Pauline Lee Hanson (পলিন লি হ্যানসন) is an Australian politician who is the founder and leader of One Nation, a right-wing populist political party. Hanson has represented Queensland in the Australian Senate since the 2016 federal election.

Hanson ran a fish and chip shop before entering politics in 1994 as a member of Ipswich City Council. She joined the Liberal Party of Australia in 1995 and was preselected for the Division of Oxley in Brisbane at the 1996 federal election. She was disendorsed shortly before the election after making contentious comments about Aboriginal Australians, but remained listed as a Liberal on the ballot paper. Hanson won the election and took her seat as an independent, before co-founding One Nation in 1997 and becoming its only MP. She attempted to switch to the Division of Blair at the 1998 federal election but was unsuccessful. Nevertheless, her newly formed party experienced a surge in popularity at the 1998 Queensland state election, garnering the second-highest number of votes of any party in the state.

Hanson was born Pauline Lee Seccombe on 27 May 1954 in the Brisbane suburb of Woolloongabba. She was the fifth of seven children (and the youngest daughter) to John Alfred "Jack" Seccombe and Hannorah Alousius Mary "Norah" Seccombe (née Webster). She first received schooling at Buranda Girls' School, later attending Coorparoo State School in Coorparoo until she ended her education at age 15, shortly before her first marriage and pregnancy.

Jack and Norah Seccombe owned a fish and chip shop in Ipswich, Queensland, in which Hanson and her siblings worked from a young age, preparing meals and taking orders. At an older age, she assisted her parents with more administrative work in bookkeeping and sales ledgering.

Hanson worked at Woolworths before working in the office administration of Taylors Elliotts Ltd, a subsidiary of Drug Houses of Australia (now Bickford's Australia), where she handled clerical bookkeeping and secretarial work. She left Taylors Elliotts during her first pregnancy.

Hanson was first married to Walter Zagorski.

In 1980, Hanson (then Pauline Zagorski) married Mark Hanson, a divorced tradesman working on the Gold Coast in Queensland. They honeymooned in South-East Asia. Mark Hanson had a daughter from his previous marriage, and he later had two children with Hanson: Adam and Lee. Together they established a trades and construction business, in which Hanson was in charge of the administrative and bookkeeping work, and would on occasion assist her husband on more practical work. Hanson has written about her difficult marriage, where alcohol and domestic violence impacted her family. They divorced in 1987. Lee was a candidate for One Nation in the 2025 Australian federal election.

In 1988, Hanson began a relationship with Morrie Marsden, a businessman in Queensland. Together, they established a catering service under the holding company Marsden Hanson Pty Ltd, and operated from their fish and chips store, Marsden's Seafood, in Silkstone, Queensland. Marsden worked on Hanson's campaign for political office in the seat of Oxley in 1996, and was a member of her staff after her election. When Hanson began to receive national and international media attention for her views, Marsden left the relationship. Hanson had begun a relationship with Ipswich man Rick Gluyas in 1994. Gluyas encouraged her to run as a candidate in the 1994 Ipswich City Council election, in which he also ran. Both were elected. Hanson and Gluyas ended their relationship some time after this, with Hanson retaining the home and property they had owned jointly at Coleyville, near Ipswich.

A 1999 civil suit reached the Queensland Court of Appeal in 2000 involving disgruntled former One Nation member Terry Sharples and led to a finding of fraud when registering One Nation as a political party,

On 20 August 2003, a jury in the District Court of Queensland convicted Hanson and David Ettridge of electoral fraud. Both Hanson and Ettridge were sentenced to three years imprisonment for falsely claiming that 500 members of the Pauline Hanson Support Movement were members of the political organisation Pauline Hanson's One Nation to register that organisation in Queensland as a political party and apply for electoral funding. Because the registration was found to be unlawful, Hanson's receipt of electoral funding worth $498,637 resulted in two further convictions for dishonestly obtaining property, each with three-year sentences, to run concurrently with the first. The sentence was widely criticised in the media, and by some politicians, including the prime minister, John Howard, and Liberal politician Bronwyn Bishop, as being too harsh.