Echoing the astonishing rise of Reform in the UK, One Nation are soaring up the polls, even as the coalition sinks to record lows. The two are correlated for a reason: as the coalition gets wetter and wetter and more indistinguishable from the green-left, by the day, centre-right conservative voters are casting around for an alternative. Like UK voters, Australian voters were long dissuaded from adopting One Nation as that alternative, mostly thanks to a decades-long legacy media campaign to demonise the party. As the legacy media’s last shreds of credibility evaporate, especially in the wake of Covid, voters are listening more closely to One Nation – and deciding that they like what they hear.
Moreover, as ‘bipartisanship’ gets more and more exposed for what it really is – the political elite ganging up together against the people – voters are deserting the mainstream duopoly in droves. If the coalition’s primary vote is dire, Labor’s isn’t much better. In the past three elections, Labor have recorded three of their five worst primary votes in their history. So, how did that translate to such a huge majority in parliament? Because the system is geared to a duopoly.
But that can only mask the collapse of the duopoly as it’s been since WWII for so long.
As in the UK, immigration and climate policies are smashing the duopoly for good.
Pauline Hanson believes that Aussies are fed up with the major parties over climate change and immigration as support for One Nation soars to record levels.
As in the UK, both major parties are singing from the same, hated, hymn sheet. Both parties have overseen record-high immigration: fuelling a housing crisis that threatens to lock a generation out of home ownership. Both are rusted on to the destructive, lunatic ‘Net Zero’ goal: the only difference is that Labor at least aren’t pretending. The Liberals want to have an each-way bet, which fools nobody.
The Australian Financial Review/Redbridge/Accent Research poll conducted from November 7–13 showed the coalition’s primary vote had plummeted to 24 per cent, while One Nation rose to 18 per cent – a poll-record high for the party – and Labor hit 38 per cent.
Those numbers put One Nation ahead of anything the Greens have ever managed, and within striking distance of becoming the leading centre-right party. Immigration is already a Top Five issue. Of the other top-ranking issues, nearly all are inextricably linked to immigration: cost of living (by far the number one issue, at 75 per cent), housing affordability, and crime and public safety. The ‘traditional’ issue of economic management barely rates, at 15 per cent.
And climate change, Labor’s singular obsession? Just 13 per cent of voters nominated it as a pressing issue.
But Labor’s Achilles heel is easily immigration.
When those polled were asked to nominate “which party was best able to handle key issues?” 27 per cent nominated One Nation on immigration, followed by 20 per cent for Labor and 19 per cent for the coalition.
That’s because One Nation is the only party with a firm policy of cutting immigration. Not just pretending to fiddle at the edges and going right on to importing millions more foreigners, like Labor and the Coalition, but actually slashing immigration in a meaningful way.
One Nation wants to cap all visas at no more than 130,000 per year, including foreign students.
Ms Hanson claimed this would “drastically reduce demand for housing, reduce rents, reduce pressure on our public services and infrastructure, and even reduce emission increases if you believe Australia’s one per cent of global human emissions causes climate change”.
“Australia cannot sustain the record numbers of immigrants being brought here by Labor,” she said.
“This poll shows most Australians have had enough of high immigration and are looking to park their vote with the one party committed to lowering it: One Nation.”
What will really be music to voters’ ears will be this kind of straight talk from a renowned political straight-shooter.
The minor party has also pledged to refuse migrants from countries linked to extreme ideologies and enforce an eight-year waiting period for citizenship and welfare.
The party has also called for withdrawing from the UN Refugee Convention, arguing that Australia should retain full control over humanitarian intake.
“Get back around sovereignty, get back the prosperity our country once had. Get back industry, manufacturing. Cut back the mass migration, which is destroying people, their livelihoods, where they’re able to live, work.
“The whole climate change BS that we’ve been fed: this has destroyed our standard of living.”
Of course, the next election is a long way away, but One Nation is doing all the right things to capitalise on its momentum. The party is opening new branches and signing up new members, across the country. Even leader Pauline Hanson’s legal battles with Greens MP, Pakistani-born Mehreen Faruqi, are keeping her name in the headlines for all the right reasons so far as her popular support is concerned.
