One Nation’s new NSW leader Mike Newman is an investment banker who wants to ‘get rid of wokery’

Son of former ABC chair will contest seat of Cessnock in March state election and says ‘my wife’s Japanese’ so he doesn’t believe party is racist

Follow our Australia news live blog for latest updates

Get our breaking news email , free app or daily news podcast

One Nation has named Mike Newman, an investment banker, as its New South Wales leader and first lower house candidate ahead of the March 2027 state election.

Pauline Hanson held a press conference alongside Newman on Friday morning to announce the son of former ABC chair Maurice Newman as her party’s candidate for the Hunter seat of Cessnock.

“He’s right across the issues of NSW, regardless of the fact he’s been living in Japan for the last 25 years … he’s always kept his eye on politics here in Australia,” Hanson said. “Premier [Chris] Minns, he’s really got a fight on his hands now.”

One Nation previously announced former federal candidate Stuart Bonds as its first upper house candidate in NSW.

Newman, a former trade bureaucrat in Asia, confirmed his candidacy in an interview with News24.

He noted the party’s NSW policy platform included reducing payroll tax by half, cutting it completely in regional areas, freezing the number of public servants and bringing in “private sector style KPIs [key performance indicators] into the public service, especially amongst the senior executives”.

“If you say you’re going to build 20,000 homes, if you don’t build 20,000 homes, you don’t get paid,” Newman said.

Newman’s time in Japan included three years as Investment NSW’s senior trade and investment commissioner in Tokyo.

In her first speech to the federal parliament in 1996, Hanson claimed: “We are in danger of being swamped by Asians.” Asked about Hanson’s previous opposition to Asian migration, Newman said he did not think the party would struggle to reach different communities.

“Look, I mean, my wife’s Japanese, so if I thought for even a fleeting second that [One Nation] were racist – all my business partners are Indians who are absolutely patriotic Aussies, I don’t really see that.”

Referencing Hanson’s calls for Australia to be a “monoculture”, Newman said Japan and Korea were “monoculture[s]”.

“[They’re] absolutely super successful nations who pride themselves on that thing. If I ever thought that One Nation was racist or any of these sorts of things, why would I join it? I mean, it’s … almost hypocritical of me to do so.”

He said Hanson’s inability to remember the name of the Japanese prime minister, Sanae Takaichi, in a News24 documentary was “an on-the-spot sort of moment”.

“She knows who Prime Minister Takaichi is,” he said.

Asked what the party’s plan was to foster social cohesion, Newman said: “We’re going to get rid of wokery, right?”

At Friday’s press conference with Hanson, federal One Nation MP Barnaby Joyce and Bonds, Newman was asked a question in Japanese, and answered in the language before translating into English.

Since 2024, Newman has worked as the chief representative for North Asia for HunterNet Co-op, which describes itself as an “effective networking organisation for business in the Newcastle Hunter region”.

Asked on Friday if he had moved to the region from Sydney, he said: “Well, I’m in the region, and to be honest, I’ve been living in Japan for the last 25 years, so I’m not actually [from Sydney], I’ve probably been living in Japan longer than Sydney.”

Asked again to confirm if he would move to the Hunter, Newman said: “I’m living in the region.”

The NSW premier has in recent months focused on the Hunter. At the NSW Labor conference in July , while announcing plans to bring train manufacturing back to the Hunter, known for its coal and heavy industries, he said the party needed to “climb Everest” to stay in power amid the rising threat from Hanson’s party.

This month, the state and federal governments announced a $2.5bn deal to save Tomago, Australia’s largest aluminium smelter, located in the region. On Friday, Joyce criticised the deal, which involved a commitment to deliver 3GW of new renewable energy. Joyce said the party would dump the state’s renewable energy zones.

Clayton Barr, the current member for Cessnock, which has been held by Labor for 38 years, won the two-party preferred vote in 2023 against One Nation by a margin of 23.4%, after the Nationals disendorsed their candidate.

The NSW Nationals MP for the seat of Upper Hunter, Dave Layzell, has warned that under optional preferential voting in NSW, a One Nation candidate could split votes, allowing Labor to win his seat, which he holds by a margin of 3.8%.

One Nation is polling at 25% in NSW, according to a Sydney Morning Herald Resolve poll in July, ahead of the Coalition on 23% with Labor in front at 29%.

The NSW opposition leader, Kellie Sloane, has suggested she wouldn’t enter a coalition with One Nation but said in June it was too early to discuss a preference deal.

According to DemosAU polling in June, One Nation’s primary vote was at 37% outside the Sydney area, with Labor at 23% and the Coalition on 19%.

Asked which seats the party was targeting in NSW, Newman said “every single one”.

Bonds, who came second to Labor’s Dan Repacholi in the two-party preferred vote in the seat of Hunter in last year’s federal election, rejected the suggestion that One Nation party members didn’t have a say in preselections.

In 2019, Bonds was reported by Channel Nine as saying “the only thing worse than a gay person with power is a woman”. He won 41% of the two-party preferred vote in 2025.