The One Nation party was formally established on 11 April 1997 at the Civic Hall in Ipswich, South East Queensland.

[19] The views, style and success politically of the party, both state and federal, lead to Pauline Hanson being compared to figures such as former conservative Queensland Premier Joh Bjelke-Petersen;[20] American conservative politician and commentator Pat Buchanan;[21] and former French politician and leader of the National Front, Jean-Marie Le Pen.

[9] In February 1999, five of the eleven One Nation MPs elected into the Legislative Assembly left the party and sat as Independents.

[27] By the end of the year, One Nation had been de-registered by the Electoral Commission (ECQ) with the party not meeting the 500-member threshold to maintain its registration status.

Fielding sixty-one candidates at the election, One Nation won over 13% of the vote, including the Central Queensland seat of Mirani.

[43] In 2019 party leader Steve Dickson resigned from the party after a three-year Al Jazeera English investigation caught him (Steve Dickson § National Rifle Association scandal),[44] alongside party official James Ashby,[45] seeking to facilitate up to AU$20 million dollars in funding from the National Rifle Association of America (NRA), an American gun rights and lobbying group.

[48] Much of the campaign and social media display, albeit restricted, was centred around the governments response to, and actions taken during, the COVID-19 pandemic.

[49] Federal party leader Pauline Hanson threatened to take legal action over the state governments interstate border closure decision in May–June 2020[50][51] and received the backing of the Minister for Home Affairs Peter Dutton.

[61] The party's main campaign policy was tackling youth crime, particularly in Townsville in the state's far north,[61] and health.

[9] Although active in a state that is notably more conservative than the rest of the country,[66][67][68] One Nation holds a distinct position on the left–right political spectrum.

That support was largely due to the vacuum created by the National Party's incremental abandonment of there supposed ideological principles of agrarianism, populism and conservatism.

[69] The party is opposed to renaming proposals of Queensland places into an Aboriginal language name and supports repealing the Path to Treaty Act 2023, declaring it "divisive.

"[70] On crime the party supports reviewing and amending bail laws; establishing a victim support program with counselling, legal and financial assistance; requiring young offenders to make restitution to victims as part of their rehabilitation, which may also involve the offender's family if the offender is a minor and parental neglect is demonstrated to be a contributing factor; and establishing facilities where intervention programs for at-risk youth can be based, starting with a re-purposed education facility on North Keppel Island.

[72][73] One Nation's principal electoral policy is to reintroduce an upper house to make the Queensland Parliament bicameral again.