Naboth's Vineyard

Who Gains When We Fear The Stranger

Pauline Hanson closed her National Press Club speech with a promise. One Nation would return to the country ‘its wealth which has been stolen from us by bad policy and arrogant policy misfits’. She is right. Wealth has been taken. She is wrong about who took it, and the tradition she claims has a story about exactly this.

The Vineyard

A man named Naboth had a vineyard. It sat beside the palace, and King Ahab wanted it. He offered to buy it, and Naboth said no, because the land was his family’s inheritance, held in trust down the generations. ‘The LORD forbid that I should give you my ancestral inheritance’ (1 Kings 21:3, NRSVue).

The king had no way to take it openly. A king who seizes a poor man’s field is a thief, and everyone would see it. So his household found another way. They arranged for two men to stand up in public and swear a lie, claiming Naboth had cursed God and the king. On the strength of the false witness, Naboth was dragged out and stoned. With the innocent man dead, the king took the vineyard (1 Kings 21:8-16).

Then the prophet Elijah walked into the king’s new garden and asked the question the whole tradition keeps asking. ‘Have you killed, and also taken possession?’ (1 Kings 21:19, NRSVue).

Here is the oldest method in scripture for stealing wealth. You have no way to take the vineyard in daylight. So you raise a false charge against someone unable to fight back, and in the noise and the outrage, you take what you wanted. The theft runs on a lie told against the innocent.

A Palestinian farmer harvests grapes at Taybeh vineyard. Photograph: Abbas Momani/AFP/Getty Images

The Same Move, Now

Hold the speech against the story.

The grievance is real. Wealth has been taken from ordinary Australians. The gas shipped offshore is barely taxed. It raised $1.42 billion in a year (Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, 2026) on exports worth around $67 billion (The Australia Institute, 2026). Assets have been sold to foreign owners. Wages have been held down. The vineyard has been changing hands for a long time.

Watch where Hanson points the anger. Not up, at those who hold the wealth. Down, at Naboth. The migrant. The student. The Muslim. The transgender Australian. She raises the charge against the people with the least power to answer, and while the country argues about them, the vineyard stays taken.

There is a funder in this story too. One Nation’s rise has been backed by Gina Rinehart, the country’s richest person, who has argued for years for lower Australian wages and once pointed to workers ‘willing to work for less than $2 per day’ (NPR, 2012). Hanson has flown on her jet, one flight undeclared (The Guardian, 2026).

In fairness, Hanson backs a higher tax on gas, and she opposed the company tax cut for big business. She is not one billionaire’s puppet. The charge is narrower and harder to shake. The anger she raises lands on the poor and the foreign, and never climbs to the people who hold the inheritance.

Who Gains

The prophets never lose sight of who gains.

‘Ah, you who make iniquitous decrees, who write oppressive statutes’ (Isaiah 10:1, NRSVue). The ones who write the rules. ‘The wages of the labourers who mowed your fields, which you kept back by fraud, cry out’ (James 5:4, NRSVue). The ones who keep back the wage. Malachi gathers them in one breath, the God who comes ‘against those who oppress the hired workers in their wages … against those who thrust aside the alien’ (Malachi 3:5, NRSVue). Notice the company the alien keeps there. The mistreated foreigner stands beside the cheated worker and the robbed widow, all of them on the same side of the ledger, all of them Naboth.

The scapegoat has a logic, and a frightened official once said it out loud. ‘It is better for you to have one man die for the people’ (John 11:50, NRSVue). Caiaphas said it of Jesus. Sacrifice the one, and the rest of us, the people who count, stay safe and in place. The gospel takes this logic and breaks it. It puts the innocent victim at the centre, shows him innocent, and exposes the lie the mighty told to keep their position. The cross is the false witness against Naboth, dragged into the light.

What The Tradition Asks

The tradition Hanson claims does not ask you to fear the stranger. It asks the opposite, and it aims the demand upward. Do justice. Pay the worker. Welcome the alien. Refuse to bear false witness against the blameless. From Naboth’s vineyard to the prophets to the cross, the whole story is a campaign against the move she makes, the move of blaming the powerless to cover the strong.

The Vineyard Returns

Elijah’s question still stands in every garden built on a lie. Have you killed, and also taken possession?

The honest answer to stolen wealth is to name who took it. Tax the gas. Bring the assets home. Lift the floor under wages. Stop swearing false witness against Naboth. The fear of the stranger is the false witness behind the taking. Refuse it, and the vineyard comes back into view. The stranger never held your inheritance. Look up to the ones who do.

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Sources

Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis. (2026, May 1). Australia isn’t getting a fair share of tax on gas exports. https://ieefa.org/resources/australia-isnt-getting-fair-share-tax-gas-exports-queensland-has-shown-how-raise-bar

NPR. (2012, September 5). Billionaire slammed after musing about workers paid $2 a day. https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2012/09/05/160614909/asias-richest-woman-slammed-after-musing-about-workers-paid-2-a-day

The Australia Institute. (2026, April 14). Australians want nothing more than a fair return for their gas. https://australiainstitute.org.au/post/australians-want-nothing-more-than-a-fair-return-for-their-gas-submission-to-senate-inquiry/

The Guardian. (2026, February 3). Pauline Hanson failed to declare free flight on Gina Rinehart’s private jet. https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2026/feb/03/pauline-hanson-free-flight-gina-rinehart-hancock-ntwnfb

Biblical quotations from the New Revised Standard Version, updated edition (NRSVue), with spelling rendered in Australian English.