Australia

The Australia First Party (AFP), founded in 1996 by Graeme Campbell, was a registered party until it was delisted in 2022 by the Australian Electoral Commission for failing to have 1,500 members (it has been delisted and relisted before, including in 2004 for failing to run any candidates). The party preaches racial nationalism, wants to return to the racist immigration policies of the past, rejects any form of multiculturalism, and promotes economic protectionism. Its slogans are “The Only Truly Australian Party for All True Australians” and “Australia First.” Campbell left the party in 2001 to run on the One Nation ticket, and longtime far-right activist James Saleam took over.

Saleam was a member of the short-lived National Socialist Party of Australia as a teenager during the early 1970s and the founder of the militant Australian white supremacist group National Action (unaffiliated with a group of the same name that has been proscribed as a terrorist organization by the U.K. government). Saleam has served two jail terms, one for property offences and fraud in 1984 and one for being an accessory before the fact in 1989 for his involvement in the shotgun attack on the home of African National Congress representative Eddie Funde. When running for various posts, Saleam’s platform pushed to reintroduce the White Australia policy and to oppose immigration from China, a position he maintains.

Other party members have also been implicated in violence. In March 2019, Australia First member Nathan Sykes, described as a “prolific online troll and a lieutenant of Australia’s most prominent white supremacist Jim Saleam,” was charged with at least eight offences, after allegations that he made repeated and detailed violent threats against Melbourne journalist and lawyer Luke McMahon. He had previously made numerous racist and intimidating online comments targeting other high-profile Australians, including an ex-Racial Discrimination Commissioner and a Guardian journalist, among others.

Sykes pleaded guilty in February 2022 in an NSW District Court and expressed no remorse at sentencing in April of that same year. He received a 19-month Intensive Correction Order. The AFP’s website criticized the decision as the actions of a “woke judge.” 

The party has connections to other racist organizations, and its main activities involve distributing racist and anti-immigrant pamphlets and engaging in protests. In 2009, it was reported that the Imperial Wizard of the KKK in Australia, David Palmer, claimed that several Klan members had joined the Australia First party, saying the Klan was “a reserve in case the ethnics get out of hand and they need sorting out.” Saleam denied this, saying, “Our party is made up of people I know: old associates and members of the former Australians Against Further Immigration Party.”

In 2014, the party aligned itself with the Australian chapter of Greece’s neo-Nazi Golden Dawn and in 2016, via X (then still called Twitter), the party endorsed former American Klan leader David Duke in his U.S. Senate run. In the 2019 Australian federal election, the party put up three candidates: Susan Jakobi for Lalor, Peter Schubeck for Longman, and Michael Chehoff for Swan. No AFP member has ever won an election. The party has a very active website where news items are posted regularly. In June 2022, the site featured a video interview with the former leader of the racist British National Party, Nick Griffin, pro-Putin and pro-Assad articles, posts about the “great reset,” and attacks on Ukraine. Griffin has appeared multiple times on AFP podcasts, with the most recent being November 2025. It also includes videos with the likes of Jared Taylor, a well-known American white supremacist. Its X feed is filled with racist, anti-immigrant rhetoric, though the account has not posted since Fall 2025.

AFP has been reduced to operating only in New South Wales (NSW), where it last ran in 2024.

Despite continuing to fail to make progress at the polls and dwindling attention from the media, the AFP continues to attempt to expand its following and remain relevant. Its website is frequently updated with articles and commentary released by the party. In August 2025, the party supported “March for Australia” rallies occurring throughout the country. March for Australia was a protest movement that opposed “mass immigration,” as well as September 2025 protests for “remigration.” Remigration is a white supremacist concept that is a soft pitch for ethnic cleansing, where all non-white people would be deported from European countries and former colonies like the United States, Canada, and Australia.

In January 2026, the AFP published an open letter, claiming it was written by a former member of the Australian Marxist-Leninist scene. The letter asked Marxist-Leninists to view the AFP’s struggle to preserve white Australian culture as part of a broader anti-capitalist movement. The letter maintains that there is a “demographic transformation” destroying the country and accuses other political parties of being fixated on “ever-expanding sexual and identity subcultures.”

Founded in 1995 by Pentecostal and Baptist ministers, the Australian Christian Lobby (ACL) is one of Australia’s most well-known anti-LGBTQ+ groups, similar in many ways to American social conservative organizations such as the Family Research Council. Led by Martin Iles since 2018, with chapters in each state capital, ACL describes itself as “a grassroots movement of over 250,000 people seeking to bring a Christian influence to Australian politics.” The self-reported accounts of the membership numbers have continued to rise since its founding.

The ACL is a public company, and its funding mostly comes from individuals. Their headquarters, Eternity House, is a separate non-profit organization. ACL holds public events that feature high-ranking political figures, and its stage has been graced by several prime ministers. In 2007, Prime Minister John Howard and opposition leader Kevin Rudd gave speeches at an ACL event that was broadcast to churches across the country. In 2009, then-Prime Minister Rudd addressed the ACL’s national conference, claiming in his speech to be the “first serving prime minister” to do so.

Its anti-LGBTQ+ positions have been denounced by influential members of the political establishment. For example, in 2012, then Prime Minister Julia Gillard cancelled a speech at the ACL’s annual conference after the organization’s managing director, Jim Wallace, argued that the health effects of homosexuality on individuals were worse than smoking. These types of controversies have long plagued ACL. That same year, Australian Greens leader Christine Milne said that the ACL’s “whole focus is to attack the gay community.” LGBTQ+ rights advocate Carl Katter has said that the group aims to “facilitate and perpetuate hate.”

Among the issues ACL is opposed to are various LGBTQ+ rights, including same-sex marriage, and before that, civil unions, LGBTQ+ surrogacy and adoption rights, the existence of transgender people, and supported the right of religious schools to discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation. ACL views pro-LGBTQ+ issues as “rainbow ideology.” In 2016, the group complained about Queensland police showing support for gay and transgender people by raising a rainbow flag over their headquarters. ACL has opposed the Safe Schools program that encourages respect for LGBTQ+ students, arguing that its funding should be pulled. ACL believes that conversion therapy for minors should be allowed. ACL was a fervent supporter of a “religious freedom” bill that failed to pass in early 2022. During the legislative debate, ACL argued that removing exemptions that allowed schools to discriminate against transgender students “completely undermined” the bill. The legislation would have granted religious institutions that run schools, care facilities, and other social services, the right to discriminate against people who do not share their faith.

Much like American social conservative organizations, ACL targeted the trans community, enlisting the aid of American anti-trans activist Walt Heyer, and subverted efforts to support medical treatment as well as an effort by Tasmania to ban conversion therapy. ACL established the Lachlan Macquarie Institute as a training organization for public policy advocates. ACL and the institute run a joint program, The Download, for young Christians living in a “post-Christian culture.” It provided seed-funding for the Human Rights Law Alliance, which says it works to protect freedoms ignored by the Australian Human Rights Commission including freedom of speech, religion, conscience, and association, and actively pursues policies and litigation that would restrict the rights of LGBTQ+ people.

