Shabash, Pauline Hanson! Thirty years in Australian politics, written off more times than anyone can count, and here you are again — One Nation’s stocks rising as Labor stumbles on cost of living and housing. That staying power deserves acknowledgment. But resilience is not the same as being right, and on migrants, on Muslims, and on who is actually squeezing ordinary Australians, you have picked the wrong targets.

Her current political resurgence cannot simply be brushed aside. Commentators note that One Nation is increasingly putting forward policies that, even if sometimes “one-dimensional or flawed”, give it a greater appearance of governing capacity.

Voters who have shifted to One Nation repeatedly identify the cost of living, immigration and housing pressures as major concerns. But recognising a problem is not the same as correctly identifying its cause—or prescribing the right solution.

One Nation has built considerable support by arguing that mass migration is driving the cost-of-living and housing crises.

Many Australians are genuinely distressed by housing shortages, high rents, overloaded infrastructure and declining living standards. The Labor Government deserves robust criticism for allowing migration to remain at levels that have outpaced housing and infrastructure capacity.

Even Hanson’s critics acknowledge that immigration policy must be connected to the capacity to house and service the growing population.

But migrants themselves did not create decades of housing under-supply, speculative investment, poor planning and policy failure. Nor should Muslims be made scapegoats for social problems they did not create.

The more fundamental question is this: who has captured Australia’s growing wealth?

While ordinary Australians struggle with mortgages, rents and grocery bills, enormous wealth and economic power have become concentrated in the hands of corporations, major investors and the very wealthy.

A genuinely populist politics should scrutinise monopoly power, tax concessions, speculative property accumulation and corporate influence — rather than encouraging struggling Australians to blame the migrant family living next door. Anger over inequality is too easily redirected away from those who benefit most from the system.

Pauline, you are also profoundly mistaken when you portray Islam as inherently threatening, even though it is a fellow Abrahamic faith. Concern about terrorism or violent extremism is legitimate. Muslims are among its victims worldwide and Australians, Muslim and non-Muslim alike, have every right to demand security.

But to slide from opposing extremism into treating a whole faith, or people from vaguely defined “radical Islamic countries”, as suspect is patently unjust. Islam is in reality a moderate religion (Qur’an 2:143).

That is precisely where your argument loses its moral compass.

Australian Muslims are not outsiders to Australian values. Islamic principles of justice, compassion, protection of the vulnerable and accountability before God are accommodated in Australia’s cherished ideals of a ‘fair go’ and the ‘rule of law.’

Calling out in February 2026 that there “were no good Muslims”, and in July that a “significant portion of Islam” is terror-based, wasn’t just condemned by Labor — they drew rebukes from your own side of politics too. Nationals Senator Mat Canavan and Deputy Liberal leader have said your statements are divisive and un-Australian. Even Barnaby Joyce responded that there are “Muslims who are very good people.”

Australia’s one million Muslims are teachers, doctors, tradies and small business owners who, generation after generation, have  facilitated Australia’s multicultural success by contributing their labour, businesses, skills and cultures while sharing citizenship and supporting democratic institutions.

And regarding your “Judeo-Christian” framing that it is the main basis of Western civilisation, historians will tell you it papers over a largely hidden story — Islamic scholars preserved and expanded Greek philosophy, and enhanced new mathematics, science and medicine through the centuries that fed directly into the European Renaissance you mistakenly claim as purely Western inheritance.

Pauline Hanson should direct more of her famous fighting spirit towards those who genuinely possess the greatest capacity to shape Australia’s economic system: powerful corporations, property speculators, monopolistic interests and wealthy elites who can exercise disproportionate influence over economic and political decision-making.

Here is the real scandal you keep walking past: while you tell struggling Australians their wages are being eaten by migrants, the data says otherwise. Top-100 company CEOs now earn roughly 55 times the average wage.

Executive pay ratio has remained very high while ordinary wages flatlined. Capital gains, concentrated overwhelmingly among the wealthiest, now rival the entire national wages bill. Decades of tax concessions for high earners and sustained corporate lobbying against reform have done more to hollow out the middle than any visa number ever has.

You don’t need to look overseas for proof of how this works — your own senior staff were caught seeking $20 million from America’s affluent NRA while discussing softening our gun laws, and you’ve acknowledged a private plane and policy access from a mining billionaire.

The lesson is right in front of you: wealthy lobbies, not migrant families, are the ones actually rewriting the rules in their own favour.

Australia does need a common culture. Commonality does not require cultural uniformity. The Socceroos recently rejected attempts to erase their multicultural identity – players proudly affirmed that their diverse origins are part of, not contrary to, being Australian.

Pauline Hanson deserves credit for political endurance and for giving voice to Australians abandoned by the major parties. But resilience is not the same as being right.

So, Shabash, Pauline — stay resilient. Keep challenging the complacent political establishment. But redirect that famous doggedness. The Muslim neighbour is not the enemy. The greater danger lies in allowing economic elites and political failures to escape scrutiny while ordinary Australians are encouraged to fight one another.

Take on the CEO pay packets, the tax loopholes, and the lobbyists actually shaping policy against ordinary Australians, migrant and non-migrant alike. That fight would earn you a decent respectful legacy.