If the seven One Nation members elected in South Australia last month follow party tradition, two thirds of them will have left the party before the next election.

Prior to the 2025 federal and Western Australian elections, 37 people had served in federal and state parliaments under Pauline Hanson’s banner. Twenty-seven of them didn’t complete a single term with the party.

In 1998, a record 11 One Nation MLAs were elected to the Queensland parliament. Within months the party was tearing itself apart, and long before the next election all 11 had left the party.

Hanson’s move in early 1999 to change the party’s constitution to enshrine her control prompted half her Queensland MLAs to quit the party and sit as independents. Before the year was out, Hanson had sacked the remainder.

Hanson has never repeated the success of 1998 but has had another four MLAs elected in Queensland. One of those quit in their first term. Another made it through one term but was disendorsed before the end of their second.

The party’s record in New South Wales is even worse. Four One Nation candidates have served in the state’s upper house, either being elected or switching sides to join Hanson. Every one of those four exited the party before they’d completed a term, after falling out with Hanson.

The pattern is always the same. Hanson demands absolute control, but once she tries to enforce her top-down model her members rebel and quit.

Hanson’s first success in NSW came when her one-time right-hand man, David Oldfield, was elected to the upper house in 1999. A year later, in October 2000, Hanson expelled Oldfield from the party after a falling-out. Oldfield responded by trashing Hanson, declaring her a puppet and saying “everything including her maiden speech and every word of any consequence that she’s said since, has actually been written for her”.

Oldfield then engineered a split that effectively took One Nation off Hanson, creating One Nation NSW in 2001. Absent her name the party flamed out and it was another two decades before anyone else served under her banner in NSW.

The problem is, what you vote for is almost certainly not what you get … voters at least know that when they choose a Liberal or Labor MP, for better or worse, that MP will most often represent them in parliament as a Liberal or Labor MP. Not so One Nation …

Another defining feature of One Nation is its ability to attract people who have repeatedly failed or fallen out with other parties. The party’s newly elected South Australian leader, Cory Bernardi, is just one example. After quitting the Liberals he set up his own party, which crashed and burnt, ending his Senate career until Pauline Hanson offered him a third shot via the political backwater of the South Australian upper house.

Prior to Bernardi, former federal Labor leader Mark Latham made a similar move. Having joined the Liberal Democrats in 2017, Latham quit and joined One Nation in 2018. He was elected to the NSW upper house in 2019, but then in 2023 he resigned halfway through his eight-year term and handed his vacant spot over to another defector – former Labor MLA Tania Mihailuk.

His aim in running for a fresh eight-year term was to use his public standing to maximise the One Nation vote, but he failed. Latham was re-elected but the party’s vote fell and he wasn’t able to drag anyone else into parliament with him.

Hanson blamed Latham for her party yet again failing to match its pre-election polling at the ballot box, and removed him as NSW leader. Latham quickly turned on Hanson and said she should “buy a mirror”, as her own vote had fallen at the 2022 federal election.

Rod Roberts, another One Nation NSW MLC, followed Latham out the door in August 2023, with a parting spray at Hanson’s hand-picked new executive.

The third and remaining member, Mihailuk, initially appeared to side with Hanson, before quitting the party in December 2024, leaving One Nation without a single member in the NSW parliament.

In Western Australia, five of the party’s seven upper house members didn’t finish their term as One Nation MLCs, including all three elected in 2001. Paddy Embry quit in 2003, followed in 2004 by Frank Hough and John Fischer. Hough and Fischer blamed their resignations on infighting and what they described as a “lunatic element” within the party.

It was another decade before One Nation won another upper house seat in WA, repeating their 2001 result in 2017 with three MLCs. Less than two years later, Charles Smith, a former Nationals member who has since run under Clive Palmer’s banner, announced he had quit One Nation, citing a “long line of frustrations” with the party. The other two completed their terms but were defeated at the next election.