In 2023, Michelle Pearse was promoted from the role of state director to CEO of the ACL. She frequently appears as the face of the organization on its website and video releases. The ACL continues to try to insert its agenda into governance. During the 2025 federal election, the ACL ran an engagement push, including a website titled “Australia Votes,” which assessed where political parties and candidates stood on issues like abortion, gender-affirming care, euthanasia, and hate crime legislation that includes protections for LGBTQ+ people. The ACL also partnered with the Canberra Declaration, another Christian advocacy group that opposes same-sex marriage and access to abortion rights, to hold online prayer meetings before the election.

One of the ACL’s particular interests is children who survive attempted abortions. In 2024, Liberal Senator Alex Antic and National Party Senator Matt Canavan attempted to pass the “Babies Born Alive” bill, which would make it a legal requirement to provide care for babies that survive abortion attempts. The ACL produced the documentary, “Born Alive, Left to Die,” which claims to have found evidence in the Northern Territory of five babies born alive after termination procedures. ACL has organized screenings of the film across the country. Medical professionals accused the campaign of spreading disinformation about late-term abortions.

In New South Wales, legislation titled the “Human Rights Bill 2025” entered parliamentary inquiry, opening it up to public submissions. The bill aims to establish a statutory human rights framework that would require the government to abide by when making decisions, developing policies, and delivering services, and in particular intends to cement more rights for people with disability, the LGBTQ+ community, and people living in regional, rural and isolated areas. The inquiry opened up for submissions on July 3, 2026, and the National Secular Lobby, a secular watchdog group, warned in May 2026 that the ACL was “mobilizing its networks” to oppose the bill.

The Australian League of Rights (ALOR) was formed in 1960 by a merger of various Leagues of Rights organizations based in the Australian states. The League describes itself as Christian and anti-communist. ALOR pushes the fringe economic idea of “social credit,” is opposed to Australian republicanism, and argues that Australia must be more tightly tied to Great Britain. Their website rages against Aboriginal rights, claiming that there is a plan to create a “black state.” The website is also filled with conspiracy materials ranting against the Bilderbergers, the radical left, vaccine disinformation, and claiming that the school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, was a false flag operation to help advance gun control. The League’s founder Eric Butler died in 2006 at the age of 90. Members of ALOR have a history of Holocaust denial and the group has supported British Holocaust denier David Irving. Many believe that the world is run by a secret society of Jews and its members have said that “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion” is a genuine Jewish document (it is a forgery). According to the Slack Bastard, the group used to have a bookshop in Melbourne.

At the core of the ALOR’s worldview is the concept of “Social Credit,” developed by Clifford Douglas. Social Credit asserts that the economy pays workers less than the total price of the value of the goods. The League of Rights believes the government should hand out a regular “national dividend” to everyone and adjust prices, instead of relying on debt-based bank loans, which they blamed for economic problems. These economic concepts are often tied to conspiracy theories about international bankers controlling the economy.

In 2023, a referendum was held asking Australians to alter the Constitution to recognize the Indigenous inhabitants of the Island. This recognition would have placed an Indigenous representative as a voice for the community in parliament. The referendum ultimately failed, with “No” votes receiving 60.1 per cent of the national vote and similar results in the state-level referendums. ALOR threw its support behind the No vote, claiming that the push for Indigenous representation was part of a communist plot. Despite this narrative finding some purchase within the far-right elements of the opposition, ALOR is largely defunct as a popular movement though continues to release video podcasts and seminars through its website.

The Australian Natives Association (ANA), run by Matthew Grant, claims on its website to be a revived version of a more than 150-year-old racist and male-only organization that represents European-descendant Australians. The group prizes self-help and building community among its members. This involves regular dinners, social gatherings, hikes, and road trips. The group’s charter of principles makes clear its racism, white nationalism, and accountability for the “leadership of their wives.”

It says ANA exists for: “the cultivation of an Australian sentiment based on the maintenance of European-descent ethnic homogeneity;” “the development in Australia of a self-reliant ethnocentric community existing in parallel to preexisting institutions;” and “the promotion in Australia of patriarchal family order.” ANA has also written about how members feel “atomized in an ocean of migrants and rootless ‘globetrotters.’” It claims it is leading its people “down the road to cultural renewal.” These beliefs paint “true” Australians as only the descendants of Europeans, it precludes Indigenous people and other ethnicities from being Australians as the ANA sees Australian identity as “inseparable from the English-speaking European descent peoples whom colonised this land.”

ANA held a convention in April 2022 that appeared to have a few dozen participants. They also have created their own, though very small, Australian Wikipedia.

On October 4, 2025, the organization claimed that fees collected from members would be put towards a litigation fund, “which will be used to finance litigation for the defense of our members if and when they are adversely impacted for their membership or activities that are undertaken with our association.” This specifically meant to provide assistance for individuals who are “unlawfully dismissed from their employment for their political opinion,” which would be “at the forefront of our efforts.”

In 2018, the anti-marriage equality lobby group, Marriage Alliance, rebranded as Binary Australia (BA) in preparation for its fight against rights and equality for transgender, gender diverse, and intersex Australians. In 2017, during the country’s plebiscite on same-sex marriage, BA’s head Kirralie Smith repeated the false idea that this change, a redefinition of marriage, could lead to legalizing such things as pedophilia. Smith warned her supporters: “It is a socialist Marxist agenda to destroy the family… there are several examples from overseas where same-sex marriage has been legalised and now the push is on for polygamy and other distortions to marriage and family.”

The Marriage Alliance was also behind a 2016 advertisement that depicted a woman being hanged by a rainbow noose. Smith’s X account bio used to say, “Islam/Sharia critic,” as she was a member of the Islamophobic, anti-Muslim organization the Q Society, but now reads, “there are only 2 sexes, male and female,” and “Guilty of ‘unlawful vilification’ for identifying males in female sport.”

BA’s website describes it as being “concerned with the role that gender plays in our society. We affirm the fact that gender is binary. Male and female.” BA is actually a registered company, Gender Awareness Australia, Ltd., and the pet project of Smith, who ran Marriage Alliance and has been a previous candidate for office. In 2018, BA’s site said, “Our organization aims to promote and celebrate the inherent differences between boys and girls, men and women…We uphold the biological assertion that there are two complementary genders.”

It aims to “challenge the aggressive agenda to de-gender our society in the areas of education, health, military, business, politics, and the law” and to “protect our children from those who would seek to indoctrinate them with programs designed to promote the LGBTI agenda while bullying anyone who opposes it.” BA is aggressively anti-transgender and produces materials attacking the trans community, most recently, information for parents. Smith claims its educational packet, “equips parents with knowledge of their parental rights and how to keep their child safe against radical transgender indoctrination.” She told a Sydney paper, “Barely a day goes by when we don’t hear from another parent concerned about what their child is being exposed to at school; transgender speakers, de-gendering language, pronoun police, explicit sex education programs and inappropriate library books.” When the state of Victoria began its debate on an legislative ban of conversion therapy, Binary Australia criticized the bill, Smith calling it “outrageously bigoted” because of its protections for transgender people from the therapy. “Politicians have condemned vulnerable sufferers to a life of daily medications, possible sterilization and infertility and mutilation via surgery of perfectly healthy body parts,” Smith said. “Every politician who has voted for this bill has … usurped parental rights and put children in danger.” BA appears well attuned to the anti-LGBTQ+ movement in the U.S. Its posts have attacked Drag Queen story hours for children, trans athletes and puberty blockers—all popular causes among the American far-right. In a 2021 article, attributed to Smith on the Binary website, she claimed that “Drag queens are coming for your kids.”

