One Nation Saps Labor Support

With One Nation barnstorming the polls for the past few months, the sniffy consensus of the media-political Establishment is that it cannot last, which is, indeed, a concern for One Nation and its supporters, too. Hence, as I wrote recently, Pauline Hanson moving to reclaim her party’s maverick outsider persona.

It’s at least 18 months to the next election, after all. A lot can happen in that time. But, as far as anyone can tell, it’s not looking good for the major parties, government or opposition. For the meantime, then, One Nation’s rise is not a ‘blip’.

Even lefty paper-of-record, the Age, is admitting it.

One Nation’s rise is real, and it is now stealing voters from Labor, not just the Liberals and Nationals. The loss of support to Pauline Hanson’s party will concern Anthony Albanese, but it will not surprise him.

Crunched by high inflation, spiralling petrol prices and more, voters are in a bad mood and they’re starting to take it out on the government as well as the opposition.

The March Resolve Political Monitor survey shows Labor losing three percentage points from its primary vote, the coalition losing one point and One Nation rising two. Those shifts are all within or just outside the poll’s 2.3 per cent margin of error, but it’s the trend that lays bare just how rapidly support for One Nation has grown.

Far from a ‘blip’, too, One Nation’s rise has been gathering speed for nearly a year, now. The catalyst seems to have been the last federal election, where less than one-third of Australians voted for Labor, yet they stormed to a landslide win. Furious voters who’ve grumbled about the two-party ‘Laboral’ duopoly for years appear to have finally decided to do something about it.

Moreover, the vast swathe of centre-right middle-Australia have really become Menzies’ ‘Forgotten People’ – worst, they’ve been forgotten by the party of Menzies. The Liberal-National Coalition couldn’t have done more to drive their own voters away if they’d tried. Elevating Angus Taylor and Matt Canavan to the leadership of the Liberals and Nationals, respectively, is a belated recognition of that fact.

But far too belated, and far too insincere. Voters are all-too-aware that the wet, blue-green ‘moderates’ are still infesting both parties, ever-ready to keep jumping on board for ‘Net Zero’, and whatever demented perversion the left decide to valorise next.

So far, then, the break of conservative voters from the coalition seems to be less a trial separation than a bitter divorce. And now Labor voters are starting to join them at the political singles bar.

The double leadership change for the coalition – installing Angus Taylor and Matt Canavan as Liberal and Nationals leader, respectively – was made to arrest the dire slide in the opposition’s fortunes, and the two men have made clear they plan to tackle One Nation head-on.

But the official opposition, polling just 22 per cent compared to One Nation’s 24, faces a very long road back to restoring its fortunes. After all, in March last year, the coalition’s primary vote was 37 per cent, 15 percentage points higher than it is now, and even a primary vote at that level would not guarantee a return to government.

As for Labor.

Labor must address voter concerns more directly, and it has foreshadowed more cost-of-living relief in the next budget. But an interest rate rise on Tuesday, when the Reserve Bank next meets, will do the government no favours.

Voters are angry – and they’re not stupid. They know perfectly well that ‘cost-of-living relief’ is just more Labor tax-and-spend, robbing Peter to pay Paul. It’s frankly an insult: a grasping socialist government that is gouging the diminishing pool of lifters, to hand out money hand over fist to a growing class of leaners at all levels, and handing just a pittance they’ve ripped from the taxpayer and expecting us to be grateful.

And it does nothing to acknowledge that voters are fed up to the back teeth with the two-party duopoly.

Fixing Australians’ cost-of-living pain is one thing; addressing the deep well of discontent among voters, and their distrust of politics and politicians, is another. That is a longer term problem, and a key driver behind One Nation’s surge in the polls and the rise of crossbench independents.

Exactly 50 per cent of voters say they will vote for minor parties and independents, a record in the Resolve poll and a far cry from days when the major parties each reliably won at least 40 per cent of voter support.

This is a stunning result: the first time such a thing has been seen in the pollster’s history.

It is another sign that voters’ support for the major political parties has cratered.

Labor’s support is at 29 per cent, dropping from a 34.6 per cent primary vote in the May election. It was last below 30 per cent in March 2025.

In the old days of the duopoly, this would have consigned Labor to electoral oblivion. It’s lower than in 1931, when the hapless one-term Scullin government bore the brunt of punishment for the onslaught of the Depression, losing 37 seats. The only reason they’re in government is because the coalition is even more disliked. The field is wide open for a new party.

But the only poll that matters, of course, is an election. The first big tests of One Nation’s new support will be the South Australian state election, and more importantly, the by-election for former Liberal leader Sussan Ley’s seat.

The findings come as the coalition, One Nation and independent Michelle Milthorpe, gear up for the Farrer byelection, which will be held on May 9. The Liberal Party pre-selected Albury councillor and lawyer Raissa Butkowski as its candidate for the seat on Sunday, which had been held by former leader Sussan Ley for 25 years.

And here we get to a curious admission:

This masthead has chosen not to publish the two-party-preferred vote between the voalition and Labor because the huge surge in support for One Nation makes any preference vote potentially misleading.

That sounds suspiciously to me like their polls are indicating that One Nation will romp home.

Guess we’ll have to wait and see.