One Nation’s ‘incredibly sloppy’ financial reports reveal more than $1m in missing or worthless assets

Pauline Hanson in the Senate. Her One Nation party has not filed annual returns with the Office of Fair Trading since 2022. Photograph: Sam Mooy/Getty Images View image in fullscreen Pauline Hanson in the Senate. Her One Nation party has not filed annual returns with the Office of Fair Trading since 2022. Photograph: Sam Mooy/Getty Images One Nation’s ‘incredibly sloppy’ financial reports reveal more than $1m in missing or worthless assets Exclusive: Financial returns, obtained by the Guardian, are ‘very poor and unprofessional’ and call into question party’s fitness to govern, expert says Get our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcast Pauline Hanson’s One Nation party reported more than $1m in missing and worthless assets in more than six years of filed financial reports, Guardian Australia can reveal. The financial returns lodged by One Nation with the Office of Fair Trading in Queensland from 2016 to 2022 have been criticised by a leading expert in financial accounting as “sloppy and unprofessional”. The documents show the party has repeatedly failed to meet its legal obligations for running an incorporated association. It has failed to hold annual general meetings on time, repeatedly filed annual and financial reports late, or not filed them at all, and used an account manager to sign a director’s declaration form. The party has not filed annual returns with the regulator since 2022. Matthew Pinnuck, a professor of financial accounting at the University of Melbourne and a former audit manager at KPMG, assessed the six years of financial accounts obtained by the Guardian. Pinnuck said the “incredibly sloppy” reports raised questions about the party’s fitness for government. “The overall quality of the preparation and presentation of the financial statements is very poor and unprofessional,” Pinnuck said. He drew attention to “highly unusual” accounting entries that showed substantial assets had been bought and sold, but were not recorded on the party’s balance sheet. The 2021 balance sheet shows the One Nation Queensland division held assets such as property and equipment worth $93,000, up from just $10,307 in 2020. However, in the same year the party reported that it purchased property and equipment worth $575,710 and claimed to have sold property, plant and equipment worth $492,491. “Both amounts are many times larger than the total carrying value of the organisation’s property, plant and equipment,” Pinnuck said. “They have got a very typical asset base, and then all of a sudden throughout the year they are buying property and equipment and selling property, plant and equipment. It is very unusual full stop. There could be an explanation for that but it is difficult to think of what that could be.” Pinnuck said another “highly unusual” entry showed that the party bought more than $100,000 worth of office equipment in 2020 which was immediately written off as “worthless”. Pinnuck said this had been achieved by depreciating the total value of the asset to zero in the same year of purchase. He said office equipment would typically be expected to have a useful life of about five to 10 years, with the cost depreciated over the same period. The party posted significant financial losses in three of the last four years of the filed annual reports. In 2022, the party recorded a deficit of $1.05m, more than double the previous year’s reported loss of $517,000 and a more than $3m turnaround compared with the $2.2m surplus it posted in 2020. “These recurring losses may raise questions about the organisation’s ability to manage its financial affairs effectively,” Pinnuck said. “Given that financial management is an important aspect of governance, such results question the organisation’s capacity to oversee and manage public resources responsibly.” The party has chosen to report as a “special purpose entity”, which is a reporting method usually reserved for small businesses. It requires less disclosure under Australian accounting standards, limiting transparency around the party’s finances. “There is potentially a breach of the Corporations Act as the financial statements have been prepared on a special purpose basis when arguably they should have been prepared on a general purpose basis,” Pinnuck said. Under the law, organisations can only prepare simplified reduced disclosure financial statements if they are not publicly accountable, he said. “Given the political significance of the organisation and the existence of a broad range of external stakeholders (eg members, donors, regulators, journalists, researchers, and the public) who rely on its financial statements, there is a strong argument that One Nation Queensland Division Inc are publicly accountable. Therefore they should have prepared full scope financial statements with complete disclosure and not the simplified reduced disclosure financial statements.” A non-director signing a director’s declaration would also arguably be a breach of the law, he said. One Nation has been under increasing scrutiny for its handling of public and membership funds as it seeks to position itself as a mainstream political force and alternative opposition in parliament. Hanson claimed last week she was able to do the job of prime minister, seizing on opinion polling that shows One Nation is now the most popular party in the country. The party’s financial records also show that it recorded net negative cashflows of about $440,000 in 2020 and 2021 combined, for investing activities unrelated to property, plant and equipment. It appears that some of this relates to the purchase of a $253,654 financial “asset” linked to the investment company Mayfair Platinum. One Nation reportedly invested $500,000 in the since-collapsed Mayfair Platinum, which had promoted a billion-dollar redevelopment of Queensland’s Mission beach and Dunk Island. The investment scheme was frozen in early 2020, and the federal court found in 2021 that the group had engaged in misleading and deceptive advertising. Despite the scheme’s collapse, Mayfair Platinum investments were still listed as current assets on the organisation’s balance sheet in 2021 and 2022, valued at between $265,000 and $300,000. In 2020, Hanson claimed the party’s executive had made the investment in Mayfair without her knowledge, even though she was party president. Her chief of staff, James Ashby, said at the time: “We have never ever risked our members’ money.” Under the model rules governing incorporated associations in Queensland, the income and property of an association “must be used solely in promoting the association’s objects and exercising the association’s powers”. The party’s financial returns also reveal that the organisation’s legal fees increased to almost $200,000 in 2022, while it spent more than $170,000 on subscriptions and close to $200,000 on consultancy fees in 2021 and 2022. Correspondence obtained through right to information laws show the Queensland Office of Fair Trading discussed a “show cause” notice it had issued to the party after it failed to lodge two years of annual reports and financial statements within the statutory timeframe. The party requested an extension of time despite being more than 12 months late in filing the 2021 report, which the regulator refused to grant. “The office is unable to grant extensions of time once a show cause notice is issued,” the regulator said in a January 2023 email. When One Nation did file the overdue reports – the report from 2021 almost two years late – its paperwork revealed that it had failed to hold annual general meetings as required under the Associations Incorporated Act. The date for the 2021 and 2022 annual general meetings was recorded as 18 February 2023 – two days before the annual reports were lodged, in breach of the requirement to hold an AGM within six months of the end of the financial year. Correspondence sent to the regulator from the party’s campaign director, which has been redacted, said: “The One Nation Office and I apologise for not having these returns lodged but the office was of the understanding that the previous party secretary … had lodged all required documentation. “One can but assume his failure to lodge the return was due to the Covid restrictions on staff attending the office and rotationally working from home.” One Nation did not respond to questions from Guardian Australia. Explore more on these topics One Nation Pauline Hanson Australian politics news Share Reuse this content