Allan hits back at Hanson’s ‘ditch the witch’ billboard, framing One Nation as enabler of political bullying

Victoria’s premier has branded Pauline Hanson a ‘barracker for bullies’ after One Nation’s ‘if the shoe fits’ billboard targeting her, sharpening a culture-war skirmish with state and federal implications.

By Monexus Staff Writeroceania5-minute read9 Jun 2026☆ Save ↗ Share ⎙ Print

Victorian Premier Jacinta Allan has accused One Nation leader Pauline Hanson of choosing "to barrack for bullies," escalating a row over a billboard that critics have labelled a "ditch the witch" attack on the state’s first female leader. The exchange, on the morning of 9 June 2026 Australian time, marks a pointed shift in how the Labor government intends to frame culture-war provocations from the federal minor party as it prepares for an election cycle in which gender, immigration and trust in political elites are likely to dominate the marginal-seat contest.

Allan’s response is more than a press-conference barb. It is a calculated decision to meet a targeted billboard on its own rhetorical ground, recharacterise the attackers, and reframe the dispute as a question of civility rather than policy substance. The strategy carries risk: it hands Hanson a fresh audience while drawing Victorian Labor deeper into a fight that has previously served One Nation well in regional Queensland and parts of New South Wales. But it also lets Allan position herself, and her party, as the defender of a basic decorum that polling consistently shows Australians — including many One Nation identifiers — say they want from their leaders.

The billboard and the counter-frame

According to reporting on the dispute, One Nation has run a billboard targeting Allan that critics have described with the phrase "ditch the witch." Hanson, when asked about the language, said "if the shoe fits," a formulation that converts a complaint about a slur into a taunt about its target. The line is recognisable from earlier Australian culture-war episodes: a public figure accuses a rival of misogyny, the rival responds that the rival is herself acting in a manner that warrants the criticism, and the question of who struck first dissolves into a contest of framing.

Allan’s response collapses that contest by refusing to litigate the billboard in its own terms. The premier says she will "always" call out what she describes as "misogynist" views. The implicit argument is that Hanson’s "if the shoe fits" line is not a defence but a tell: it confirms the intention, in the premier’s reading, to use a gendered insult and then dare the target to complain about it. Allan’s "barrack for bullies" formulation relocates the issue from the specific billboard to a wider pattern of behaviour attributed to One Nation and its leader.

This is a deliberate choice. It moves the story from a single piece of street furniture to a question of political culture, and it forces journalists covering the dispute to ask whether Hanson’s posture is a one-off provocation or a method. In a state where Labor holds a comfortable majority but where regional seats have shown One Nation voters willing to park their votes outside the major parties, that is a frame Allan can live with.

What the sources do — and do not — say

Reporting on the episode names both principals and the billboard. It identifies Allan as Victorian premier, and Hanson as federal leader of One Nation. It does not, in the material available, specify the location of the billboard, the date the campaign began, the spend behind it, or the size and reach of the audience it is intended to reach. Whether the imagery is part of a paid national buy, a state-level One Nation push into Victorian marginals, or a single local installation is not clear from the reporting on hand. The phrase "ditch the witch" appears as a label applied by critics rather than as confirmed text in the material Monexus has reviewed, and the line should be read accordingly: as a characterisation of the campaign’s effect, not as a verbatim transcription of it.

Nor does the available reporting specify what policy position Allan is alleged, by Hanson, to have taken that the billboard is responding to. In earlier Australian rows of this shape — from the "Ditch the Witch" T-shirts of 2010 in the United States to domestic episodes around female leaders — the originating grievance is typically either a vote, a speech, or a personal-life claim. The current material does not pin down which it is. That gap matters: without a stated trigger, the argument tends to slide into identity politics, which is precisely the terrain Hanson has historically been happy to occupy.

The structural picture

Strip the personalities out and the dispute is a familiar one in liberal-democratic politics. A sitting female premier faces a billboard attack from a minor-party leader whose base rewards confrontation. The premier’s options are to ignore it, to escalate it, or to reframe it. Allan has chosen reframing, but the framing she has chosen — bullies and misogyny — does double duty. It speaks to women voters who have grown tired of gendered abuse in public life, and it signals to the broader electorate that Labor intends to police the tone of the campaign rather than absorb the hit.

The federal dimension is harder to miss. One Nation, under Hanson, has positioned itself as a vehicle for voters who feel the major parties have stopped listening on immigration, cost-of-living and cultural grievance. A high-profile fight with a Labor premier is not a distraction for that party; it is oxygen. The risk for Labor is that a culture-war proxy contest consumes the oxygen it needs to land cost-of-living messages in regional Victoria. The risk for One Nation is that Hanson’s "if the shoe fits" line travels poorly with female voters in Melbourne’s outer suburbs, where the party’s growth ambitions in Victoria are concentrated.

What to watch

Three things will tell us whether Allan’s response has done its job. First, whether Hanson doubles down on the billboard in coming days, which would validate the premier’s reading that the taunt was a feature, not a slip. Second, whether One Nation’s Victorian unit accelerates its paid campaign or walks it back, a signal of whether the federal party sees the line as electorally usable in the state. Third, whether the broader Victorian Labor team — ministers, candidates, the party’s campaign vehicles — adopts the "barrackers for bullies" formulation in their own communications, which would turn a premier’s line into a party frame.

The underlying question is whether a politics of personal attack remains a winning register in a state where voters have, in recent cycles, shown a willingness to drift away from the major parties over cost-of-living and integrity concerns more than over culture. Allan is betting that it does not — and that calling it out, early, forces the contest onto her terms.

This article was written by Monexus staff and reflects the available reporting as of 9 June 2026. The location, reach and exact text of the One Nation billboard are not specified in the material on hand, and the description "ditch the witch" is used here as a label applied by critics of the campaign rather than as a verbatim transcription of the artwork.

Wire provenance

This editorial synthesis draws on the following public wire/social posts:

https://t.me/monexuswire/2173