After the first GPAHE report on Australia was released in 2022, Binary objected to being included in the list of groups. Smith called the claim a “defamatory slur that is unfounded and unjust” in a short press release put out by the organization. “There is zero evidence of Binary inciting violence or acting hatefully toward an individual or group,” though violence is not the sole basis of GPAHE’s reports.

Only months later, in December 2022, Smith posted to X, calling for men to help her identify a transgender woman playing on a local football team. Referring to the player as “the bloke playing on the women’s team,” she then reportedly posted a photo of the woman, calling her a “bloke in a frock.” She shared these to her Facebook page, as well as Binary Australia’s, which had 48,000 and 78,000 followers, respectively.

In February 2023, Smith filmed a group of men impersonating transgender women while playing football. On December 20, 2024, Smith was placed under a two-year apprehended violence order (AVO) for her targeting of the player. A New South Wales district court ordered Smith not to assault, threaten, stalk, harass, intimidate, approach, or contact the woman for two years and not approach two mid-north coast football clubs for the same period. Her attempts to appeal the ruling were dismissed in 2025 and she was ordered to pay for the player’s legal costs.

That same year she was found guilty of “vilification” for the targeting of two different transgender women who also played football at their local clubs. Smith was ordered to pay $95,000 to the women and make a public apology. This was the first vilification ruling based on gender identity in Australia. Smith was granted a stay while she appeals.

The European Australia Movement (EAM) is led by Thomas Sewell, a neo-Nazi who has helped form a series of extremist groups, including the National Socialist Network (NSN), of which the EAM was a partner project. The organization was allegedly disbanded on January 18, 2026, ahead of the passing of legislation that banned the NSN. The Combating Antisemitism, Hate and Extremism Bill 2026 moved quickly through parliament after the tragic murder of 15 people at a Bondi Beach Hanukkah celebration by two Islamic extremism. The message announcing the groups’ dissolution was signed by seven men, all leaders of the NSN, first among them was Sewell.

EAM primarily used the social media and chat application Telegram to communicate with the public, where the group had 3,384 subscribers in March 2024. The Telegram page for EAM was deleted after the announcement of its disbanding in 2026. Sewell’s personal Telegram channel, where he often releases recordings of livestreams and videos he appears in, is still active and has 10,791 subscribers as of July 2026. Sewell has claimed that a previous channel that was removed by Telegram had over 16,000 subscribers.

Sewell is one of Australia’s best-known white supremacists, though he was born in New Zealand. His past white nationalist projects include the Lads Society and the True Blue Crew. Both of these groups were featured in the 2022 version of GPAHE’s Australia report. In 2017, Sewell attempted to recruit the perpetrator of the 2019 Christchurch mosque shootings into the Lads Society.

Following the announcement, Sewell went on a press tour of far-right livestreams, assuring his supporters that while these organizations may be shutting down, his work to spread National Socialism was only beginning. “There was no fascism in Australia in 2020. There was no National Socialism in Australia in 2020,” Sewell told Henrik Palmgren, host of the white nationalist media company Red Ice. “There was no radical white nationalism. There was very tiny, sporadic little embers across the country. And we took all those little embers, and we put them all together, and we put all the fuel on the fire, and we built a great flame.”

EAM’s goals were to build “a physical and politicised White Australian Community” as part of a mission to preserve the “advancement of White People in Australia.” Its slogan comes from the Nazi regime: “Blood and Honour.” EAM claimed it was creating a network of “White Australians across every city, suburb and town who are against the systematic replacement and destruction of White Australians.”

For the most part, EAM’s advocacy was limited to public stunts, such as a June 2022 unfurling of the group’s extremist banner while members “Sieg Heiled” in front of children in a park near Sydney. Sewell has long engaged in this type of attention-grabbing activism that is then repurposed into propaganda, including neo-Nazi protests and a cross burning. In April 2022, he duped a Bavarian beer hall in Docklands into holding a birthday party for Adolf Hitler. In that incident, he held up a photo of Hitler while other members at the table performed Nazi salutes.

Its messaging is overtly neo-Nazi, claiming “the Australian ZOG [Zionist Occupied Government] and mainstream media establishment work together to install fear and division in the Australian people.”

The group has worked with the since defunct Australian Proud Boys Borderlands chapter and networked with the European neo-Nazi group, Nordic Resistance Movement. Through media appearances and livestreams they have made connections with groups in the United States like Patriot Front, as Sewell has appeared with the group’s leader, Thomas Rousseau, on live streams with another prominent Australian white nationalist Joel Davis. In Canada, one of the founders of the white nationalist group Second Sons Canada, Alex Vriend, has interviewed Sewell multiple times. Other leadership of SSC frequently re-post articles supporting the Australian leader.

In June 2026, it was revealed that Sewell had been living in a $2.5 million estate with several other families who were also part of the white nationalist movement. The property was reported to have been purchased by the heir to a Melbourne trucking company, Martin Featherstone, who has publicly supported Sewell and his movement.

FamilyVoice Australia (FVA) is an anti-LGBTQ+ advocacy group that was founded in 1973 as the “Australian Festival of Light and Community Standards Organisation” (AFLCS), which was modelled on and inspired by the UK’s Nationwide Festival of Light, a movement against what it saw as increasingly permissive views around sex and sexuality. It rose to prominence advocating against LGBTQ+ rights and has been at the forefront of movements opposing same sex marriages, surrogacy, adoption by same-sex couples, and abortion.

Led for decades by Rev. Fred Nile after he quickly rose from heading up the NSW branch to accepting a position as national coordinator in 1974. Initially, the group had some success bringing speakers from the U.K. to Australia and promoting Christian values in governance. This included British satirist and critic of the sexual revolution, Malcolm Muggeridge, in October 1976, who spoke to an estimated 35,000 people during a Sydney Hyde Park address. Similarly, the group also brought U.K. anti-obscenity campaigner Mary Whitehouse to the country amid a controversy where she had taken legal action against a gay student magazine that published one of her poems. Several student protesters picketed her events and Brisbane police arrested seven people for throwing pies at the activist.

Nile was elected to the NSW Legislative Council as leader of the Call to Australia Party (later the Christian Democratic Party) in 1981, which was separate from the AFLCS and actions by the organization began to dwindle, but not end over the 1980s. The organization did continue to put out resources and publications aimed at a variety of issues, including attacking women and girl’s access to abortion services and opposing comprehensive sexual health education. In a 1981, the Festival of Light Australia republished a paper by U.S. anti-abortion advocates claiming that making contraception available to teens was an “invitation to promiscuity” and had resulted in “more illegitimacy, more abortions, more promiscuity, more venereal disease, and more cervical cancer.” By 1996, the group was sponsoring the Australian tour of U.S. teen anti-abortion activist Gianna Jessen, who claims to be a survivor of a saline abortion.

In July 2008, the organization rebranded as “FamilyVoice Australia,” separating itself from the international network of “Festival of Light” organizations.

By September 2010, the group also hosted U.K. Anglican bishop Michael Nazir-Ali and toured him around Australia under the new FamilyVoice banner. Speaking to crowds of thousands, he warned audiences of “the triple jeopardy of aggressive secularism, radical Islam and a misplaced understanding of multiculturalism.”

