How the media legitimise Barnaby and Pauline's PHONies

Why do the establishment media continue to legitimise politicians like One Nation's Pauline Hanson and Barnaby Joyce? Managing editor Michelle Pini analyses the media's obsession with the PHONies.

It’s hard to believe there was a time when Barnaby Joyce was representing the nation as Australia’s Acting Prime Minister and, on the day he was promoted to Deputy PM, proudly strutting his stuff on the streets in shorts and Akubra.

It was also during those heady days that Barnaby – then married for 24 years, a father of four and a staunch Catholic – hid his secret affair with a staffer, who also ended up pregnant with his child, triggering the infamous “bonk ban” in his honour.

It was difficult to avoid seeing him and hearing his fulminations back then, which later included ranting at the sky that he was “sick of the government being in his life”, despite him being an MP of said government at the time. Was he largely incoherent back then? Yes. Was he more frequently than not turning up to Parliament looking bedraggled and worse for wear? Of course. But he was also the Leader of the Nationals and the person who took over when the PM was otherwise disposed. It made sense for the media to give him airtime, no matter how insane his ramblings often were.

Merry Christmas pic.twitter.com/QGYPv51pTN
— Barnaby Joyce (@Barnaby_Joyce) December 24, 2019

Fast forward several years, a few intimate moments with a planter box and a few hundred obscenities later, plus turning up to parliament allegedly inebriated and falling asleep on a more regular basis, among other career highlights, and Barnaby – finally relegated to the back bench by the party to which he was tethered for 30 years, three of them as leader – has now defected.

These days, Joyce may be seen and heard ranting about, well, mostly the same stuff, and on the same mainstream “media” outlets, except now spewing forth with his “knockabout larrikin” ways from the warm embrace of the even less respected (hard to believe, we know) Pauline Hanson’s One Nation (PHON). Only his chief sponsor remains unchanged, billionaire Gina Rinehart.

These “knockabout larrikin” ways, which extend to disinformation and general idiocy on a wide variety of subjects, such as climate denial, support of Trump, a penchant for drilling and digging every natural resource, and are sprinkled with regular doses of bigotry, racism, misogyny and all the Far-Right hatred on which Pauline Hanson’s One Nation has staked its “reputation”.

There is no doubt that Barnaby suits the PHONies — the party that shares its unqualified opinions on repeat, and without concern for the feelings of others, the accuracy of its claims or, well, the existence of any facts whatsoever. What may be harder to understand, however, is why the media, including the public broadcaster, continue to amplify him, his even more unintelligible leader, Pauline Hanson and PHON's ratbag collection of... let's call them "larrikins".

This week, Barnaby opined that there is "nothing to be gained" from condemning Trump'. He also ranted about fossil fuel policy, why we should frack the living daylights out of everything and why we shouldn’t have any climate policies. Oh, and also, why a violent rapist deserves a “second chance” — in a plum role, working for parliamentarians, and paid for by the taxpayer.

'Gutter politics' and rape: The Black history of One Nation

Pauline Hanson’s One Nation party has thrown a "warm protective blanket" over Sean Black — violent convicted rapist, wife-beater and purveyor of chaos. Investigations editor Ross Jones reports.

Profound words from the man who is known for taking to YouTube to yell loudly at the sky, publicly shouting profanities into his phone while lying on the ground and has a history of disturbing sexual harassment allegations against him (which IA has investigated).

His boss, Pauline, meanwhile, often takes to the airwaves to share her thoughts about Trump and how she loves "absolutely everything about Donald Trump” and thinks “all of his policies are fantastic”. Pauline also called for Australia to "help stamp out evil" by joining in the U.S.-Israeli military action against Iran.

Pauline also expressed support this week for their former staffer and convicted rapist, Sean Black, and blamed the other parties for forcing One Nation to sack him because of the “harassment” the PHONies endured.

Now, with an obscene war and ongoing genocide in the Middle East, the oil crisis and a looming global recession, on what does the media wish to focus: One Nation.

Some time back, David Speers interviewed PM Albanese, who criticised the preference deal between the Coalition and One Nation, which he said legitimised One Nation’s hard right grievances, which are presented without solutions, as “a cul-de-sac that doesn’t lead the country anywhere”.

But Speers kept interrupting, demanding answers to idiotic questions, such as:

But do you need to engage with [One Nation] as a party?

When was the last time you met with Pauline Hanson?”

But is there a point at which you would treat One Nation as the real opposition?

The only self-respecting answers to these questions then and now are surely: No, No and Never — WTF?!

Nonetheless, Albanese calmly responded by explaining that Pauline Hanson can’t even engage, rarely rocks up to work and “often isn’t in Parliament”. The PM drew the line at pointing out that the media was also legitimising PHON’s idiocy, though, of course, they were and they continue to do so. Nor did he stoop to mention that One Nation is unelectable and Barnaby and Pauline, at best, buffoons.

Why Pauline Hanson's One Nation will never win government

Don't believe the News Corp bots, Pauline Hanson's One Nation failed dismally in South Australia — and will continue to fail in every subsequent election.

As IA founder Dave Donovan wrote recently:

Australians are not stupid, mostly. Why would they risk Pauline Hanson, a stammering, stumbling, invariably incomprehensible incompetent, with a party made up of clowns, misfits and criminals, which is utterly bereft of any coherent policies or governing credentials, with the precious levers of power? …

… Australians – decent Australians, the majority – will never allow this laughable party of descention, offence and indignation to ever attain any more than a handful of lower house seats, IA contends. Not enough, IA further suggests, to even grant them a trial run on the opposition benches of any Australian Parliament across our great brown land.

All of which brings us back to the question of why the mainly billionaire-owned mainstream media, led by Murdoch and bolstered further by the national broadcaster, and of course, the billionaire-controlled algorithms of social media platforms, continue to prop up these grifters?

For the same reasons that Trump was twice catapulted to the presidency. Because, like Trump, Barnaby Joyce and Pauline Hanson, and the PHONies are not "larrikins". Their toxic diatribes give people permission to be obnoxious, misogynistic, racist and bigoted, and to publicly express all the other dark parts of the human psyche that should not see the light of day.

In the past, such behaviour would be unseemly in a politician. Politicians were once respected as village elders, not idiots.

Disturbingly, enabling people to be hateful and cruel, and still obtain respectability, provides for the media – and its billionaire backers – the opportunity to sow doubt, prey on ignorance, legitimise and stir up divisions, and ultimately, create an environment where policies based on "othering" and greed can continue to line the pockets of the actual elites, while labelling everyone else "the elites".

The aims are really pretty simple: the principles of low regulation, which permit the continued pillaging of the environment and workers, more wars requiring more armaments and ultimately, more money for the already obscenely affluent.

This editorial was originally published as part of the Independent Australia weekly newsletter. Subscribe to IA to access all our work from as little as $1.15 per week and help power our journalism in 2026.

Follow managing editor Michelle Pini on Bluesky @michellepini.bsky.social and Independent Australia on Bluesky @independentaus.bsky.social, X/Twitter@independentaus and Facebook HERE.