‘They don’t have a clue’: Covert tapes expose One Nation turmoil, Rinehart influence claims

One Nation’s former national campaign director has been captured on covert recordings warning that billionaire Gina Rinehart is secretly dictating party strategy and top adviser James Ashby may be using the political party to enrich himself.

Despite Pauline Hanson sacking loyalist Sean Black after the Coalition put pressure on her for employing the formerly jailed rapist in key One Nation backroom roles, he claimed on the tapes to have quietly continued working for the populist party after his removal.

Heard bemoaning the party’s lack of competence to wield the significant power it is chasing in upcoming elections in Victoria, NSW and federally, he warns that rampant nepotism could see Rinehart puppets or inexperienced One Nation insiders, such as Hanson’s daughter Lee, given key political or policy roles, or even elevated to governor-general if the party ever secured government.

“They don’t have a clue what democracy is,” Black, who served One Nation for eight years including as campaign manager between 2023 and April 2026, said on one recording.

In another, he cautions that Rinehart has disproportionate influence over One Nation and especially its chief strategist James Ashby.

“James’s view on policy is that the policy comes from Gina or Gina’s acolytes, and that is it,” Black states.

He also claims to be worried Rinehart is pulling One Nation’s strings using proxies such as Rinehart company chief executive and ex-Northern Territory Chief Minister Adam Giles.

Giles made a $500,000 donation to One Nation earlier this year, which he said in April was paid out of his bonus from Hancock. At the time, when other large donations linked to Rinehart including a plane were also publicised, Treasurer Jim Chalmers described Hanson as a “wholly owned subsidiary of Gina Rinehart”.

Crossbencher David Pocock, in a parliamentary question on notice, asked if the electoral regulator could investigate the donation. This masthead has also seen documentation suggesting the Coalition was concerned that Rinehart was potentially funnelling money through her staff to bypass donor disclosure rules.

This masthead is not suggesting Black’s claims on the tapes are true but the recorded claims mark the starkest warning yet from Pauline Hanson’s inner sanctum over the legal and political risks of handing One Nation power.

In another recording, Black also questions the integrity of an arrangement where party members’ money was used to build a shed on Ashby’s privately owned property to ostensibly host a One Nation brewing company.

“That whole arrangement that was exposed… is astonishing [as is] the fact no one’s played up about it more,” Black says.

On the tape, Black also insists that One Nation only removed him because of media pressure about his past rape conviction rather than real concern about the criminal conduct that saw him jailed in 2018.

And he claims that rather than being banished, he was permitted to keep assisting the party as a paid fundraiser in Victoria after he was ostensibly sacked by Hanson.

Black was sentenced to five years’ jail and served two years and three months for raping and assaulting his former partner in a bathroom in 2007, pushing her down stairs and crushing her hand in a door. In Black’s sentencing, Judge Glen Cash said Black had used violence to exert control and that the victim of his offending “was not only your wife but the mother of your children”.

Hanson defended Black when asked about his sacking on this masthead’s Inside Politics podcast in June, arguing he had “paid his time” behind bars.

Blaming the pressure on Black on those trying to “destroy One Nation”, she admitted his sacking was “a decision that I had to make … because people were saying to me, ‘Look, you can’t keep him, I’ve got to sack him’.”

In a Sky News interview in April she said she had “actually shot this man …today in front of his wife, with his two children in the next room. So he’s gone, finished.”

But on the recordings, Black said Hanson, who did not respond to questions, privately fought his removal and indicated “she would have me back in a heartbeat once things died down”.

“She made an offer on the table of how much money to give me. And I said, Pauline, I trust you with the deeds of my house. If you think that that’s fair, so be it.”

He said that a short time later, “Pauline called me up and tripled the offer. 
And she said: ‘that’s a reward for being so nice’.”

The latest Resolve Political Monitor shows One Nation’s primary vote at 25 per cent, ahead of the Coalition on 23 and behind Labor on 29.

The party, whose remarkable polling surge has shaken the political establishment this year by capitalising on voter disillusionment and concern about migration, is no stranger to internal dissent.

