How Pauline Hanson fills the gap in our political landscape. By Nick Cater in The Australian.
One Nation may one day eclipse the Liberal-National Coalition as the principal force on the centre right but it will never form government while Hanson remains its leader.
Not while its internal structure remains nebulous and immature and the mechanism for the leader’s removal is entirely in her own hands. Not when the party’s future as a parliamentary force lies in the hands of inexperienced MPs and senators. …
The gaping political hole for leaders to ride the populist wave of those who oppose the globalist ruling class — principally mass immigration and decarbonization:
The populist wave overturning business-as-usual politics around the world is driven by demand, not supply. A gaping hole has opened up in the centre of the political landscape which, this being a democracy, would sooner or later be occupied.
Hanson’s One Nation didn’t create this space, nor did it appear to be the natural candidate to fill it after the last election, when it emerged with a primary vote of 6 per cent.
Yet One Nation has scooped up the none-of-the-above votes scattered like confetti in 2025 and pushed the boundaries still further by becoming the home for a substantial subsection of the disgruntled Liberal base as well as the working-class voters Anthony Albanese has shaken off as Labor reinvents itself as the party of the technocratic elite. …
Passions:
For Hanson’s accidental army, One Nation is as much an emotional home as a serious political choice. A survey of the comments on any article in The Australian remotely critical of One Nation (including most probably this one) reveals how passionately supportive they are. Former Liberal voters who switch allegiance to One Nation are not simply changing their votes. They are changing tribes. Their internal narrative changes from “I support the Liberal Party” to “I’m one of the people who finally woke up”. …
It’s global:
In his 2022 book Values, Voice and Virtue, British political scientist Matthew Goodwin makes a strong case that the exposure of this fault line in Britain predates the rise of Nigel Farage’s Reform UK. The speed of Farage’s ascendancy, like the sudden rise of populist movements in other European democracies, owes less to his political attributes than the gap in the market for a movement that respects the view of the non-graduate majority.
Reform was the result rather than the cause of the populist mood, fuelled by resentment over the pursuit of pet projects such as multiculturalism and the mitigation of climate change that diverted government attention from the everyday problems of working families, small businesses and retirees.
In Britain, the populist revolt manifested itself most clearly in the Brexit vote. In Australia it was the Voice referendum. In both countries the established conservative parties seemed at first to be on the right side of the argument. Peter Dutton’s Liberal Party appeared to gain ground, just as the Conservatives did in Boris Johnson’s landslide election win in 2019. In both cases, the alignment with anti-establishment voters was short-lived. Neither Johnson nor Dutton could overcome the tensions in their own party.
In both cases, and the US too, the long-standing right-wing party was tainted by its past adoption of the globalist policies on mass immigration, DEI, and carbon. Hence the “uniparty” charge. Can we trust the main right-wing party to change its ways, or is it better to elect a new but less capable populist party? Why do we have to choose between talent or the right policies delivered with conviction? Can’t we have both?