Pauline Hanson says two nuclear reactors should be built on Australia’s east coast, but insists One Nation’s policy is nothing like Peter Dutton’s failed push to build plants during his unsuccessful election campaign.
Campaigning in Victoria ahead of the November state election, the One Nation leader went beyond the party’s published policy, which calls for $6.8bn to be spent on construction of one reactor, to be built at a site supported by community consultation.
Hanson also called for taxpayer funding to keep coal-fired Loy Yang power station outside Traralgon operating, as well as construction of “a couple” of new nuclear plants as part of a push for a “diversity” of power supply.
“The reactors need to happen,” Hanson said on Monday.
“But we need that diversity of power. Keep your coal-fired power stations going.”
Sign up for the Breaking News Australia emailShe distanced herself from a plan to build seven taxpayer-funded nuclear plants that was previously proposed by the Coalition. That policy, which suggested having two of the plants use small modular technology, fell flat with voters ahead of the 2025 election.
One Nation’s policy says nuclear energy would support industry and take pressure off older energy infrastructure, while creating high-skill jobs. Their $6.8bn price tag is based on projected costs for two nuclear reactors being built in South Korea.
Labor opposes lifting the Howard-era moratorium on civil nuclear power in Australia, while the Coalition wants to remove the ban to allow the private sector to pursue developments.
Tony Wood, an energy and climate expert at the Grattan Institute think-tank, said any move to repeal the moratorium would spark a new fight about nuclear.
“If the moratorium was lifted tomorrow, no one is going to go out and build a nuclear power station. It would need huge amount of government support and take a long time,” he said.
“You couldn’t pick up a nuclear power station from South Korea and drop it in the Latrobe Valley. You’ve got a whole regulatory process, you’ve got a whole investment process and you’d have to bring out the entire workforce because there’s only one or maybe two universities that do any sort of nuclear science these days in the university courses.”
Wood said the $6.8bn price tag could be low, noting the Hinkley nuclear development in England was costing at least £35bn, or about $66bn Australian dollars.
“I think nuclear might eventually be part of Plan C or D but I don’t see it being part of Australia’s Plan A,” he said.
War of words with PM
The unveiling of the policy came after Labor’s historic loss in Western Australia’s Secret Harbour byelection, where One Nation’s Luke Herdegen secured the party’s first lower house seat in the state’s parliament.
After the byelection result, Anthony Albanese told Queensland Labor’s state conference that One Nation was “dangerous, divisive and downright dishonest”.
“They’ll say anything and do anything to win votes. Bend any facts. Peddle misinformation and disinformation. Turn Australian against Australian,” the prime minister said.
“Parties like One Nation have no serious answers to our problems.”
In a significant spray on social media, Hanson on Monday said Albanese’s comments “crossed a line”, and that “words have consequences”.
“That is how political violence is incited,” she wrote.
“Anthony Albanese says we need to turn down the heat and violent rhetoric in our political discourse. Meanwhile, he and his treasurer are pouring petrol all over it,” she said.
“The real danger to Jim [Chalmers] and Albanese is that the people of Australia are coming for their government … at the ballot box.”
But the attorney general, Michelle Rowland, threw her support behind Albanese’s characterisation of One Nation, saying she considered the party to be dangerous in multiple ways.
“I think some of One Nation’s elements, particularly where they have been recruiting or otherwise giving a platform to extremist views, … that is dangerous,” Rowland said.
“I think it is also dangerous, at a time when social cohesion has never been more important, to trade on the politics of division.”
Hanson is no stranger to making controversial comments.
She plans to take a fight with a fellow senator to the high court, after losing an appeal to a federal court ruling that she racially discriminated against the Greens’ Mehreen Faruqi by telling her to “piss off back to Pakistan”.
Hanson also came under fire in February after she disputed whether “good Muslims” exist. The Australian federal police confirmed they had received multiple complaints about the comments, but determined Hanson’s comments did not breach hate laws.
• This article was amended on 31 August 2026. One Nation’s Luke Herdegen won the party’s first lower house seat in the Western Australian parliament, not Rod Caddies as a previous version stated.
