One Nation policy record

One Nation would bring the age of criminal responsibility back to 10 and sentence children charged with serious violence as adults. That plan, with three new courts, a 24-hour bail court and 90-day trials, fills 21 pages of its platform and carries no price. The two savings put against it were costed by the Parliamentary Budget Office for a Libertarian member and for the Liberal Party.

One Nation Victoria launched its platform at Crown Melbourne on 3 October 2026, in a 64-page booklet called The Real Deal. Warren Pickering, the Pakenham candidate, is state leader and party president, and Colleen Harkin is deputy. The party holds one seat in the 40-member Legislative Council, Rikkie-Lee Tyrrell’s Northern Victoria seat, and is contesting 28 November¹November² .

This page is the record as it stands on 29 October 2026. It sets out what the party has published, where a release and the booklet commit to different versions of the same policy, and where it has published nothing at all. Caretaker begins on 3 November, so what appears here is close to final.

Law and order: three pillars over 21 pages

Crime takes the booklet’s first 21 pages, under the heading Restore Safety, and Pickering calls it the policy he is most proud of and the most important to Victoria³ . The commitments divide into police, courts and corrections, and none of them has a published cost.

On policing, the party promises a second recruitment pathway for Australian Defence Force veterans through an accelerated bridging course, plus sign-on bonuses, accommodation allowances and a police psychologist. It would use AI to draft routine paperwork, with an officer authorising every document, and says it will maintain rather than relax recruitment standards¹ .

Police powers would expand. The booklet promises Western Australian-style pursuit powers, broader notice-to-appear and field-charging powers, seizure of e-bikes, and a mandatory minimum sentence for assaulting a police officer, paramedic, nurse or firefighter¹ .

The courts plan is the largest block. Three new Magistrates’ Courts would open at Melton, Epping and Pakenham, and the bench would grow toward about 170 magistrates. Judicial registrars would double from 18 to 36. A bail court would be staffed around the clock in existing courtrooms. A 90-day clock would run from charge to trial for serious violent offences, with night and weekend sittings¹ .

Bail would carry a presumption against repeat and on-bail offenders, an exceptional circumstances test, published reasons, and mandatory supervised bail with electronic monitoring for listed offences. Intensive correction orders would be restored, and non-compliance would mean imprisonment. The Sentencing Act would name community safety as its paramount consideration, and the 40% standard-sentence benchmark would rise¹ .

Two sentencing commitments sit at the centre of the pitch. A child charged with a serious violent offence would be sentenced under the Sentencing Act 1991 as an adult. The age of criminal responsibility would return to 10, from the current 12, on the argument that “corrective action” early prevents “a life of crime”¹ .

The rest ranges widely. There is UK-style self-defence in the home and a trial of legal capsicum spray for personal protection. Parents would be liable for fines and property damage caused by children under 16, and clean-up orders would carry a 48-hour removal standard on state assets. Corrections Victoria and the Director of Public Prosecutions would have to refer every non-citizen convicted of a violent offence for deportation¹ .

Sport vouchers sit in this section, as crime prevention. The booklet makes them income-tested; the party’s 16 October families release promises $150 a season, $300 a child a year, with “No means-testing. No paperwork beyond a simple claim”¹claim”⁴ . The two documents describe different programs and neither mentions the other.

The price is the missing piece. Criminal lawyers told The Saturday Paper the 90-day clock alone would need “a multi-multibillion dollar investment”⁵ . The Age reports the crime package is to be funded from cancelling the Suburban Rail Loop and repealing the Treaty. Those two savings total just under $6bn, against costs the party does not itemise⁶ .

Tax: a wind-back, a threshold, an abolition

The tax offer runs from page 28 to page 35. Land tax would be wound back on rental properties and small property owners, explicitly not repealed, and the party says it will publish what that costs. It has not.

