Do we like Dave Hughes?
Our score: 6 out of 10. A decent record with one contested rant and one gross stunt, but the record we could open is thin on real good deeds.
Hughesy has been a fixture of Australian telly and radio for decades, and the sources we could open for this card are almost all about this year, which has been a busy one. He has gone from comedian to loud political commentator, and the 2026 stoush is what people are asking about.
The big shift: he describes himself as a long-time Labor voter, but he now says he will vote Liberal at the November Victorian election. He told The Standard that lockdowns, state debt and changes to capital gains tax and negative gearing drove it, and added “I’m not going to just vote for them and then blindly believe everything they say.” Voting Liberal is not a harm-test issue on its own, and he has said he's copping flak for it.
The harm check is where the asterisk comes from. Women's Agenda reported that on morning telly he questioned why permanent residents can get government support, saying “We are sick of them stealing our money.” The columnist called it deeply irresponsible and linked it to anti-migrant rhetoric; no response from Hughes was in that piece. It's one opinion piece's reading of one rant, so we've marked it, not failed him, and nothing from him on trans people, women or climate turned up.
Then there's the glass. In July, New Zealand comedian Melanie Bracewell alleged in a TikTok comment that Hughes had urinated in a glass she uses on stage. He didn't dispute it to the Daily Mail, saying it happened “maybe four times in my life” before solo shows with no backstage toilet, and described the feud as a joke the two had laughed about. Gross, yes. A pattern of mistreating people, on what we found, no.
The money question followed him into October. Independent Australia, an openly critical outlet, reported that he fronted the Victorian Liberals' campaign launch in Geelong and that his usual fee is believed to start around $5,000 plus GST. Hughes told it he was “not receiving any money at all” and later said he was reported to the Victorian Electoral Commission over two Liberal fundraiser events. He said he'd stop speaking at Victorian Liberal events, and that no one has shown a breach.
The honest gap: the pages we could open give us little of his charity work or kindness off stage, so the good side of the ledger is thin here. He passes the nice test on what we found, and the harm test with an asterisk for the immigration rant. We'd keep an eye on where the political turn goes.