came during one of the more dramatic moments of her appearance, when protesters displayed a banner reading “I opposed a pay rise for workers, while I took a $100,000 pay rise for myself”.

Late last month, Hanson suggested she didn’t support an above-inflation increase to the minimum wage, saying “You can’t just say we’re going to give you a rise, because you really need to understand 50,000 small businesses have gone insolvent because they can’t pay their bills”.

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Two days later, she partly walked that back, saying she didn’t begrudge anyone getting this year’s wage bump.

However, her voting record where workers are concerned has long been a source of criticism from unions and other labour advocates, and she has consistently opposed policies such as decreasing the gender pay gap, increasing workplace protections, and banning pay secrecy arrangements.

For her part, Hanson has insisted she will stand up for workers.

As for the $100,000 pay raise claim, there’s little doubt about that – as One Nation’s leader, she pocketed the raise when it gained minor party status thanks to Barnaby Joyce’s defection.