One Nation denies link to racist Facebook page promoting Victorian candidate

The official Facebook page of One Nation's candidate for the outer-Melbourne seat of Sydenham, Joh Bauch, has been revealed as one of two administrators of a pro-Pauline Hanson Facebook group with ties to an account publishing racist material.

An ABC NEWS Verify investigation into the group "Make Australia great again with PAULINE HANSON" has discovered the other administrator is a page with a history of posting racist and offensive material including describing Islam as a "cancer on humanity".

The page, called Down Under News, has also shared campaign material for One Nation and Joh Bauch.

Mr Bauch did not respond to questions from ABC NEWS Verify and his account was removed as an administrator of the group after questions were sent to him.

A spokesperson for One Nation said their candidate "joins a lot of [Facebook] groups" to "get his message out" but was unaware they had been made an administrator.

They emphatically denied any ties "official or otherwise" between One Nation and overseas content creators.

The pro-Pauline Facebook group

The Facebook group was created on July 31, 2026 and describes itself as a community to "discuss the future of Australia" and "promote positive change".

It is unclear when Mr Bauch became an administrator of the group, but he appears to have joined it several weeks ago and has used it on multiple occasions to share policy announcements and campaign material from his official One Nation-branded candidate page.

The other administrator, an account called Down Under News, used to be called Old Europe Vibes and appears to have previously been focused on posting images of European scenery before abruptly pivoting to right-wing Australian politics on July 29.

Since then, Down Under News has posted a slew of inflammatory political content, spamming right-wing Australian political groups with content vilifying Muslims.

The page has also republished content from Mr Bauch's official One Nation Facebook page.

A Facebook user called Mmh Shevafeby is one of several accounts active in the group co-administrated by the Down Under News page, having posted extensively in the group.

The content creator appears to be based in Indonesia. Many of their recent posts include pro-One Nation material and inflammatory content focused on Australian politics.

At times Mmh Shevafeby appears to have accidentally included the AI prompts used to create their posts, including text that shows their explicit aim of generating "high engagement and debate" from Australian Facebook users.

Mmh Shevafeby is also a prolific poster in other right-leaning political Facebook groups and is an administrator of at least two groups dedicated to defending Ben Roberts-Smith, both of which appear to be operated predominantly by Indonesian-based content creators.

The account has been part of Facebook's monetisation program since at least May 2026.

Mmh Shevafeby did not respond to questions about their involvement in the group or whether they were working with One Nation.

Down Under News did not respond to questions.

A read receipt within Facebook's messaging feature shows the questions to Down Under News were received.

Cash for clicks

The recent influx of Indonesian and other international content creators using monetised Facebook accounts to seek attention from Australians discussing politics on social media has been investigated and documented extensively by ABC NEWS Verify as well as The Guardian Australia and A Current Affair.

Indonesian content creators represent the largest share of non-English-speaking content creators on Meta, with reportedly 1.7 million Indonesian accounts monetised as of early 2026, dwarfing all other non-English monetised users according to reporting by tech news website Rest of World.

The revenue can represent a significant income for some Indonesians, which appears to be the case with Mmh Shevafeby.

Their Facebook account has published posts that claim to show earnings from Meta, and has claimed in online posts that their earnings from Meta help pay for their groceries.