Do we like Paul Hogan?
Our score: 8 out of 10. He backed marriage equality years before it passed, called out racism in 2026, and his one real stain is a tax fight he settled without admission.
Hogan is the bloke who went from working on the Sydney Harbour Bridge to being a global star in his 40s as Mick 'Crocodile' Dundee. He now lives in California but has said he wants to come back to Australia and be buried here, with his ashes scattered off the Harbour Bridge. He's 86 and still the larrikin everyone remembers.
The fresh bit is a ripper. When One Nation leader Pauline Hanson called for a 'monocultural' Australia, she named Hogan and Norman Gunston in the Senate as examples. Hogan fired back to the Australian Financial Review that she was a 'pelican' and 'living in the past', and pointed out that everyone bar Aboriginal Australians is a migrant. Being used as a poster boy for a view you don't hold is annoying, and he didn't let it slide.
The stain is the tax saga. The Australian tax office pursued Hogan and his producer John Cornell for about eight years over unpaid tax, a sum authorities put around $150 million including penalties. In 2012 they settled after mediation, with confidential terms and without admission, and both men denied wrongdoing. He was never convicted of anything, but it was a long, ugly fight with the taxman.