In April 2023, under National Director Peter Downie, FamilyVoice publicly called for the entire Australian Classification Board to be fired over its rating of the graphic novel Gender Queer by Maia Kobabe, falsely claiming the book is “widely banned” in the U.S. A month later, the group named head of the anti-transgender advocacy group Binary Australia, Kirralie Smith, its “2023 Australian Mother of the Year.” Two years later, Smith was found guilty of “vilification” for the targeting of two different transgender women who played football at their local clubs. Smith was ordered to pay $95,000 to the women and make a public apology.

In December 2024, FamilyVoice’s Facebook page posted a screenshot from a UK tabloid about the death of a transgender woman in 2019, which was mocked by many of its followers. Far from an isolated incident, the Facebook page has been documented sharing numerous posts mocking transgender people and categorizing their gender identity as mental illness.

The primary focus of FamilyVoice to this day remains attacking LGBTQ+ rights, particularly those of transgender people. Its X account frequently re-posts disparaging remarks about transgender people, including by the leader of the far-right One Nation Party, Pauline Hanson, reading “this transgender movement is a militant force right throughout society and must be confronted,” on June 24, 2026. Another, also in support of Hanson posted 11 days earlier celebrates that a One Nation electoral victory might result in fewer “Muslim refugees” entering Australia.

The Great Australian Party (GAP) is a far-right political party that was registered with the Australian Electoral Commission in 2019. The party promotes a series of reforms that would vastly change the country’s legal and tax systems while viewing the constitution as invalid. Led by a former One Nation Senator, Rod Culleton, who left the party before being ejected from parliament in 2017 after he was declared bankrupt and banks foreclosed on his farm in Western Australia. He was later determined to have been ineligible due to a larceny conviction stemming from a 2014 dispute with a tow truck driver, though this conviction was later annulled.

GAP is an outgrowth of the “Power to People Party,” founded by Darryl O’Bryan and Mike Palmer in 2017, though rebranded in 2018 at Culleton’s suggestion and officially registered with the Electoral Commission in 2019. Part of a broader “constitutional restoration” movement, the party argues that the removal of the Crown from Australian governance has invalidated most of the legal system. The party promotes an end to personal income tax, as well as abolishing family courts. Like many sovereign citizen movements, GAP deploys pseudo-legal and circular arguments that attempt to “prove” the illegitimacy of national governments. Much of Culleton and GAP’s bizarre philosophy is detailed in a documentary called “Senator in Exile – The Lost Colony,” which claims that the role of the U.K. Crown was usurped during the mid-20th century and that Australia does not have an official head of state (as a constitutional monarchy, King Charles III is officially the head of state and represented by Governor-General Sam Moslyn).

The party ran a former police officer, Wayne Glew, for Senate in Western Australia in 2019. Glew had previously been declared a vexatious litigant after he made arguments in court that the government did not exist. He had property seized in 2018 after he refused to pay $300,000 in legal costs. In 2022, Glew was charged for inciting others to arrest government ministers after documents he said were arrest warrants were delivered to a Perth police station.

Culleton received a boost of publicity after he appeared as a guest on celebrity chef Pete Evans’s “Evolve” podcast in 2020. Evans built a significant following during the pandemic by promoting anti-vaccine and conspiracy theories. GAP had only around 21,000 followers on Facebook at the time, compared to Evans’s 1.5 million. Following the interview, in February 2021, Evans joined GAP as a proposed candidate for NSW Senate, but would withdraw from the party before the end of the year.

Also in 2021, leaked emails revealed that the party was attempting to form an alliance with the Original Sovereign Tribal Federation, an Aboriginal sovereign citizen movement. The two groups signed a memorandum of understanding in August 2020, based on their shared goal to “stand down the illegal corporation [the Australian government] harming us all.”

The 2022 federal election did little to boost the party’s profile as GAP candidates received 0.55 per cent of the first preference votes nationally. No candidates were elected. Since then there have been a wave of increasingly odd documents and explanations released on the GAP website. The party maintained a presence on most major social media platforms like TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, and X, as well as several fringe platforms like Telegram and Bitchute. While there have been no posts to these accounts since Summer 2025, the GAP website remains active, announcing new candidates and even an open letter to U.S. President Donald Trump, with whom it feels a kinship.

“Your victory is a testament to your dedication and strength, as a true leader to navigate the USA(and the world) through unprecedented challenges, despite fierce political and judicial headwinds, which sadly, I am all too familiar with, having also experienced the latter,” the letter reads.

He goes on to claim that he was removed illegally from parliament, “removing me from the political poker table, upon pointing out that Australia had departed from its foundation law.”

The LGB Alliance Australia (LGBAA) is an offshoot of the UK LGB Alliance (LGBA), which has chapters in multiple countries. LGBA, the parent organization of LGBAA, describes its objective as “asserting the right of lesbians, bisexuals and gay men to define themselves as same-sex attracted,” and states that such a right is threatened by “attempts to introduce confusion between biological sex and the notion of gender.” LGBA officials have argued that lesbians are in danger of extinction due to a disproportionate focus on transgender issues in schools. They’ve claimed that lesbians are “going” as individuals increasingly identify as transgender, a fear echoed both by trans-exclusionary groups and by some lesbian feminists. The group is particularly supportive of the prohibition on allowing transgender athletes to compete as women. In August 2021, the UK Charity Commission announced that it would be engaging with the LGB Alliance trustees after the Alliance posted a Tweet stating that “adding the + to LGB gives the green light to paraphilias like bestiality – and more – to all be part of one big happy ‘rainbow family,’” a post which was removed by Twitter for violating the platform’s rules.

In November 2021, British MP John Nicolson said that the speaker of the House of Commons had referred “abuse and obsessive behavior” from LGBA to security. LGBA ran a fundraising campaign saying, “make a donation to us IN HIS [Nicholson’s] NAME and we will tweet out your message,” subsequently tweeting a number of statements attacking Nicolson, including ones that called him a “rape-enabling politician.” The fundraiser was removed from the JustGiving and GoFundMe crowdfunding platforms for violating their rules.

In general, LGBA and its international chapters oppose gender-identity education in schools, medical transition for children reporting gender dysphoria, and gender recognition reform. The group was described by the Labour Campaign for Trans Rights as transphobic in a statement signed by a number of Labour members of parliament. This group was key to the decision by British Prime Minister Boris Johnson to exempt the transgender community from the UK’s recent legislation to ban conversion therapy, something LGBA vocally opposes. They view the transgender community as a threat to the LGB community and argue that “biological sex is observed in the womb and/or at birth and is not assigned. In our view, current gender ideologies are pseudo-scientific and present a threat to people whose sexual orientation is towards the same sex, in the case of bisexuals, to both sexes. In addition, we believe that these ideologies are confusing and dangerous to children.”

“In addition, we believe that these ideologies are confusing and dangerous to children. We recognise that sex is binary, female and male, and that (for the vast majority of people) sex is determined at conception, observed at birth (or in utero), and recorded. We reject the co-opting of rare medical Differences in Sexual Development (DSDs/intersex conditions) in order to cast doubt on the binary nature of sex.”