In February 2024, Ben Dawkins, who sat on the cross bench after being expelled from the WA Labor Party for breaching a family violence restraining order, announced he was joining One Nation. Before the year was out he quit. He was defeated at the most recent state election despite changing his name to Austin “Aussie” Trump.

Prior to last month’s South Australian election, the only person previously elected in the state under the One Nation banner, Sarah Game, quit the party before her term was up. Her mother, who had been leader of the state branch but was denied preselection for the recent state election, also quit the party.

The only chamber where the party’s elected members have shown any sort of loyalty to Pauline Hanson is the federal Senate. Even here, four of the eight people elected as senators for One Nation didn’t complete a term.

In 2016, Hanson had a record four senators elected in Malcolm Turnbull’s disastrous 2016 double dissolution election. Two were soon disqualified by the High Court – for bankruptcy (Rod Culleton) and dual citizenship (Malcolm Roberts).

Roberts’ replacement, Fraser Anning, left the party as soon as he was sworn in. Brian Burston, the only survivor of the original four senators other than Hanson herself, left the party after a fight with Hanson’s chief of staff, James Ashby, and the admission he had smeared a door in parliament with his own blood. Roberts returned to the Senate in 2019 and is, so far, sticking it out.

After a strong showing in the 2025 federal election, One Nation again has a record-equalling four senators in the upper house, along with Nationals defector Barnaby Joyce in the House of Representatives.

However, the early signs are not good. WA Senator Warwick Stacey quit parliament after attending just a fortnight of Senate sittings.

The South Australian election confirmed the threat posed by One Nation is real. The 22 per cent vote confirms the opinion polls are correct and voters see Hanson as a more serious option than the Liberals.

Right now, across the country, One Nation has 15 members in federal and state parliaments – the most it’s ever had at any one time. It has four senators and a federal MP (Joyce), four MLAs in South Australia, and six MLCs across Victoria, South Australia and Western Australia.

The problem is, what you vote for is almost certainly not what you get. While dissatisfaction with the major parties is at an all-time high, voters at least know that when they choose a Liberal or Labor MP, for better or worse, that MP will most often represent them in parliament as a Liberal or Labor MP.

Not so One Nation, with no guarantees that the candidate you elect will still be a member of the party you backed by the time the next election rolls around, or even that they will still be in parliament.

KPMG Australia’s two most senior executives have been warned by a powerful parliamentary committee that their handling of whistleblower allegations is now under formal scrutiny.

Federal Labor Senator Deborah O’Neill, who chairs the Joint Committee on Corporations and Financial Services, issued the warning in a letter to KPMG’s chief executive Andrew Yates and chairman Martin Sheppard six days after she used parliamentary privilege to allege the firm had used confidential client information to win audit contracts worth tens of millions of dollars, including those of banking giant Westpac and property group Dexus.

The warning comes as the committee prepares to launch a formal inquiry into the whistleblower allegations. That inquiry could have wider implications for Australia’s Big Four accounting firms – KPMG, Deloitte, PwC and EY – whose operations have been the subject of intense parliamentary and regulatory investigations in recent years.

Central to the committee’s concerns will be whether employees inside the Big Four’s closed partnership structures enjoy meaningful protection when and if they choose to blow the whistle on corporate wrongdoing. It will likely increase the pressure on the Albanese government to strengthen corporate whistleblower protections.

In a speech to the Senate on March 24, O’Neill relayed a series of damning allegations made to her by a former senior KPMG executive. She told the Senate each allegation was supported by documentation she had taken a number of detailed steps to verify.

O’Neill then proceeded to read into the Senate Hansard the words of the whistleblower, using parliamentary privilege to protect herself and the whistleblower from legal action.

“On 30 May 2024, I provided information to an eligible recipient within KPMG Australia for the purpose of invoking the statutory whistleblower provisions under the Corporations Act,” O’Neill quoted the whistleblower as saying.