The Age prices the insurance duty alone at $2.35bn in 2026–27 and $10bn over the forward estimates⁶ . The booklet publishes no estimate for any of it, and the transparency promise on land tax is a commitment to publish later, not a figure.

Payroll tax has two versions. The booklet lifts the threshold. The party’s social media and the 8 October One News Australia breakdown promise to abolish payroll tax entirely for regional employers. The Age confirms that commitment is not in the published document⁷document⁶ . The two differ in cost by an order of magnitude, and the party has not said which it would legislate.

On spending, the booklet would cut the executive layer of the public service while protecting and increasing frontline staff. Agencies would get expiry dates unless Parliament votes to continue them. Regulation would face a “two-out, one-in” rule, with a legal clock and deemed approval for decisions¹ .

No figures, and whose savings these are

No dollar figure for any spending commitment appears anywhere in the 64 pages. The only amounts are revenue baselines and cost-of-living statistics. Land tax raises about $6.5bn a year, payroll tax around $12.5bn, and Treaty funding roughly $70m a year. Public entities spend around $35bn a year¹ .

Pickering gives the reason twice. “So we are not going to speculate on costs. Victorians don’t need more figures on a spreadsheet,” he told the Pakenham Officer Star News on 21 October⁸ . To The Saturday Paper he said cost projections are “widely inaccurate”⁹ .

One Nation is also outside the body that costs election promises. The Parliamentary Budget Office tracks commitments only for parties with two or more sitting members, its head Xavier Rimmer said in September, and One Nation Victoria has one¹⁰ . The rule puts the party outside the tracker. No One Nation request or costing appears in it.

The two savings figures the party does cite belong to other people. The $5.5bn from cancelling the Suburban Rail Loop is a PBO costing prepared for David Limbrick, the Libertarian member. It also finds a $618m cost to the budget in the first year⁶year⁵ . The $342m from repealing the Treaty and winding up Gellung Warl was costed by the PBO for the Liberal Party⁶ . One Nation adopts both policies and has published neither costing.

The funding base One Nation points to, and who costed each line
Measure | Amount | Effect | Costed by
Cancel the Suburban Rail Loop | $5.5bn; $618m in year one | Saving | PBO, for Limbrick
Repeal the Treaty | $342m | Saving | PBO, for the Liberals⁶Liberals⁵

The party adds a third saving of its own: $1bn over four years from implementing the December 2025 Silver review of the public service in full. The Age reports that figure as a party claim, not a PBO costing⁶costing⁵ . Add the three and the total is just under $6bn over the term, which is The Age’s arithmetic rather than a party document. That paper’s judgement is that the savings are $4bn less than one of the party’s own tax cuts requires. Everything else in the platform is unpriced.

Energy: targets out, coal and gas in

The booklet scraps all net-zero targets and subsidies, cancels VNI West, the Western Renewables Link and other large transmission projects, and repeals the Nuclear Activities (Prohibitions) Act 1983¹ . It backs long-term security for coal, a gas reservation that gives Victorian households and industry first call, and the reversal of the ban on new gas connections in homes.

At a Latrobe Valley launch on 31 August, Pickering committed to keeping Loy Yang A open past 2035. Asked what that would cost the state, he said: “Those figures haven’t been discussed just yet”¹¹ . The party’s Narracan candidate, Ben Lucas, floated a new coal-fired plant on 29 October and, asked its cost, said “Not off the top of my head”¹² .

It would also ban industrial solar, wind, battery and transmission projects on irrigated, flood-prone, bushfire-prone or catchment land. The Western Renewable Energy Zone would be disbanded, along with its compulsory acquisition powers¹ .

Education: curriculum, vouchers, a ban on face coverings

Schools take two pages of the booklet. The Victorian Curriculum would be replaced with a sequenced, knowledge-rich syllabus, year by year and subject by subject, taught through explicit instruction and systematic phonics. Literacy, numeracy, science, history and civics would be the priorities¹ . Trade schools would expand, behaviour protocols would be strengthened, and school vouchers would let public funding follow the student. No voucher value or eligibility rule is published.