LGBAA follows the same advocacy as its UK namesake. LGBAA is particularly concerned in having transgender people portrayed as women. For example, LGAA wrote the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) to complain about the program “You Can’t Ask That,” which focused on lesbians, having “a male who calls himself ‘Rosie.’ Rosie is clearly male and talks about his penis and using his penis as a ‘lesbian.’ As lesbians, we are highly offended by the assertion that a male can be a lesbian or that lesbians should include males in our communities and our dating pools. We were also appalled that a bisexual woman (i.e. a woman attracted to both males and females) was included in an episode about lesbians… Lesbians are, by definition, females who are exclusively attracted to other females i.e. same-sex attracted women.”

In recent debates about banning conversion therapy in Australia, LGBAA was outspoken against protecting the transgender population from these efforts, believing that to be a separate issue. In a submission to parliament in opposition to a proposed ban in Victoria, LGBAA rejected the law as an “unasked for, unnecessary, deceptive bill.” The group added, “This bill violates democratic principles of inclusion and diversity in the creation of this bill and the ‘urgent’ rush for it to be rammed through into legislation unasked for by the Victorian people…Only one perspective, a gender ideology perspective, was put forward by a LGBTQIA+ organization as the primary input into the bill’s creation.”

Holly Lawford-Smith, a political philosophy lecturer at the University of Melbourne and a regular contributor to the LGB Alliance Australia YouTube channel and who believes conversion therapy for transgender kids will “ensure minors don’t make mistakes they may regret deeply as adults,” was banned from Medium and Twitter, though her Twitter/X account was restored in 2022 after the platform was acquired by Elon Musk.

The group has helped efforts to exclude transgender people from certain events. In 2021, LGB Alliance supporter Jessica Hoyle brought a test application for an exemption from the Tasmanian Anti-Discrimination commissioner to hold some single-sex events that would ban transgender women. LGBAA reportedly helped Hoyle file the application. The commissioner, Sarah Bolt, wrote in a July 2021 letter to LGB Alliance Australia: “The exemption application made by LGB Alliance seeks to go further than asking a person’s sexual orientation by requiring people to provide intimate information about their body to gain access to the proposed events, as attendance will be limited to people who are not ‘biological men’…I do not see how this can be done without intrusive questioning and completely undermining a person’s right to privacy,” Bolt said, adding that doing so would be “offensive, humiliating, intimidating, insulting and ridiculing” and amount to “sexual harassment.” The state’s anti-discrimination commission ruled lesbian events that exclude transgender-women carry a “significant risk” of being illegal. Hoyle took the case to the High Court. Equality Tasmania, which works to protect LGBTQ rights, warned at the time if the court ruled in Hoyle’s favor it could throw LGBTQ+ rights into jeopardy. “If Ms Hoyle succeeds it would set a dangerous precedent that would disadvantage not just LGBTIQA+ Tasmanians but all Tasmanians at risk of discrimination,” said the advocacy group’s spokesperson, Dr. Lucy Mapstone.

Hoyle’s request for an exemption and appeal were denied in 2025.

After the release of GPAHE’s Australia report in 2022, LGBAA released a statement denying that it belonged on the list of far right groups, calling the report “poorly researched.”

“The continued harassment of LGB groups around the world under the guise of combating extremism shines a light on [GPAHE’s] ideological beliefs,” the statement read, calling the findings “thinly veiled homophobia.”

In 2022, LGBAA also supported fundraising for the legal defence of the female-only social media application called “Giggle,” which enacted policies that excluded transgender women. In 2021, a transgender woman, Roxanne Tickle, joined the platform. She was eventually removed through a manual review by CEO Sall Grover, who “determined that Tickle did not satisfy Giggle’s female-only membership criteria,” according to a page set up for fundraising. The court found that Giggle had in fact engaged in unlawful indirect discrimination and ordered a payment of $10,000 and legal costs in 2024. Grover and Giggle appealed, eventually dismissing the legal effort, and upgrading the charge to “direct discrimination” while also increasing the damages awarded to $20,000. Grover has indicated they intend to take the case to the Australian High Court and is attempting to crowdsource $1,000,000 via the fundraising site GiveSendGo to pay for the effort.

In February 2023, LGBAA criticized ACON, one of Australia’s largest LGBTQ+ advocacy organizations, as “failing LGB Australians” and conducted a quantitative analysis of the group’s annual reports that showed increasing mention of transgender content when compared to terms like bisexual, gay, intersex, lesbian, and queer.

“It is very obvious that the word Trans now takes precedence in terms of content and presumably emphasis in services,” the group wrote on its website. “We know who ACON work for and it is no longer for the LGB.”

A few months later, in August 2023, LGBAA conducted a similar study of annual reports put out by what they called “Mainstream Rainbow Organizations,” or MROs, that they felt were similarly “failing” the community through the inclusion of trans people.

They also made a submission to the federal government’s review of the Online Safety Act in 2024, which included arguments that “misgendering” should not be part of the criteria for complaints. The LGBAA also made a submission to Victoria’s review of the Conversion Therapy Act, calling for gender identity to be removed from the legislation, as well as Queensland’s review of the use of puberty blockers for minors experiencing gender dysphoria. The State of Queensland eventually chose to maintain a ban on the practice.

My Place Australia (MPA) is a sovereign citizen organization founded by a former candidate with the Australia One Party, Derren Bergwerf. His aim was to build a parallel society to survive a coming societal collapse. Founded in 2022, during the public health response to the pandemic, MPA opposes vaccinations, and spreads conspiracy theories, like that of “15-minute cities,” urban design that would prioritize placing essential amenities within 15 minutes walking distance, as a form of control. The group promotes a variety of natural health treatments to address mental and physical illnesses. MPA promotes that individuals network together to address food scarcity and build strong ties locally in order no longer rely on what they view as large and unsustainable food supply chains. While ultimately a positive endeavour on its face, this is intended to allow members to weather the coming collapse.

Bergwerf ran in state and federal elections in 2022 as an independent, claiming during a candidate forum that “there should be a royal commission into our governments, and they should be removed and put in jail.” After losing at the federal election, he claimed on social media the race had been rigged.

Like other sovereign citizen organizations, the group’s beliefs are underpinned by wildly inaccurate and outright false assumptions about the country’s legal system. Its website offers several documents for download that explain how to allegedly escape the economic and legal systems of Australia. These documents include the claim that “every mortgage and loan is fully repaid” immediately as it is taken out and that a convoluted legal framework has been created to “swindle” individuals out of money and trick them into obeying an invalid legal framework that begins with the issuing of a birth certificate. Instead, they believe they are bound only by basic “common law” tenets of doing no harm to others. Like many other sovereign citizen movements, MPA reject the title, citing their belief that an individual cannot be both sovereign and a citizen at the same time.

Outside of the central website, the group is organized through a connected series of private Facebook groups and a subscription-based hub that claims to connect the network of chapters.

The organization became the subject of scrutiny in January 2022, when the Deputy Mayor of Frankston Liam Hughes stood shoulder to shoulder with Bergwerf during a protest to preserve a local park. While Hughes was unaware of the group’s beliefs, many of the estimated 100 protesters had been organized to appear through a local MPA Facebook group.

Connected to the far right scene through its members’ broad conspiratorial beliefs, an ABC News article focused on its activities in April 2023, and interviewed Bergwerf  condemning a demonstration by a neo-Nazi group in Melbourne. When questioned about antisemitic posts featured on MPA social media, he claimed he could not confirm if the Holocaust happened because “I wasn’t there.”

