Pauline Hanson’s party has filled more than half the lower-house tickets for November’s state election, but the biographies of several nominees are already complicating the official narrative of a professionalised, heavily vetted operation.
Fifty-one of Victoria’s 88 Legislative Assembly seats now have a One Nation standard-bearer. The rollout, conducted largely through social media rather than a traditional press conference, has introduced voters to a cast that includes a former Liberal councillor welcomed by men with organised-crime convictions, a naturopath who amplified a debunked claim linking paracetamol to autism, and a candidate who told climate-striking schoolchildren that the crisis was their own fault.
The Berwick launch and the company it kept
Michael Piastrino, a hairdresser turned aspirant for the outer-suburban seat of Berwick, held his campaign kick-off on Sunday. The Liberal incumbent, Brad Battin, sits on a 4.7 per cent margin — territory the minor party clearly fancies. Yet the photographs from the event told a story the party’s headquarters might have preferred stayed private.
Standing behind Piastrino in one selfie was Malaki Salesui, convicted in 2021 for his role in an organised car-theft ring. Another attendee, Mick Mantzaris, pleaded guilty in 2012 to possessing testosterone, disclosing restricted information and misleading the Office of Police Integrity. A year later he was the target of a drive-by shooting; police described him at the time as an associate of outlaw motorcycle gang members.
Anthony Younan, nephew of the slain underworld figure Nabil Maghnie, also weighed in on Piastrino’s Instagram feed. “I can’t believe I am going to vote for a red headed woman who hate Arabs,” he wrote. “My mother is going to disown me Michael. But I am doing this for you bro!”
Piastrino, who ran for the Liberals in 2022 before being forced to apologise for declaring that Daniel Andrews would be “brought to justice for the murder of 800 people,” told the Cranbourne Star News he had met Mantzaris and Salesui through church. “I’m not here to judge people,” he said. “I’m here to help people.”
Vetting rhetoric versus reality
In June, One Nation’s general manager, Kelvin Morton, insisted the party had overhauled its candidate selection. He spoke of “very comprehensive deep dive” technology that scoured social-media histories and delivered a “thorough assessment” of character. Warren Pickering, the Victorian leader installed last month, has himself acknowledged past drug use and a drink-driving offence — a disclosure framed as transparency but which also underscores the latitude the party extends to its own.
Ben Lucas, contesting the Liberal-held seat of Narracan, resigned from Baw Baw Shire Council in 2021 after convictions for drink-driving and dangerous driving. Court records show a $2,000 fine and a two-year licence suspension. This month he pleaded guilty to operating a category-one aquatic facility — ice baths at his gym — without council registration, incurring $3,000 in costs. Lucas dismissed the matter on Facebook as a “storm in a teacup” blown out of proportion by an “administrative oversight,” adding: “If I wasn’t involved with One Nation, would this have still been pursued in the same way?”
Health misinformation and the autism claim
Elita Dabrowski, the party’s pick for Sunbury — a seat Labor privately fears could slip — has scrubbed her social-media accounts since announcement. A deleted tweet from September 2025, captured by Guardian Australia, shows her endorsing Donald Trump’s assertion that paracetamol use during pregnancy heightens autism risk. “As a naturopath & functional health practitioner, I felt proud – it reflects what I see in clinic every day,” she wrote. The claim has been repeatedly rejected by major medical bodies and peer-reviewed research.
Dabrowski’s professional background as a “functional health practitioner” gives her platform a veneer of authority that makes the amplification of fringe theories particularly potent. The post remains a matter of public record despite the deletion.
Rhetoric on race, history and the climate
Tammy Lindrum, running in the historically safe Labor seat of Albert Park, left a trail of comments on Meta’s Threads platform under the handle “Lindrum Legends.” In April 2025 she wrote of “Black and Muslim supremacy in Australia” and complained that “the Whitman [sic] can’t say anything as they risk being accused of being racist.” Three months later: “If you don’t like Bacon go back to a Muslim country.” Responding to a proposal to make the First Peoples’ Assembly of Victoria permanent, she asked: “We have paid their housing, welfare, education, health, for many years. When does that stop?”
Bruce Whalley, the candidate for Labor-held Bundoora, blamed children for the climate crisis during the 2019 school strikes. “Climate change is the fault of kids,” he tweeted. “Stop asking for a car lift to school. WALK! RIDE a BIKE! or CATCH PUBLIC TRANSPORT. Gosh! Start to be a generation of doers Not talkers and complainers.” His Instagram bio describes him as an “ABC2 TV Think Tank tragic” — an odd boast for a party that campaigns to defund the broadcaster and bars its journalists from official events.
One Nation was contacted for comment on each of these matters. At the time of publication, no response had been received.
Why it Matters
Victoria’s electoral arithmetic is unforgiving for minor parties: preferences decide seats, and the major parties’ willingness to direct them toward One Nation will hinge on whether the Coalition calculates that the brand’s toxicity outweighs its utility in harvesting protest votes. The candidates now on the ballot paper — some with criminal associations, others trafficking in medical misinformation or racialised rhetoric — will test that calculation in real time. If the party’s “deep dive” vetting missed what a basic archive search uncovered, the credibility of its entire state operation is in question before a single vote is cast.
