Over recent weeks, Pauline Hanson made headlines for her comments on domestic violence. She declared domestic violence is “a two-way street”.
Media outlets then unearthed a 2025 podcast episode in which Hanson called paid domestic and family violence leave a “holiday”, and alleged domestic violence diverts police attention away from “real crime”.
While Hanson says her comments were taken out of context, her stance on domestic violence is not new.
In fact, as I chart in a forthcoming piece in Australian Historical Studies, her identification with male grievance has been core to her politics since day one. She’s been dubbed “queen of the Australian men’s rights movement”.
Yet this aspect has been largely overlooked by journalists and scholars alike, overshadowed by her attitudes toward racial diversity and immigration.
Defender of men’s rights
In 1996, Hanson told a journalist:
I think the most downtrodden person in this country is the white Anglo-Saxon male.
In 2023, she said in parliament:
[…] but, no doubt, I will be the only woman today speaking for the most oppressed and neglected minority in Australia: men.
As evidenced by these two quotes, almost 30 years apart, Hanson has consistently cast herself as an unwavering champion of men’s rights.
Though the manosphere has been trending in recent years, it’s just the latest manifestation of the men’s rights movement, which took off in the 1960s.
A subset of this movement is the fathers’ rights movement. Its followers believe the push for women’s rights has gone “too far”, that the Family Court is under feminist rule, and that the “feminist domestic violence industry” weaponises family law against men.
At the core of both movements is a simultaneous belief in male supremacy and male victimhood, with women as the primary villain in both cases.
Hanson championed the men’s rights agenda long before the rise of the manosphere. Hanson 1.0 (1996-98) and Hanson 2.0 (2016–) alike adopted many of the movement’s demands as core policy. This was most evident in attacks on family law for its supposed anti-male bias, a victim-blaming rhetoric of domestic violence and general anti-feminist sentiments.
Hanson vs the Family Court
Since the 1990s, Hanson has been an ardent believer in the myth that men are victimised by the Family Court system.
In her 1996 maiden speech, she attacked both the Family Law Act and child support scheme for being biased against “non-custodial” (male) parents, arguing the former “brought death, misery and heartache to countless of Australians” while the latter “has become unworkable, very unfair and one sided. Custodial parents can often profit handsomely at the expense of a parent paying child support”.
After successful lobbying by men’s rights groups, in 2019 Hanson moved for a parliamentary inquiry into the family law system and was appointed as its deputy chair.
Throughout the inquiry, Hanson endorsed evidence from the men’s rights groups invited to give testimony, while disparaging bodies representing single mothers and women’s legal services.
Hanson vs domestic violence
Hanson has long advanced men’s rights movement myths about domestic violence.
Demonstrating the increasing radicalisation of Hanson 2.0, in her 2016 maiden speech she warned the murder of women by their former partners out of “sheer frustration” would increase unless men are treated with more respect in “this unworkable system”.
Hanson vs feminism
Lastly, Hanson has been staunchly anti-feminist since her early days in parliament, appealing to men who feel directly threatened by feminism.
In a 2019 parliamentary speech, she stated she had had a “gutful of hearing from man-hating feminists […] I’m sick and tired of this constant criticism of men in Australia, especially if they’re white”.
Source: Pauline Hanson was once dubbed ‘queen of the men’s rights movement’. Her 30-year career shows why