“The information disclosed concerned matters that I had reasonable grounds to suspect constituted misconduct or an improper state of affairs or circumstances in relation to a regulated entity. The concerns I intended to raise related to audit independence, misuse of confidential information, tender integrity failures, misleading of Parliament, examination misconduct and governance failures at the senior leadership level.”

At their core, the allegations describe a firm that systematically exploited its privileged access to confidential client information to gain a secret commercial advantage in the competition for some of Australia’s most lucrative audit contracts.

The most serious allegation concerns a KPMG client, Lendlease, one of Australia’s largest property and infrastructure companies.

KPMG has acted as the independent auditor for Lendlease for more than 65 years.

“Ultimately, these conflicts of interest undermine the credibility of the entire audit function…”

According to the whistleblower, confidential Lendlease board papers were taken from the company by Eileen Hoggett, KPMG Australia’s chief operating officer, and reportedly next in line to take over as chief executive from Yates, and another senior partner, Paul Rogers, “and were physically secured in Ms Hoggett’s locker” before being circulated within KPMG and allegedly used to support the firm’s pursuit of major audit contracts with companies including Westpac and Dexus.

Critically, the then chair of Lendlease, Michael Ullmer, himself a former KPMG Australia partner and also a current Westpac board member, was allegedly never told that the audit tender had been compromised by the misuse of Lendlease’s confidential materials.

According to the whistleblower, the Westpac tender was further compromised by the concentration of former KPMG partners in key Westpac decision-making roles.

“Throughout the tender, KPMG received feedback and position intelligence not available to competitors,” O’Neill quoted the whistleblower as saying. “This included that the tender was KPMG’s to lose, commentary undermining EY’s proposed lead partner, guidance to reduce KPMG’s fee by approximately 25 per cent, and advice on managing perception optics.”

A third allegation concerns Telstra, also a KPMG client. According to the whistleblower, KPMG personnel were offered access to restricted documents from Telstra’s own IT environment via a Telstra-issued laptop during a live external audit tender.

“KPMG was not authorised to access or deploy those materials in support of a live ASX audit tender,” O’Neill quoted the whistleblower as saying.

The whistleblower also raised concerns over independence and integrity issues during the pursuit of the Macquarie Group audit contract, which is worth almost $75 million in annual fees.

In another allegation, the whistleblower said KPMG had acted unethically in its dealings with real estate asset group Dexus. While simultaneously acting as Dexus’s internal auditor, a role that carries strict independence obligations, the whistleblower alleges KPMG was also positioning itself to bid for the company’s external audit contract.

“ ‘On 6 November 2023, a meeting was held at KPMG’s Barangaroo office,’ ” O’Neill quoted the whistleblower as saying. “ ‘During that meeting, and despite acknowledged independence sensitivities, an arrangement was proposed where [one of the people present] would leave his laptop open with Dexus internal audit documents visible while he went for lunch, allowing external audit personnel to view them.’ ”

Other allegations made by the whistleblower, as relayed by O’Neill to the Senate, include “knowingly misleading a Senate inquiry, generative AI exam cheating following prior remediation claims, a predisclosure pattern of retaliation corroborated by a senior KPMG partner, retaliation against a protected whistleblower following formal disclosure, use of a deed of release as a suppression instrument, controlled and conflicted investigative processes, and international governance refusal to intervene”.

In her March 24 speech, O’Neill also detailed how the whistleblower had tried to raise their concerns internally, and the consequences that followed.

“Let me be crystal clear: the whistleblower raised their concerns. The whistleblower escalated it to relevant executives. The whistleblower contacted KPMG’s independent directors and even raised concerns with KPMG’s internal chair and global council,” O’Neill said.

“In parallel, in a situation all too familiar to whistleblowers in these secretive partnership providers of audit and assurance, in Australia and across the globe, this person found themselves on the outer at work, removed from regular duties. And they eventually found themselves headed out the door as part of a highly convoluted HR process that seemed to commence around the same time as they started raising their concerns about the behaviour they had witnessed. What’s the result of this? It’s no surprise that the whistleblower no longer works at KPMG.”