A ban on burqas and niqabs in all schools, including Islamic schools, appears on the party’s education page but not in the booklet. Education spokeswoman Colleen Harkin announced it on 6 October: “Full-face veils have no place in our schools. They’re a barrier to integration and are linked to the subjugation of women”¹³women”¹⁴ .

Four policies the party published in July are absent from the October booklet and from the current education page. They are elected school boards with parents holding at least half the seats, mandatory Australian history, NAPLAN-based progression requirements, and a rollback of Safe Schools and Respectful Relationships¹⁵ . The party has not announced a reversal. The commitments stopped appearing.

Treaty: scrap it and end the funding

The Treaty section is one page. The Statewide Treaty would be scrapped entirely, Gellung Warl abolished and its legislated funding ended. The booklet’s argument is that “permanent political structures imposed without the consent of the people have no place in Victoria”¹ . It puts the funding at roughly $70m a year, rising 2.5% automatically, plus tens of millions more in capital expenditure.

Repeal sits alongside two royal commissions, into the Big Build and into the state’s COVID response. A public expenditure platform, YourMoney.vic.gov.au, would publish every variation within 30 days with the approving official named¹ .

Housing, health and the regions

Housing policy is supply- and tax-side. The party would review every fee and charge that adds to the cost of a new home. It would release under-used government land and put a legal clock on planning and building approvals. It would free up granny flats and spare rooms for rent, and raise the foreign purchaser duty. No rate is published for the duty¹ . On 27 October it added crisis, transitional and temporary places in every region, plus a fully funded statewide By-Name List. Trials of land tax exemptions and wage subsidies would follow for landlords and employers housing people off that list¹⁶ .

Health promises a real-time statewide view of surgical and specialist waiting lists. Category 1 patients would be seen immediately and Category 2 within ten minutes, with 24-hour emergency departments guaranteed in major regional hospitals. Administrative savings would be redirected into nurses, doctors and beds, with no figure attached to the savings or the beds¹ .

For the regions, the booklet restricts water trading to farmers with land to irrigate and reinstates the 1,500 gigalitre buyback cap, with full allocations at season start. Native forestry would be rebuilt on selective harvesting, the 35 fisheries roles cut in 2025 restored, and duck hunting protected at current bag limits. Firearm licensing would be streamlined with longer licence periods and higher penalties for firearm crime¹ .

What the platform does not say

These are silences in the record, not gaps in the research. Each was checked against the booklet, the party’s policy pages and its releases to 29 October.

• Renters’ rights: no position on minimum standards, no-fault evictions or the rental reform package.
• Social housing supply: no target for new public or community housing. The homelessness policy adds crisis beds and landlord incentives, not dwellings.
• Public transport fares, service levels or the metropolitan bus network.
• Mental health, alcohol and other drugs, and disability, beyond the Drug Court, the Assessment and Referral Court and the H.E.L.P. service directory.
• Child protection and family violence, beyond family violence appearing as a category of crisis bed.
• Local government rates, amalgamation or planning powers, beyond consultation and the approvals clock.
• Poker machines, gambling and liquor reform.
• Any state-level immigration commitment. Population growth is named as a pressure on housing, with no state policy attached.

How this compares

On crime, One Nation goes further than either major party. The Coalition argues for tougher bail and sentencing. One Nation adds adult sentences for children charged with serious violence, the age of criminal responsibility back to 10, and a 90-day charge-to-trial clock. On tax it abolishes insurance stamp duty, which neither major party proposes, and on energy it scraps the renewable targets rather than revising them.

The pages for the other parties set out their records in the same form, and the issue notes take the same evidence by topic instead of by party.

Linked notes

https://terrain.pub/notes/crime-and-community-safety

https://terrain.pub/notes/statewide-treaty

https://terrain.pub/notes/cost-of-living-and-energy-prices