Former MPs Mark Latham and Brian Burston previously attacked the party’s finances and personnel. Black’s criticism could be seen to carry more weight given his long-standing long-term loyalty towards Hanson and the key roles he held in the party until recently.

To have allegations of this nature raised by someone in Black’s role suggests serious dysfunction within One Nation.

His claims about the party’s inner financial dealings closely mirror claims by One Nation co-founder David Oldfield, who wrote in his 2019 memoir that the party had become “little more than a personal money-making scheme”.

On the tapes, Black said as well as the payout, Black’s family firm Front Door Services was assisting One Nation’s Victorian branch to fundraise as part of a consulting deal allowing Black to keep a cut of every donation his company raised for One Nation’s state election campaign.

“It was a written contractual agreement. …. on behalf of the Victorian executive, operating as its own legal entity and my wife. They [Victoria’s One Nation office] were calling me like daily for assistance,” he said.

Some One Nation staff had been suspicious about Black’s role for months after his sacking, according to a source familiar with conversations inside the party. Some believed Hanson had found a way to keep Black afloat financially, out of sight of One Nation’s staff and MPs, though that has not been proven.

Adding to Hanson’s political headache was a campaign being run by Liberal MP Garth Hamilton, a Hanson critic, which sent letters to each woman in his regional Queensland electorate criticising Hanson’s support for a domestic violence perpetrator.

Black also reveals on the recording that after word of the arrangement spread inside One Nation, party HQ panicked and sent him a letter demanding he hand back sensitive personal information on One Nation supporters they accused him of using to target unsuspecting donors.

In May, One Nation’s “Office of the General Manager” sent an “urgent communication” that appears to warn that unnamed persons were offering their services to One Nation branches around Australia in a manner that could involve “potential breaches of” electoral law and campaign finance and disclosure arrangements.

When contacted by this masthead, Black denied any involvement in One Nation fundraising or consulting roles after his removal in April and dismissed suggestions he had ever mishandled members’ data.

On the covert recording, Black insisted his fundraising and consulting deal was approved by One Nation’s Victorian officials and that the real problem with the party’s finances lay elsewhere.

Black is also heard expressing surprise at a lack of public scrutiny of revelations James Ashby had used party funds to build a $56,000 shed on his personal property that the party said was to be used for a One Nation micro-distillery business.

This masthead also revealed in September that Ashby registered in his own name a $100,000 plane that was donated to the party in 2015.

Black, on a recording, said he was concerned that Ashby was exploiting One Nation to make money and accrue benefits for himself, but no one in the party was willing to subject Ashby to proper scrutiny.

“James Ashby doesn’t understand politics. 
James Ashby understands his bank account and James Ashby. And then anything in between is sort of like has to go into his bank account. That’s it. 
That is only thing that James is focused on.”

Black said the media hadn’t picked up on the fact the property was co-owned by Ashby’s boyfriend, meaning he could profit from the improvement in value to the land.

While Black expressed concern about the use of one nation members’ money to build the shed – there is no suggestion Ashby, who declined to comment, has ever acted corruptly.

In an email to members about the arrangement, One Nation’s general manager Kelvin Morton described the shed arrangement as “unconventional” but approved by One Nation.

“In an effort to minimise costs, including commercial rent and outgoings, it was unanimously agreed that One Nation would loan Small Batch Brewing the establishment costs for a shed and distilling equipment, which could be placed on land owned by a member of the executive,” Morton wrote in his September email.

But Black said One Nation’s description of the arrangement as “unconventional” grossly understated the potential impropriety of the arrangement.

Black also details his concern that One Nation will use future political power in federal parliament to secure Ashby a large sum of money that he has for years argued he should be paid by the commonwealth after racking up million of dollars in legal costs pursuing an unresolved sexual harassment case a decade ago against his former boss, ex-speaker Peter Slipper.

“The first thing they’ll do when they’re in power or that they have balance of power will be to say, no one gets confidence and supply until you give Senator Ashby f—ing $2 million ex-gratia,” Black states.

