Can Hanson’s war on climate change ‘hoax’ survive the summer?

Updated June 19, 2026 — 2:56pm,first published 2:55pm

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When Pauline Hanson railed against the “hoax” of global warming at the National Press Club this week, she sent Australia’s climate wars back to 2009, when then-opposition leader Tony Abbott branded climate change “absolute crap”.

Abbott backed away from his most strident opinions, but One Nation’s surge in popularity has elevated previously fringe views to the heart of Australia’s political debate.

The party’s manifesto states climate action is a government move to exert totalitarian control over society and it denies the science of global warming.

“Net zero is … a vehicle for creating a socialist Australia in which citizens are forced under comprehensive government control,” says One Nation’s policy statement, dubbed ‘the real impacts of net zero’.

How will this new force change the political debate?

The climate wars are about to do the time warp, again, but even more polarising.

It’s just a jump to the left. And then a step to the right

Ever since Abbott tore down the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd government, the Coalition has criticised Labor’s climate policies as overly ambitious and expensive, while maintaining their commitment to addressing global warming.

Abbott signed Australia up to the Paris Agreement on climate change in 2015. Liberal prime minister Scott Morrison committed to net zero in 2021. And Coalition leader Peter Dutton last year declared he would build seven emissions-free nuclear power plants to help reach that goal.

Since its 2025 election wipeout, and the emergence of One Nation, the Coalition has backtracked on climate action. Former leader Sussan Ley ditched net zero and her replacement, Angus Taylor, switched the Liberals’ focus from nuclear energy to coal power, declaring fossil fuels essential to cutting power bills.

But Taylor, unlike One Nation, accepts that climate change is a real phenomenon.

On a page dedicated to the topic ‘net zero is destroying Australia’, One Nation claims records that track global warming are fake.

“These supposed effects are based on discredited computer modelling that does not account for........

© The Sydney Morning Herald