Markets 
One Nation upper house candidate Natalie Adams is the daughter of a former fraudster, and her husband owes a $1.3 million debt to the tax office.
The North East Metro candidate’s father is disgraced businessman Sebastian Canzoneri, who was convicted of fraud in the late 1990s when Adams was still a teenager, and was sentenced to two years in jail, suspended for 16 months.
An investigation by The Age of the business and property dealings of One Nation’s first group of candidates for November’s state election has also discovered that state leader Warren Pickering uses an address outside the Pakenham electorate he is running in, and another candidate appears to be living at a home owned by his parents.
Canzoneri had many colourful business connections including being a business associate partner of Ron Bakir, the man who funded the legal defence of Shappelle Corby when she was facing criminal charges in Bali for drug trafficking.
Canzoneri later became the chief executive officer of Bakir’s mobile phone retailer, which was once known as Crazy Ron’s – a play on competitor Crazy John’s trading name.
Adams – then using her maiden name Canzoneri – and her father were mentioned in passing in a civil dispute relating to the name clash. In that case, Crazy Ron’s agreed to change its name to Mad Ron’s as part of a court settlement.
A judgment in the matter reveals Adams was working in an administrative role when she mistakenly arranged for the company to be listed as Crazy Ron’s (instead of Mad Ron’s) in the Sydney and Melbourne White Pages. Her mistake was not detected by a more senior staffer and the court heard her father attempted to have the listings cancelled with limited success.
Company records show Adams was listed as a director on some of the same companies as her father in the past decade, including Flagstaff Pty Ltd, Ruldina Investment Pty Ltd (now under external administration), and Investico Pty Ltd.
They were not directors at the same time, and the companies have now been deregistered.
Adams is also listed as a creditor to her husband Daniel Adams’ business, Team JJs, which appointed liquidators last year amid soaring debts including a $1.38 million bill to the ATO for unpaid taxes.
In May 2024 Adams and her husband took out a fresh mortgage over their house in Bulleen with Macquarie Bank. In July last year another mortgage was taken out over the home, provided by family members Noeline and Stephen Adams. The couple also placed a caveat over the home.
Staff at Team JJs, which supplied labour to the family’s JJ Communications enterprise, are owed nearly $240,000, according to a liquidators’ report filed in October.
The report shows Adams is also owed about $53,000 for the business, which supplied labour to the family’s telecommunications infrastructure business JJ Communications, which remains operational.
Adams and her husband were contacted for comment via One Nation and an email for their company. Canzoneri was also contacted for comment.
According to public records, Pickering – who is One Nation’s Victorian leader and candidate for the lower house seat of Pakenham – does not own any property in his name. The 43-year-old single father lists his address on documents for a superannuation trust, which was opened in June, in Warragul – in the state’s south-east.
The property is about 45 minutes from the suburb of Pakenham and outside the electorate in which he is running.
Company records also indicate he sold his shares in Queensland-based company Figjam Seriously, and he is no longer a director.
The company – a health and nutrition company – continues to operate under sole director Joanne Scott, with its principal place of business listed in the Townsville suburb of Burdell. That same address was also Pickering’s address at the time he was a director, in the year to July 25, 2019.
The property is leased by Defence Housing Australia, according to records.
Pickering was born in Gippsland, in Victoria’s east. He worked in farming and as a bricklayer before joining the Army as a combat engineer for a decade.
He was deployed to the Middle East and took part in humanitarian operations before he transferred to the Army Reserve and worked in Queensland’s coal mining industry.
Pickering has previously said in interviews he lost his job at a BHP coal mine in central Queensland during the pandemic after the mining giant mandated COVID-19 vaccines.
The Age recently revealed Pickering is a self-described conspiracy theorist who has claimed Australian government policy is controlled by a cabal of foreign “globalists”, and endorsed the idea that the world economy was deliberately crashed to trigger a “great reset”.
Pickering was contacted for comment via One Nation.
Property records show Western Metro candidate Fiona Lopez and her husband Alexander own a home in Sunshine, in Melbourne’s west, but are not registered as currently living there. They borrowed against it in 2025, after buying the home in 2021. It is unclear where she lives now.
Lopez, a human resources manager, was a contestant on television game show Who Wants to be a Millionaire in 2021 and 2022, winning $1000.
On social media, Lopez’s husband Alexander shared selfies at a rally to mark the resignation of former premier Daniel Andrews outside Parliament House on September 27, 2023.
“Bye Bye Dan,” a caption read. Lopez was contacted for comment via One Nation’s media team.
Property records for South East Metro candidate Colleen Harkin show she took out a mortgage on her Brighton home in late June, days after quitting the Liberal Party and announcing that she would join One Nation.
Western Victoria candidate Chris Burson – who has said he was on former premier Daniel Andrews’ security detail – is a City of Geelong councillor. He was formerly a combat engineer in the Army, and said he worked for Victoria Police for 10 years.
Burson told a podcast hosted by far-right influencer Avi Yemeni in 2022 that he quit Victoria Police during the pandemic because he did not want to enforce COVID rules.
Burson formerly had the online persona of “allaustralianhero@myspace”.
Burson was contacted for comment through One Nation.
The South Metro candidate, 29-year-old Aaron Sanford, has no registered companies or property under his name, and according to public records is living at a home owned by his parents.
He was listed as solicitor at Melbourne law firm HDME Lawyers as of April this year, but his profile has been removed from HDME’s website and the firm declined to speak with The Age when contacted. Sanford is also listed as a solicitor on the website of interventionorders.com, which specialises in family law.
Northern Metro candidate and creator of One Nation’s anti-woke cartoon A Super Progressive Movie, Mark Nicholson, is registered as living at an address in Abbotsford, but it is not in his name.
One Nation’s current Northern Victoria MP Rikkie-Lee Tyrell’s dairy company has been deregistered, and her One Nation profile says she lives in Shepparton.
Cut through the noise of federal politics with news, views and expert analysis. Subscribers can sign up to our weekly Inside Politics newsletter.
Sarah Danckert is a senior reporter who specialises in investigations and corporate wrongdoing. She is a two-time Walkley Award winner, and has won six Quill Awards and two Kennedy Awards.Connect via X or email.From our partners
Read the full article here