Questions have persisted for years about how One Nation accounts for public funds paid into its accounts by state and federal electoral commissions in return for each vote won at an election. Even if One Nation fails to win power at upcoming Victorian, NSW or federal elections, it stands to reap millions due to its vastly improved popularity.

Former One Nation MP in NSW, Mark Latham, quit the party in 2023 accusing One Nation’s leadership in parliament of misappropriating $270,000 worth of NSW electoral funds to pay for party merchandise “to be on-sold with the money laundered to Ashby and Hanson.”

Both Ashby and Hanson rejected the claims and no regulatory action was taken.

Black reveals One Nation is sitting on other scandals, claiming that an incident the party hushed up involves certain senior figures from One Nation’s federal headquarters secretly accessing data held by the party’s NSW branch without its approval.

He said the plan involved One Nation insiders deciding “that they would break into the emails of the New South Wales branch.”

Having “collected a whole heap of information”, the data thieves faced a dilemma.

“The problem that they had was that they knew it was illegal to do, that the New South Wales branch is its own, its own legal entity. So they would be in all sorts of f—ing shit. They couldn’t use any of the evidence. They knew that. So it was just f—ing scary.”

Black also raises his deep concerns about the influences that Rinehart is exerting over the party.

Hanson’s burst in popularity has coincided with the patronage of Australia’s richest person. Rinehart donated a $1.3 million plane to Hanson in April. The party is moving its headquarters to a building purchased by Rinehart, which the party said it would lease at a commercial rate.

The mining billionaire paid for Hanson’s flights between London and a luxury Italian resort in a July trip to Europe that became infamous for Hanson’s interview with far-right criminal Tommy Robinson.

The Coalition and Labor have targeted Hanson over her ties to Rinehart, which those parties believe will become a growing perception problem for Hanson.

One Nation also flipped its gas reservation policy in favour of a scheme that benefits Rinehart’s firms. And on the EU free trade deal, which will benefit Rinehart’s critical minerals and beef firms, One Nation has pushed back against the Nationals’ hard line against the pact.

Hanson’s is also the only party to have gone near adopting Rinehart’s campaign for military spending worth an extra $225 billion over the decade.

On the secret recording, Black said he was deeply worried Rinehart would exploit the inexperience of One Nation’s candidates and party machine, stacking the party with figures loyal to the billionaire.

Black said One Nation was already working with policy and think tank figures and ex-politicians from the Liberal or Nationals parties who had been financially supported by Rinehart.

“All those people, I think, are lined up for jobs. And I’ve spoken to a lot of them, James, has said, here’s the number of this person, help them with policy creation by giving them this data, et cetera, et cetera.”

“The conga line of people that go through that party were all connected to Rinehart, this guy that’s in New South Wales, leader. [Mike Newman.] 
Yeah. He’s a Rinehart. Got to be. 
Basically, it was alluded to me, that he’s in the Rinehart camp.”

In a lengthy statement, a spokesperson for Hancock Prospecting said Rinehart’s support of One Nation was dwarfed by the donations given by trade unions and corporate interests to the Labor Party and the Greens.

The spokesperson singled out donations given by “left wing billionaires” such as Scott Farquhar and Mike Cannon-Brookes to progressive fundraising vehicle Climate 200, and Andrew Forrest to Labor.

They stressed that “Rinehart… has received nothing from One Nation” and was not seeking any benefit.

“Mrs Rinehart has maintained publicly for the same things for over fifty years: less regulation, less taxes, and greater defence of our country,” they said.

“She believed all this and was saying this long before One Nation polled where it has been in recent months, and still does poll, and long before friends of hers such as Barnaby and Cory and Teena, joined One Nation, and long before friends of hers decided that One Nation should be supported given the record of the uniparty.”

Black also talks of his fears that Hanson, who is effectively lifetime leader of One Nation due to a limitless term as president under the party’s constitution, will use her power to propel her daughter Lee into parliament or senior government national security roles.

“They will move her into most probably the director general of prime minister and cabinet. And then when they realise that, that is a level of intellect that is required for that role, you have to be across f—ing security. You have to be across defence. She will f–k that up pretty quick and they will probably put her in as a governor.”

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