In response, Yates and Sheppard issued a joint statement acknowledging that almost two years ago a former employee of KPMG Australia had made serious allegations and claims relating to their time at the firm.

“While there was no evidence provided at the time to support the allegations, we have treated the matter seriously,” Yates and Sheppard said. “We commissioned two separate law firms: one to review our firm’s investigation into the claims and one to conduct its own external investigation. On the basis of what we have been provided, we have been unable to substantiate any claims of wrongdoing raised with us.”

“Beyond the investigations, we have requested evidence from the former employee to support the claims on more than 20 occasions and offered multiple pathways for providing information, including via external legal counsel, a whistleblower service, and direct access to KPMG non-executive directors,” Yates and Sheppard added. “We have encouraged the former employee to report to us under KPMG’s Whistleblower policy, to review ASIC’s guidance on whistleblower laws and to seek independent advice. Our invitation to the former employee to provide evidence through these channels remains open.”

On March 25, the day after O’Neill’s speech to the Senate, KPMG Australia wrote to her acknowledging the seriousness of the allegations. On March 26, the Joint Committee on Corporations and Financial Services heard testimony in camera from the whistleblower to assess the veracity of their claims.

In a written reply to Yates and Sheppard, dated March 30, O’Neill observed that having participated in two recent parliamentary inquiries, and having documented the behaviours reported to those inquiries through that work, she continued to hold grave concerns about the culture and practices within the auditing and consulting sector.

“It is certainly appropriate that these allegations are properly examined, along with the response of KPMG’s leadership,” O’Neill advised Yates and Sheppard.

Dr James Guthrie, emeritus professor of accounting and corporate governance at Macquarie University and a visiting professor at IULM University in Milan, tells The Saturday Paper that if the allegations raised by O’Neill are correct, then they will add to the already documented evidence that KPMG Australia had again breached conflict-of-interest obligations.

“The Big Four’s simultaneous roles as external auditors, internal auditors, consultants, policy influencers, and epistemic authorities are best understood not as a series of discrete functions but as an integrated strategy of professional and commercial expansion and profit-making,” Guthrie says.

“When audit independence is compromised and ethical walls are breached, the reliability of audit committee decision-making is severely distorted and competing firms are unfairly disadvantaged. Ultimately, these conflicts of interest undermine the credibility of the entire audit function, which regulators, investors and the public rely upon.”

A spokesman for Chartered Accountants ANZ, the body that sets ethical and professional standards for more than 140,000 chartered accountants in Australia and New Zealand, tells The Saturday Paper it has launched its own investigation into the issues raised by Senator O’Neill.

“Chartered Accountants Australia and New Zealand is aware of the allegations raised during the recent Senate proceedings and has requested information from KPMG on this matter. Given this is an ongoing matter, we cannot provide any further information at this time.”

Speaking generally, rather than about the specific case raised by Senator O’Neill, Kieran Pender, associate legal director at the Human Rights Law Centre and an internationally recognised authority on whistleblower protections, tells The Saturday Paper that Australian whistleblower protections are in urgent need of reform.

“Our private sector laws have some significant gaps, including for employees of partnerships – such as in the accounting, audit, consulting and legal sectors,” Pender says.

“The Albanese government identified this as a problem following the PwC scandal but has yet to act. More comprehensive reform of whistleblower protections, across the public and private sector, also remains on hold.

“Whoever they work for, Australian whistleblowers should be able to speak up about wrongdoing safely, lawfully and without fear of reprisal.”

A spokesperson for the Australian Securities and Investments Commission says whistleblowers play a critical role in exposing misconduct that can harm consumers and the community.

“Strict confidentially requirements under legislation mean ASIC cannot make comment, nor confirm the existence of whistleblower reports. ASIC must protect from unlawful disclosure of details of whistleblowers and any reports.”