One Nation has six more months to raise uncapped political donations

Labor’s decision to delay political donation reforms has inadvertently handed One Nation an extra six months to court high-rolling donors as the minor party claims to have raised more than $2 million in less than two days through their campaign attacking the prime minister.

One Nation will have the rest of the year to capitalise on its newfound popularity and lobby for unlimited donations and gifts – such as the private plane donated last month by Australia’s richest person, mining billionaire Gina Rinehart – before a yearly cap of $50,000 per donor is introduced for federal cash donations and another $50,000 for gifts.

The public will not learn the details about Pauline Hanson’s millions in donations for this financial year, including the “Fire the Liar” campaign, until the Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) publishes campaign donation data on February 1.

That process will also be overhauled so that from next year, donations are made public within three weeks, or daily in the week before an election. Parties will need to declare donations made in the last half of this year by early 2027.

The threshold for anonymous donations will be lowered from $17,300 to $5000.

The prime minister questioned the legitimacy of One Nation’s fundraising claim on Thursday, while saying it paled in comparison to other donations and gifts Hanson has received from Rinehart.

“Did she, though? What evidence is there?” he said at a press conference in Sydney when asked about the money Hanson had accrued.

“This is someone who got a plane worth more than [those fundraising donations] given to her by Australia’s richest person,” he said.

“That pales in insignificance with the size of a single donation which was given, showing, I think, the interests that One Nation represent. It’s not battlers – they vote against battlers each and every time.”

Hanson’s chief of staff James Ashby insisted all the donations were real and vowed to prove their legitimacy.

“We’ll get the website independently audited by a forensics team, and they can actually give a stat dec to state that the website is real, the money’s real,” he told 2GB radio on Thursday.

He said 28,000 people had donated to the campaign, which would average close to $60 each.

One Nation launched the fundraiser on Wednesday morning in response to Labor’s social media campaign appealing for donations of $27 to stop the rise of the minor party.

The Fire the Liar fundraising site suggests a donation of $60, but accepts any amount. Ashby pitched to listeners that anything under $1500 was tax-deductible ahead of the end of