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A last-minute bundle of accounts released to this masthead reveal the scale of One Nation’s thriving online merchandise business and its significant revenue from “candidate fees” as well as hefty legal bills and consultancy fees.
The Queensland Office of Fair Trading released three years of financial accounts on Friday after One Nation scrambled to submit its overdue financial reports and avoid the risk of being deregistered.
The accounts, submitted by One Nation Queensland Division Inc, show $2.5 million in total merchandise sales between 2021-22 and 2024-25.
Merchandise has become a significant income stream for the rising political force, which sells items online including mousepads, beach balls, bottles of gin, bobble-head dolls and Make Albo Go Away baseball caps. The annual revenue figure jumped from about $167,000 in 2022-23 to $871,000 in 2024-25.
The party is also earning money from its political aspirants, taking in $732,000 in “candidate fees” in 2024-25. Membership fees rose to a high of $263,000 the same year.
Its total equity stood at $1.4 million.
But One Nation also has considerable expenses. The latest accounts show it spent nearly $800,000 in legal fees in a four-year period. It spent more than a million in “consultancy fees” in the same period.
The scale of the electoral funding and income from donations indicate One Nation Queensland Division Inc is operating on a national level.
In the year 2022-23, the entity reported receiving $2.9 million in electoral funding, a sum that lines up with payments from the Australian Electoral Commission for that year’s federal election.
Records from the Queensland Electoral Commission show it also paid the party about $250,000 that same year.
The entity reported $2.1 million in donation income in 2024-2025 while the Queensland electoral records show One Nation receiving $145,000 in the same year.
One Nation Queensland Division Inc is separate from a public company the party registered in 2021, named Pauline Hanson’s One Nation Limited. The public company counts Hanson and party treasurer Alex Jones as directors and is the leaseholder for the party’s Brisbane office headquarters.
One Nation did not respond to questions about the status of its public company. Earlier in the week, a spokesman said: “One Nation has met all of its obligations with respect to the Queensland Office of Fair Trading.”
The accounts released on Friday include director declarations from Jones, who said they “present fairly the company’s financial position”. Jones pleaded guilty to electoral fraud in 2022 but he did not receive a conviction.
The independent audits were conducted by Tony Becis, a Brisbane-based chartered accountant frequently used by the party.
Signatures on the reports were dated August 18, showing the party was racing against the clock to submit in time to meet its Tuesday deadline.
Queensland’s Office of Fair Trading, which oversees incorporated associations in the state, had said the party could risk losing its legal status if it failed to hand in the outstanding accounts.
The party has a long history of failing to maintain up-to-date financial records. This masthead revealed in January that Hanson had undisclosed shareholdings or directorships in three separate companies, which prompted the senator to change her official register of interests.
This year, Hanson, as the registered party agent in Queensland, was required to amend the financial return for the last state election, as One Nation had failed to declare $255,000 in spending, nearly half its overall expenditure.
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James Hall is the News Director at the Brisbane Times. He is the former Queensland correspondent at The Australian Financial Review and has reported for a range of mastheads across the country, specialising on political and finance reporting.Connect via X or email.From our partners
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