We have one of the highest interest rates in the world, and we owe more money per capita than any other country. All we need is a nail hole in the bottom of the boat and we're sunk.

Liberal Bruce Baird said Hanson had her facts wrong in her suggestions of immigrants bringing disease into Australia. During this period new right-wing parties emerged in most states running on platforms which were equally anti-elitist but not as populist as One Nation. The United Australia Party led by Ellis Wayland fielded candidates in the 1997 state election in South Australia; the Australian Reform Party led by the gun lobbyist Ted Drane was active in rural Victoria and New South Wales; The Australians led by Tony Pitt formed out of the defunct Confederate Action Party in Queensland; and Tasmania First fielded candidates in the 1998 state election.

Following her disendorsement as the Liberal Party candidate for the federal seat of Oxley for the March 1996 election Pauline Hanson was elected as the independent member in that election. Her profile increased dramatically later that year when Pauline Hanson gave her maiden parliamentary speech in which Pauline Hanson criticised immigration and multiculturalism government assistance to Aboriginals and political correctness and called for a return to high-tariff protectionism.