A Telegram page attributed to the movement has made repeated references to the “Khazarian Mafia,” a conspiracy theory that supposes that Ashkenazi Jews are the descendants of a large kingdom of Turkish-speaking refugees who adopted Judaism. The story of the Khazar conversion has become a way to separate Jewish people from their roots, claiming many have no connection to “real” Judaism, whatever that means.

MPA also encourages its branches to create “council action groups,” to attend local council meetings and eventually “establish constant control over council decisions.” In 2023, 15 councils in Victoria reported being disrupted by members of the MPA network. In Yarra Ranges, the Council called police after more than 100 protesters disrupted the meeting with claims about 5G technology and 15-minute city conspiracies. In the City of Casey, a series of events featuring drag queens were cancelled after a threat assessment by Victoria Police found the council was being targeted by people linked to MPA. Despite member’s difficultly influencing local councils, Bergwerf claims to have been elected as the mayor of the “People’s Council of Frankston,” an unrecognized body set up by MPA.

Where MPA did have some impact was in the 2024 local Queensland elections, where members were active in the campaign for Troy Thompson, who won the race for mayor of Townsville. Thompson thanked the local branch, My Place Townsville, calling them a “wonderful organization.”

While the organization has not yet been able to transition its broad following into seats on local councils, it continues to network and build a collective across Australia and online. The most recent reported estimates place around 180 separate groups operating under the MPA umbrella.

The National Socialist Network (NSN), founded in late 2019 or early 2020, was, up until its banning in 2025, the most prominent neo-Nazi group in Australia. NSN was primarily Melbourne-based, though had expanded to have chapters in most of the country’s states. On its website, NSN called itself “a revolutionary movement” that fights for a “White Australia.” They openly declare that “we are racists” and oppose what they call “the non-White invasion of this continent.” They assert that “the right wing is inundated with cowards and traitors,” and declare their loyalty “to National Socialism and nothing else.” Support for Hitler and attacks on Jews are common within the group, which also recruits from other neo-Nazi groups including Combat-18.

NSN was formed by members from some of Australia’s most active, but now defunct, white supremacist groups, the Lads Society and the Antipodean Resistance. It was the brainchild of longtime neo-Nazi and Lads founder Thomas Sewell, a former army soldier. Sewell, who was born in New Zealand, has said, “I decided that the Lads Society model had some great ideas to it, but it was not strong enough or explicit enough … it tried to create a ‘broad tent’ approach instead of forming a strong cadre of men who would create the stem cell of our future leadership of White Australians.” Sewell is also mentioned in the New Zealand Royal Commission report into the Christchurch terror attacks, with investigators concluding that Australian terrorist and mass murderer Brenton Tarrant was an online follower and contributor to the United Patriots, a now defunct neo-Nazi group Sewell had been involved in, and that Sewell had later contacted Tarrant and invited him to join The Lads Society. Tarrant, an online member, declined Sewell’s offer so he could pursue his New Zealand plot.

The amount of hatred spewed by the NSN is astounding. They have described Indigenous Australians as “subhuman and monkeys,” and traded in antisemitism and racism.

In March 2021, Victoria Police’s counter terrorism command charged Sewell with affray, recklessly causing injury, and unlawful assault after he punched a security guard working at a television station. The assault took place prior to the broadcast of an “A Current Affair” report about Sewell’s organization. In May 2021, Sewell was arrested again by counter-terrorism police for an alleged armed robbery in Taggerty. In 2021, a report on right-wing extremism in Australia by The Age, The Sydney Morning Herald, and “60 Minutes” identified 24 members of NSN, including some with gun and security licenses and others working for the government. The reporting was largely based on the work of a source who infiltrated the neo-Nazi group.

For the most part, NSN has been involved in protests, stunts, and propaganda distribution, as well as fight training. But the group celebrated the violence on January 6 during the U.S. Capitol insurrection. On January 7, 2021, a post on an NSN social media account hailed the “brave white men in Washington DC” who, the group wrote, “have lit a flame that will never go out…The enemy’s spell has been broken forever … those Jews and traitor politicians who had crowed so loudly about confronting White supremacy and racism ran and hid in the basement like the rats they are!” The post was accompanied by a photo of a sticker reading, “white revolution is the only solution.” It had been placed at Commonwealth Place in Canberra, only a short walk away from Australia’s federal parliament. Sewell praised US shooter Kyle Rittenhouse as a “hero,” and encouraged his followers to “destroy multiculturalism,” “faggotry,” and the “Jewish empire of evil.”

Other public stunts include in April 2022, when Sewell duped a Bavarian beer hall in Docklands into holding a birthday party for Adolf Hitler and a June 2022 unfurling of the group’s extremist banner while members made the Nazi salute in front of children in a park near Sydney.

When regulations were passed in Victoria in 2023 banning Nazi salutes and symbols in public, Jacob Hersant, another leader of NSN, was arrested for making the gesture days later. Despite this slip, the organization has often changed its behavior to avoid law enforcement and counter-protesters, but it has also been involved in repeated confrontations. And Sewell’s violent rhetoric has not let up.

In June 2024, Sewell falsely claimed on neo-Nazi Blair Cottrell’s livestream that the U.K. Home Office was planning to remove children from the homes of individuals found to be far-right extremists. He said that such an action could cause him to “become a terrorist.”

“If you take my child off me, I’m going to start killing people,” he said, “and I’m going to encourage every single person that I know to also start killing people that are responsible, starting with probably the police and the judges that ordered for a child to come off one of us.”

Roughly 20 members of NSN, dressed in balaclavas and all black, disrupted a protest organized by asylum seekers in Melbourne in October 2024 while chanting white nationalist slogans. Rather than advertising a plan to attend the protest, NSN showed up unexpectedly. Police officers used pepper spray on the group, but there were no arrests.

After the protest, Sewell went on a podcast and threatened to reveal an officer’s personal information who he said tried to remove an NSN member’s mask.

“This guy, he’s got all his social media, like his family, like his wedding photos. We’ve got it all downloaded, we’ve got it all saved,” Sewell said. “Just working out how to legally post it all in a way that’s just maybe for comic purposes.

“You wanna dox our boys and then you’ve got like your missus and all your family and the house you bought all on social media, f*cking idiot.”

Seemingly having a knack for avoiding lengthy prison sentences, Sewell was sentenced to community service for the doxing threats after being found guilty in September 2025 of intimidating a Victoria police officer.

Sewell is currently out on bail for two alleged incidents in August 2025. This includes a fight with a man who confronted NSN during a march through the streets of Melbourne and a separate incident where he and a group of masked NSN activists attacked an Indigenous protest encampment. Sewell was released on bail pending trial after two months in custody after the Supreme Court found the prosecution failed to establish that he posed an “unacceptable risk to the safety of the community.”

Messages posted by Sewell on Telegram show his intention for other Australians and immigrants that he does not view as people. He has written, “Every one of those things you see in Australia, your grandchildren will have to see probably 100. Every one of them that is a rapist and home invader, your grandchildren will have to deal with 100 rapist home invaders.”

