What does this state election mean for your family?

Who we are

Working Families for Victoria is a movement of Victorians who think people deserve the full picture on our politicians – and their records – before we vote.

We're not aligned with any political party or union, and we don't take instructions or donations from any either.

Working Families for Victoria is a campaign supported and funded by GetUp, which takes no donations from any political party or government, publicly discloses its donations, 97% of which are under $100.

What we stand for

We're campaigning for a Victoria that backs the people who keep it running:

• Affordable childcare, so no parent has to choose between a job and their kids.
• Well-funded public schools, so every kid gets a fair start.
• A properly funded health system, so seeing a doctor doesn't wreck the budget.
• Strong wages, so a full week's work is enough to live on.
• Real paid parental leave, so a new baby doesn't mean a financial setback.
• Support for people doing it tough, when work isn't enough or isn't there.
• A fair go for apprentices and tradies training for a decent, secure job.

Working families rely on wages to cover the mortgage or the rent, put meals on the table, and pay for their kids' education. None of that gets easier if wages stand still.

Wages don't rise on their own – it usually takes a vote in parliament to make it happen. In 2023, parliament voted to make it a criminal offence for an employer to knowingly underpay a worker. Malcolm Roberts, a sitting One Nation senator, voted no.

We were surprised, so we checked the record. Turns out that's not a one-off position. Over two decades, Pauline Hanson, Roberts, Barnaby Joyce and, more recently, Tyron Whitten have voted against or sought to weaken law after law built to raise wages, protect penalty rates, or stop pay being undercut:

• 2025 – when parliament moved to lock in protections against future cuts to penalty and overtime rates, Hanson, Roberts and Whitten voted to weaken those protections
• 2023 – Roberts voted No, twice, to the law requiring equal pay for people doing the same job through a labour hire firm. Freight workers went on to pick up as much as $8,000 a year under the change, flight attendants up to $20,000. The same law made it a criminal offence for underpaying a worker – Roberts voted No to that too.
• 2022 – Hanson voted against the core of Secure Jobs, Better Pay – the government's own legislation built to get wages moving.
• 2014 – Pauline Hanson: “Get rid of penalty rates, and I'd also say get rid of the 17.5% leave loading.”

Don't just take our word for it – you can see all the details yourself. Check out our sourcing here.

We know just how important safe, affordable childcare is for working families. It means kids are properly looked after, parents can actually get to work, and every child gets a fair start early.

In February 2025, parliament voted on the Three Day Guarantee – a law giving every eligible family three days a week of subsidised childcare, worth about $1,460 a year for a family on $50,000 to $100,000. Pauline Hanson voted no on it, twice.

Now she's proposing childcare should be less subsidised, to “encourage parents to look after their own children” – part of One Nation's income-splitting policy. So we dug deeper to check how she's actually voted on it:

• 2025 – Hanson voted no on the Three Day Guarantee twice, a bill that went on to give more than 100,000 families extra subsidised hours. Malcolm Roberts voted the same way, and Barnaby Joyce voted no against the same bill in the House.
• 2019 – families with high-needs kids had been left with nowhere to send them, and parliament had the chance to get emergency funding out to them. Hanson voted no.
• 2017 – when the people looking after our kids were earning as little as $21 an hour, parliament voted on giving them a pay rise. Hanson and Roberts voted no.

One Nation's current policy is to scrap the childcare subsidy altogether and replace it with a tax deduction instead.

We'd rather you look into this yourself than take our word for it. Everything above is sourced and linked below.

Public schools often run on canteen rosters, fundraisers, and parents chipping in for things you'd assume were already covered. Working families expect their local public school to get a fair go, not just what's left over.

There's a Commonwealth fund for upgrading school buildings – classrooms, halls, new equipment – that only private schools can apply for. Public schools aren't eligible at all.

Every time parliament's had a chance to fix that, One Nation MPs have voted no:

• December 2019 – a $10 million hardship fund for schools doing it tough in the drought, after public schools had already been excluded from an existing Commonwealth program. Hanson and Roberts voted no. The vote tied 32 all – if it had gone the other way, those schools would have got the money.
• July 2019 – a Senate motion for a dedicated capital works fund for public schools, the equivalent of the one private schools already had. Hanson and Roberts voted no.
• June 2017 – Hanson and Roberts voted yes on a bill to deliver less funding for public schools.
• February 2017 – Roberts had already voted no on a separate needs-based school funding motion, his third vote against public schools in this same pattern.

Cory Bernardi voted no alongside Hanson and Roberts on both 2019 motions, and Barnaby Joyce voted in the House in 2017 for the Coalition's lower-funding model.

It's all on the public record, sourced below – have a look before November.

Starting an apprenticeship means finding a couple of grand for tools before you've earned a cent. For working families backing a kid through a trade, that's real money upfront, on top of everything else.

There used to be $5,500 to help with exactly that – paid in cash, tax free, across the apprenticeship. It was scrapped in 2014 and swapped for a loan instead, up to $20,000 of debt to pay back. Cory Bernardi, One Nation's South Australia leader, voted for that swap.

Twice since, when parliament had the chance to make TAFE fee-free, Hanson and Roberts voted no:

• 2025 (July) – Hanson, Roberts and fellow One Nation senator Tyron Whitten all voted no to an amendment making university and TAFE fee-free. The same day, Hanson spoke against wiping 20 per cent of student debt – around $244 million in apprentice loans and $317 million in VET loans, gone for people already qualified and working.
• 2023 (October) – Hanson and Roberts voted no to the same fee-free TAFE proposal, two years earlier.

Construction is one of the trades free TAFE was built for, and every side of politics agrees Australia needs more houses built. Hard to do that without tradies, and harder to become one carrying debt for tools and training most other apprentices don't have to pay for.

Every vote here is checkable in a couple of minutes – links below.

Having a baby already means less money coming in and more going out. Working families count on paid parental leave to get them through the early years with their children.

In 2020, when a lot of women lost their jobs during the pandemic while pregnant, parliament had two separate chances to let them keep access to paid parental leave anyway. Malcolm Roberts voted no both times.

That wasn't a one-off:

• 2024 (March) – three votes on making paid parental leave better: getting the full 26 weeks sooner, and starting superannuation on it a year earlier so parents don't retire worse off. Roberts voted no on all three.
• 2023 (March) – three votes: adding superannuation to paid parental leave, and extending eligibility to PhD students. Roberts voted no on all three.
• 2020 (June) – alongside the two pandemic votes above, a third vote the same day would have let fathers claim the leave when the mother earned too much to qualify. Roberts voted no on that one too.

Across all nine of those votes, Roberts voted no every time. Pauline Hanson voted no on five and was absent for the other four.

It goes back further. In 2017, when the government wanted to lift paid parental leave from 18 to 20 weeks, Hanson opposed the increase outright, calling it part of a “welfare handout mentality.”

None of this is hidden – you can check every vote yourself before you decide.

Seeing a doctor or filling a script shouldn't blow the weekly budget.

In 2023, parliament brought in 60-day dispensing – letting patients get two months of medicine on one script instead of two, worth up to $180 a year on some medicines. Hanson and Roberts both opposed it in the Senate.

It's not the only place they've voted against making healthcare more affordable:

• 2025 – Hanson voted no against expanding publicly funded dental care, including the Senior Dental Benefits Scheme.
• 2018 – Hanson voted no on a Senate motion to expand “Denticare” access – a push for Medicare-style universal dental coverage.
• 2014 – Barnaby Joyce and Cory Bernardi voted for a federal Budget that cut $54 billion in public hospital funding.

It's all on the public record, sourced below – have a look before November.