Pauline Hanson's One Nation to run in local government elections

EXCLUSIVE: Pauline Hanson says her party will contest at the local level and already has representation.

Queensland senator Pauline Hanson has confirmed One Nation will run candidates at upcoming local government elections, marking a marking a significant expansion for her party.

One Nation has generally stayed away from endorsing candidates in council elections, with rare exceptions including Bob Thompson, who was elected in to NSW's Campbelltown City Council in 1999 but left the party soon after.

In an exclusive interview with 6 News, Hanson said One Nation hopes to grow at the state and federal level, "and we're going to branch out into council as well".

"There has been a couple [council] seats that we've won, we've held a council seat in Victor Harbour in South Australia and he's doing an excellent job there, he will be heading our South Australian upper house ticket next year for their elections in March".

"We've also had a councillor elected in Tasmania, so there has been a couple of councillor spots".

The Victor Harbour councillor that Hanson was referring to is Carlos Quaremba, who is also the current president of One Nation SA.

But it's not completely clear who the Tasmanian One Nation councillor is, as although One Nation member Emma Goyne was elected to Clarence City Council in 2022, she publicly stated during the local elections campaign that "council is no place for politics" and referred to a "past association with One Nation" (although she's also shared One Nation content as an elected councillor). We've asked Hanson's team for clarification.

Hanson confirmed to 6 News that One Nation is "going to start branches around the country". On the question of why One Nation hadn't set up local branches until now, she said "we've had to actually get the administration side of the party with limited resources and people to run it to actually put everything into place".

"Now that I feel that we've we've achieved that, now we will allow people to start up branches, get that involvement from the public and people to join the branches...from the branches they can get their own candidates, their own members, whether they want to stand for local, state or federal – we will allow that".

Local branches has been a recent point of expansion for the Libertarian Party, which had a number of victories at last year's local elections in NSW and Victoria.

During a live debate for Queensland Senate candidates aired on 6 News in March, Libertarian lead candidate Jim Willmott pushed One Nation senator Malcolm Roberts on the subject, repeatedly asking "how many branches have you got?".

Outside of the Libertarians, local elections is generally not an area looked at by minor parties on the right. But with Reform UK winning big in last month's English local elections (yes, the UK has generally has more partisan councils and doesn't have state elections) it could be an area where parties can establish a strong on the ground campaign before running at other levels of government.

Local elections will be held this year in the NT and WA, and next year in SA and Tasmania.