On November 8, 2025, approximately 60 members of the NSN rallied outside of the New South Wales Parliament. The crowd chanted “blood and honour,” while displaying signs and banners reading “White Australia.” White Australia is the name of the political wing of Sewell’s movement that he attempted to develop into an official political party capable of running candidates in elections. One of the individuals in attendance was a South African national, who had his visa revoked as a consequence.

Another prominent member of the NSN, Joel Davis, was arrested by federal authorities after allegedly menacing independent MP Allegra Spender after he allegedly encouraged people in a group chat to “rhetorically rape” the politician over social media. He was later released on strict bail conditions in March 2026.

When such groups were officially banned in May 2026, others in Sewell’s network shuttered: the European Australian Movement, National Socialist Network, and White Australia. Punishment for membership, funding, recruiting, or directing the organizations carries a potential sentence of up to 15 years in prison.

Beginning that same month, former NSN members launched a fundraising campaign to challenge the ban. They raised $157,000 of a $175,000 goal, including overseas donations. The challenge is expected to go before the High Court of Australia in September 2026.

Outside of organizing, Sewell has been a constant international ambassador for his movement. His criminal prosecutions and steady stream of NSN propaganda and protest footage have elevated his reputation among the transnational far-right.

Sewell has appeared on dozens of livestreams with white nationalist and far-right activists including U.K. leader of Patriotic Alternative Mark Collett, U.S.-based Patriot Front leader Thomas Rousseau, and Second Sons Canada founding member Alex Vriend. He also made several appearances on the neo-Nazi Nordic Resistance Movement’s (NRM’s) English-language podcast. NRM was designated a foreign terrorist organization by the U.S. government in 2024 and banned in Finland after a court decision in 2020.

In June 2026, it was found that Sewell and several others had taken up residency in a ten room estate donated by a wealthy supporter of the group in a north-east Melbourne suburb. Reporting by The Age uncovered the location of the property and several other wealthy backers connected to Sewell, including former race car driver Yassin Albarri who previously ran in 2022 as a candidate for Clive Palmer’s United Australia Party (UAP) in Victoria.

The National Workers Alliance (NWA) is a recent addition to Australia’s far-right scene, forming in mid-2024. Founded by former Lads Society affiliate Matt Trihey, the NWA grew out of Melbourne’s COVID-19 health restriction protest scene. Trihey built his following through providing sound equipment to speakers at the many rallies that dotted the city during the pandemic lockdowns. This role eventually saw Trihey start to give speeches where he developed hard line racialist views intoa small collective of activists.

Launching NWA as a distinct “Australian Not For Profit Nationalist Organisation,” the group believes and promotes a fusion of conspiracy theories and far-right nationalism. Policy objectives outlined on the group’s website include an “Immediate Moratorium on Immigration,” withdrawal from the United Nations, opposition to “Digital ID,” and rhetoric around “preserving Western Culture and Identity” and “stopping the sexualization of children.”

NWA held its first public event on June 19, 2024, as it filled the Polish Club in Rowville, Melbourne, and livestreamed to Facebook. Besides Trihey, speakers and attendees at the event included prominent Christian nationalists, a former actor turned far-right organizer, a wrestler, and neo-Nazis. During the event, Trihey claimed that Australian politics is being secretly controlled and that “there is no political solution.” While claiming not to want violence, Trihey said: “We don’t want, but if people keep pushing, it’s what they’ll get.”

Also speaking was Christian nationalist Nick Patterson who told the crowd that Western culture is being destroyed by “the people above.” Claiming that schools served to indoctrinate young people into Marxism, he denied climate change and accused teachers and educators as being “so far removed from morality they can’t tell you what a woman is.” Using his time to rail against COVID-19 restrictions and “gender ideology,” he also covered NWA’s favourite topic, the failures of multiculturalism. Claiming that non-Christian immigrants were responsible for a decline in Australian values, he blamed this as the cause of events like “drag queen story hour,” which Patterson claims is harmful to children.

The evening ended with former actor turned white nationalist Damien Richardson talking with Blair Cottrell, a prominent neo-Nazi and far-right online influencer. Cottrell hinted that violence would be necessary to “secure a homeland for our people,” though stopped short of overtly calling for violence, claiming “I’m not prepared to fedpost on a livestream.”

In September 2024, NWA attended a private dinner forum organized by the National Socialist Network and titled “Defending Europeans” at a McKinnon, Melbourne, restaurant. Requesting that the venue black out the windows, the approximately 100 attendees included Cottrell and National Socialist Network leaders Thomas Sewell and Joel Davis.

The “Urban Street” restaurant would later face backlash from the community for hosting the event, and the management who booked the dinner were allegedly fired as a result.

In December 2024, a planned NWA event at the Polish Club was cancelled after the venue withdrew due to public pressure. Using an alternate location, the speeches were livestreamed as Trihey claimed the cancellation draws more attention to his event from sympathetic viewers.

NWA members also participated in the August 31, 2025, “March for Australia” anti-immigrant rally alongside NSN and other far-right networks. This was the same day that NSN members allegedly stormed the Aboriginal Camp Sovereignty site in Melbourne.

Continuing to find its place in the nationalist scene, in April 2026, an NWA event managed to draw between 100 and 200 people. During this event, Trihey called for accused war criminal Ben Roberts-Smith to be exonerated. Roberts-Smith is accused of killing five Afghan nationals while deployed in 2009 and 2012 as a member of the Australian Special Air Service.

Pauline Hanson’s One Nation (PHON) is mostly known for its anti-immigrant leader, Pauline Hanson. Founded by Hanson, David Ettridge, and David Oldfield in 1997, the party was established after the Liberal Party removed its endorsement from Hanson in a federal election the previous year. They dropped Hanson, who remained an MP, after she made disparaging remarks about Indigenous Australians in a letter published in the Queensland Times. It read, “How can we expect this race to help themselves when governments shower them with money, facilities and opportunities that only these people can obtain no matter how minute the Indigenous [sic] blood is that flows through their veins and that is what is causing racism.”

Arguing that other political parties are out of touch with mainstream Australia, One Nation runs on a broadly populist and protectionist platform and is against globalization. It promises to drastically reduce immigration and to abolish “divisive and discriminatory policies … attached to Aboriginal and multicultural affairs.” PHON rejects multiculturalism as a “threat to the very basis of the Australian culture, identity and shared values,” and argues that past government policies regarding immigration were causing “the Asianisation of Australia.”

Its slogan, shared on posts to the party’s over 437,000 followers (as of June 2026) Facebook page, is “We’ve Got the Guts to Say What You’re Thinking.”

When Hanson launched the party from Ipswich Civic Hall, it did not have a finalized platform, but made commitments to “end immigration until there is a substantial reduction in unemployment and to abolish all forms of native title,” according to reporting at the time. Over 100 people gathered to protest the party, which was estimated to have around 5,000 members.

When Queensland state elections followed in 1998, the party returned 22.7 per cent of the vote, more than any other third-party, earning them 11 seats in the legislature.

Over the next three years, the party elected one member, Heather Hill, to the senate and three state parliaments before facing trouble. Hanson lost her seat to a Liberal candidate and Hill had to resign in 1999 after being disqualified for being a dual U.K.-Australian citizen. Five of the 11 Queensland MPs resigned to sit as independents that same year. One Nation was briefly deregistered, though managed to get back on the ballot for the 2001 state election. Hanson was expelled from the party in 2002 and in 2003 was convicted of election fraud for claiming 500 members of the “Pauline Hanson Support Movement” were actually One Nation members. She was released after spending 78 days in prison when her three election fraud charges were overturned on appeal.

