Pauline Hanson has claimed thousands of dollars in taxpayer-funded flights and chauffeured vehicles to headline political fundraisers for One Nation, raising questions about whether she is in potential breach of parliamentary rules.
Hanson has previously criticised MPs’ use of taxpayer-funded entitlements, but Guardian Australia can reveal the Queensland senator billed taxpayers for multiple flights to campaign alongside her daughter, Lee Hanson, who was the party’s lead Senate candidate in Tasmania at the last election. This included a return trip from Hobart to Sydney to appear live on Channel Seven’s Sunrise program.
On Friday, the Guardian revealed that Lee Hanson has since been employed by One Nation as a senior adviser for the party’s New South Wales senator Sean Bell, a former “trusted adviser” to her mother.
Under guidelines for parliamentarians, the “dominant purpose” for taxpayer-funded travel must be parliamentary business. While political campaigning is not excluded under the guidelines, “you must not claim work expenses or use public resources for the purpose of fundraising, soliciting donations or attending fundraising events and activities” – unless related to charity.
MPs from both major parties have frequently sought to justify using taxpayer resources to attend political fundraisers, usually by claiming other coincidental parliamentary or constituent business.
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Records from the Independent Parliamentary Expenses Authority (IPEA) show that, in the lead-up to the last election, Hanson billed taxpayers thousands of dollars for trips which included attendance at political fundraisers. Among the expenses was $1,650 to attend an Adelaide “Australia Day” fundraiser last year, alongside a One Nation Senate candidate and South Australian upper house MP, Sarah Game, who has since quit the party.
Hanson also claimed more than $2,000 to fly from Brisbane to Sydney on 14 February 2025, and then from Newcastle to Brisbane two days later.
On 15 February, Hanson headlined a One Nation fundraising dinner with her NSW candidates on the state’s Central Coast – about midway between Sydney and Newcastle. Comcars in Brisbane linked to the trip totalled $700.
The party also held its NSW annual general meeting in Gosford on the same day.
In April 2025, Hanson claimed about $1,200 in flights to and from Newcastle, and attended a fundraising event in Maitland with the party’s candidate for the seat of Paterson.
In 2024, Hanson also headlined a fundraiser at an open-air floating bar on the Swan River as part of a $2,200 trip to Perth.
Hanson has been contacted for comment.
Daughter’s campaign
According to IPEA records, Hanson claimed $2,400 across six flights to and from Hobart over a five-day period last April – which coincided with the launch of her daughter’s Senate campaign. They included return flights to Sydney, where the pair appeared in the Sunrise studio on 3 April, at a cost of $1,200, and $200 in Comcar fares.
The party leader then claimed another $2,500 to and from Hobart, where she campaigned with her daughter in the final week of the election campaign. She stayed in Hobart until the day after election night, returning to Brisbane on 4 May.
Hanson’s use of taxpayer funded travel has previously been the subject of an assurance review by the expenses watchdog, after she claimed almost $5,000 to attend Gina Rinehart’s 70th birthday party in Perth in 2024.
She was cleared of any wrongdoing, after her office provided diary entries that showed she met with senior executives from Rinehart’s company, Hancock Prospecting, which were used to justify the trip was related to her parliamentary duties.
The One Nation senator has also repeatedly failed to properly declare gifts from Rinehart, correctly updating the register only after Guardian Australia published details of her undeclared flights. The Guardian revealed last year that the mining magnate flew Hanson and her chief of staff, James Ashby, on her private jet to Florida, and again on a flight between Melbourne and Sydney after a Rinehart-linked event in Geelong in October.
IPEA records show that Hanson also claimed $2,260 in taxpayer funded flights to travel to Adelaide in November 2024, where she joined Rinehart at her national mining and agriculture days. Hanson was seen dancing alongside Rinehart at the gala mining event in Moomba where Guy Sebastian performed.
The use of taxpayer funds has been a perennial issue for the Queensland senator, with her party twice being forced to pay back election funding to the Australian Electoral Commission (AEC). She is also subject to an enforceable undertaking after the 2019 federal election, which imposes conditions on Hanson as the registered agent for any claims to public funding greater than $10,000.
That 2021 enforceable undertaking was put in place after the AEC found the party had wrongly claimed about $165,000 in expenses, which it was forced to repay. An AEC review had found some of Hanson’s claimed expenses were either “not Electoral Expenditure …[or] were Electoral Expenditure that had not been incurred”.
After the 2022 compliance program, Hanson was forced to pay back about $70,000.
The AEC has been undertaking its compliance review of 2025 election campaign funding, which delivered just over $6m to One Nation. The compliance review is part of an annual program that is based on a sample of annual disclosure returns lodged. The AEC will also audit claims from other parties as part of the review process.
Close to 90% of the dollar value of election funding paid out to eligible participants was covered through compliance for the 2022 federal election, and a similar level is expected for the 2025 election, with the review expected to be finalised in the coming months.
