Not so long ago, politicians cared about the optics of big donations

When the LNP was formed in Queensland back in the late 2000s through an amalgamation of the Nationals and Liberals, one of the state's local billionaires was willing to assist ahead of the looming state election.

LNP leader Lawrence Springborg was offered the billionaire's jet for use during the campaign against the Labor government, an LNP figure familiar with the offer recalls.

It was an attractive idea. The aircraft had a boardroom, comfy swivel chairs and a separate zone for members of the press.

Perfect, in other words, for flying the candidate, his team and a media contingent around the sprawling state.

Springborg considered the offer but ultimately said no, knowing it would have become a defining storyline of his campaign against Anna Bligh, who was already ramping up Labor's attacks over LNP donors.

Some years later, in 2017, then-deputy prime minister Barnaby Joyce felt compelled to hand back a $40,000 "National Agriculture Day" award that Gina Rinehart presented to him at an agricultural event sponsored by Hancock Prospecting at the War Memorial.

Joyce initially accepted the giant novelty cheque and even indicated he would spend it on his farm, before relenting after a backlash from political opponents and the farming industry.

A more recent example of a politician harbouring qualms about being seen to be too closely associated with a billionaire was Peter Dutton.

A little more than two years ago, the Australian Financial Review's Rear Window column detailed how the Liberal leader dashed to Perth one Thursday after Question Time to attend a birthday party for Rinehart.

The trip wasn't disclosed by the opposition leader, but the paper reported that Dutton had "travelled commercially at his own expense".

Hanson has revelled in her ties to big money

These anecdotes point to a time when perceptions over ties between well-heeled donors and, in this case, conservative politicians mattered. At the very least it was considered bad PR.

One Nation's dramatic return to the national stage seems to have dashed any sense of restraint or shame about such things.

Indeed, Pauline Hanson has positively revelled in her ties to big money.

In April she boasted about having received a "sexy" Cirrus G7 private plane.

The Guardian reported that a spokesperson for Hancock Prospecting confirmed the donation to One Nation came through one of Rinehart's companies, not from Rinehart personally.

On Thursday — a day after Hanson went head-to-head with Canberra's press gallery — Australia's richest person presented the One Nation founder with "a beautiful, big, fat" toy orange bulldozer at a News Corp-hosted conference in Townsville, having told the crowd she was giving Australians hope.

"I want some bulldozer noise," Rinehart said in an attempt to rev up the crowd.

She said the gift was inspired by an Elon Musk chainsaw-wielding stunt, where he led an effort to slash US government spending.

The chuckling, cosy interaction will no doubt birth a thousand memes.

But it's a striking piece of political theatre, indicative perhaps of new promiscuity creeping into donor politics.

If anyone is embarrassed, it's hard to spot

This week The Australian's Jack Quail noted that Joyce, Hanson and other members of their entourage and staff frequently appear clad in apparel from S Kidman, an RM Williams-style label owned by Rinehart.

The billionaire was wearing an S Kidman hat when she handed over the novelty bulldozer on Thursday.

The newspaper reported that One Nation wouldn't say whether the clothing was a donation and that, aside from a "few shirts gifted more than a year ago, the party's representatives are so enamoured with Kidman they have been footing the bill themselves".

Voters will have to await official disclosures to determine how deep the ties are between One Nation and Rinehart.

And if anyone's embarrassed by it all, it's hard to spot.

The polls of recent months, and evidence from the US and UK, suggests such perceptions have little impact on supporters of One Nation, Donald Trump or Nigel Farage.

Hanson's defenders could argue that other parties accept money from all kinds of sources under a disclosure system that is slow and murky.

Labor has the unions and the teals have the Climate 200 movement.

The conservative parties have business and well-heeled individuals.

Though One Nation claims its recent viral "fire the liar" campaign is driven by smaller donations, big money would merely be a way to level the playing field.

Many commentators are predicting big things for One Nation even though the next election is still nearly two years away.

How enduring is the current One Nation model? Hanson is having a moment now, but older heads remember how she flourished in the late 1990s before collapsing.

One Nation's prototype in the 1980s, the Joh for Canberra movement, was equally doomed, collapsing when it tried to go mainstream.

Like now, those waves of populist anger had real catalysts.

When Hanson first emerged, she was partly propelled by disaffection over the Hawke/Keating economic reforms and globalisation. Immigration was the locus.

"Economic rationalist" policies like the Hilmer reforms were blamed for hollowing out communities and eroding living standards.

Gradual change is the mantra

John Howard eventually saw off the Hanson threat, in no small part because the Nationals and the Liberals refused to preference One Nation ahead of Labor.

But Howard also had the benefit of a China boom to fund entitlement politics that ground down the sharpest spikes of voter anger, and a global war on terror that helped push voters back to the Coalition.

It's significant that Hanson largely vanished from the political scene during the resources boom of the 2000s and early 2010s, contesting and losing at eight federal and state elections.

It was only in 2016, as the post-boom slump and productivity crisis began to drag on living standards, that she won her Senate spot.

In 2026, Anthony Albanese has no easy cash to sling around, and the government's instincts are to run a steady managerial strategy.

There are still the Howard-like handouts, only this time many of the recipients are in feminised care industries and rusty manufacturing hubs.

The government will need to figure out, in the words of one prominent Labor figure, who the "ordinary people" are that have drifted to One Nation.

Gradual change is the mantra.

That's a brave political bet in a world of political insurgency, social media lightning storms, and god-knows-what kind of foreign interference campaigns might be lurking beneath the surface.

Jacob Greber is political editor of ABC's 7.30 program.