Hanson did not return as leader and One Nation was relegated to the fringes with other small parties. Hanson returned to leadership in 2014 and was returned to parliament in the 2016 federal elections.

In 2017, Hanson arrived at the Senate dressed in a burka and demanding that the clothing be banned. The following year, party members tried to pass a Senate motion endorsing the white supremacist slogan, “it’s OK to be white.”

Regardless of its extremism, the party is still popular in parts of the country and has several members sitting in office. Hanson has served as a Senator for Queensland in the Australian Parliament since 2016, along with Malcolm Roberts. Others include Tyron Whitten, who took his seat as Senator for Western Australia in July 2025, and Sean Bell, the Senator for New South Wales, who was appointed in September 2025 to replace Warwick Stacey after his resignation.

In the House of Representatives, Barnaby Joyce, the Member for New England, NSW, left the Nationals Party in December 2025 to join One Nation and David Farley, the Member for Farrer, NSW, became the first candidate for the party directly elected to the House in a May 2026 by-election.

The senators had worked to block efforts on climate change, which PHON senators have called a scam and a plot by the UN, and other progressive issues. During the pandemic, the party was against lockdowns and spread misinformation about vaccines. It has frequently attacked the World Health Organization’s efforts in the pandemic in its social media posts.

Early in 2023, One Nation announced it would lead the campaign for a “No” vote against the Indigenous Voice to Parliament referendum. Hanson is quoted on the party’s website as claiming the measure would divide Australia based on race and said the measure “was known as apartheid in South Africa, and it was rightly consigned to the dustbin of history. How can we possibly be contemplating this in Australia?”

When the “No” vote won in October 2023, One Nation’s campaigning was seen as a contributing factor.

In August 2023, after being dismissed as parliamentary leader for One Nation, Mark Latham quit the party and accused it of “defrauding NSW electoral funds” to aid the party federally. Hanson denied the allegations.

In November 2024, a federal court judge ruled that a post by Hanson to the social media platform X in 2022 telling Senator Mehreen Faruqi to “piss off back to Pakistan” constituted a “racist attack” and ordered her to pay for Faruqi’s legal costs. Hanson has appealed the ruling.

The party lost one of its more prominent voices in December 2024 when Tania Mihailuk resigned as NSW leader and quit One Nation, leaving the party with no representation in the NSW Parliament. The trouble would not last long, as in the following May 2025, a federal election saw One Nation double its Senate representation from two to four seats, with wins in NSW (Warwick Stacey) and Western Australia (Tyron Whitten) alongside Hanson and Malcolm Roberts (Queensland).

On November 25, 2025, Hanson wore a burqa into the Senate for a second time, recreating the stunt from 2017. The act was meant as a protest for the chamber’s refusal to debate her bill banning full-face coverings. As a result, Hanson was formally censured and suspended for seven sitting days.

Less than two weeks later, Former Deputy Prime Minister and Nationals leader Barnaby Joyce announced he was defecting to join One Nation.

The party also made major progress in state and by-elections that could indicate rising support among Australians. A by-election in Farrer handed a decisive win to candidate David Farley, and the South Australian state election and the Nepean state by-election in Victoria also managed to translate high polling numbers into a substantial political victory. It was shortly after that a report by the Australian Financial Review claimed that One Nation’s paid membership had surged past other parties, along with rising poll numbers that made it the most favored during the primary round of voting.

Hanson also delivered her first-ever formal address to the National Press Club in June 2026, outlining a broad policy platform that included reducing migration, ending transgender participation in sport, defunding and restructuring state news agencies, regulating AI technology, and eliminating foreign aid to countries that work with the Government of China.

In July 2026, Hanson spoke at CPAC London, and event affiliated with the American group CPAC, and that was put together by former British Prime Minister Liz Truss. This appearance marks Hanson’s elevation on the transnational far right, as CPAC events host prominent officials from across the globe. She told the crowd Australia had “gone woke,” complained about immigrants in Australia and about pro-environmental policies. While in Britain, Hanson also went on a “fact finding” tour with British anti-Muslim bigot Tommy Robinson and appeared on one of his podcasts. Robinson has been jailed five times for multiple offences, including fraud and assault.

Intended to be the political wing of Thomas Sewell’s neo-Nazi movement, White Australia (WA) emerged as a Sydney/New South Wales-based partner organization to National Socialist Network (NSN). Headed by Jack Eltis, a part-time air-conditioning mechanic from north-west Sydney, he is now reported to be the NSN’s third-in-command under Sewell. While NSN, the European Australia Movement (EAM), and White Australia often operate in concert as part of a broader project, it can be hard to distinguish the organizations and their membership from one another.

The group’s description from its defunct website reads that “Australia was founded as a White Nation…We are proud of our history and completely unapologetic to those we conquered.” Membership required monthly in-person attendance and accepted donations solicited via Bitcoin, as well as “cash, cheque, or money order” to a Rouse Hill Town Centre PO Box registered to Eltis.

Eltis also travelled to Germany, which he referred to as the “motherland” on a “combined business and personal trip.” He claimed on Telegram that during his two weeks in the country that he “network[ed] with nationalist organizations there,” adding that he hoped to return to Europe to meet with other organizations, particularly branches of the neo-Nazi Active Clubs operating inside the U.K. It was around this time that Eltis claimed to have secured “about 90 per cent” of the 1,500 signatures required to form a federal political party.

In Fall 2025, Eltis attempted to register a company, “White Australia Pty Ltd,” in NSW, intending to raise funds toward registering a federal political party. The Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) rejected the name, leading to Eltis try again, this time under the name “Terra Australis Alba” (“White Southern Land” in Latin).

It was around this period that White Australia submitted an application to the NSW police to hold a public assembly outside of the state Parliament. The permit was approved and the protest held in November 2025 with approximately 60 NSN and White Australia members with signs reading “Abolish the Jewish Lobby” and chanting antisemitic slogans including “blood and honor.” The public outcry around the rally drew scrutiny about how neo-Nazi groups were able to obtain a permit and resulted in Eltis allegedly losing his accounts with ME Bank.

Despite pressure from public officials after the rally, the Australian Electoral Commission stated it had “no scope” under current law to block a neo-Nazi group from registering as a federal political party.

At the start of 2026, facing a ban under laws proposed after the Bondi Beach attack, Sewell and other movement leadership announced that NSN, EAM, and White Australia would be disbanding as of January 18, two days before the Combating Antisemitism, Hate and Extremism (Criminal and Migration Laws) Act would pass through federal parliament. By May 2026, the groups were listed as “prohibited hate groups” under the new laws.

The same day as the ban went into effect, Eltis claimed via an aligned neo-Nazi news site that the Australian Electoral Commission had approved the federal registration of a party under the name “White Australia Party” (WAP). In the same article, Sewell frames the ban as an attempt to “criminalize us and use the police force as a mercenary wing,” and suppress political competition. Sewell also started a fundraising campaign for a legal challenge he is bringing to the Australian High Court over the organizational bans. The fundraiser continues and at time of writing, has raised $193,524 of a $250,000 goal.