New order: Pauline Hanson arrives with a bang on this year’s Power list
by Andrew Cornell · Australian Financial ReviewAndrew Cornell
Sep 23, 2026 – 5.05am
A quarter of a century ago, in The Australian Financial Review Magazine’s first Power issue, an individual with no formal office made the list of the 10 most overtly powerful Australians. In the panel’s view, this person was shifting the thinking and actions of those at the nation’s helm, generating heated public debate on immigration, nationalism and identity.
That person was Pauline Hanson. She was No. 5 on the 2001 Power list, behind then-prime minister John Howard, treasurer Peter Costello, Kim Beazley as the leader of the opposition, and Rupert Murdoch. Hanson, in the view of panellist Robert Manne, had “transformed this country in a most peculiar way”.
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