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While the big story of the UK’s recent local government elections was Nigel Farage’s Reform, a whisper in the storm of discontent that blew away Labour and the Tories was Restore Britain. Founded by former Reform MP Rupert Lowe, who committed the cardinal sin of actually committing to the principles Farage wants us to think he really believes in, Restore Britain only officially formed in January this year. Consequently, it only fielded 10 candidates at last week’s elections: but every single one of them won.
While One Nation was formed 30 years ago, it now faces much the same challenge as faces Restore Britain: a minor party suddenly storming ahead in the polls and by-elections, needing to recruit enough candidates in a hurry.
There’s the big rub: balancing the need to suddenly find hundreds of candidates, while trying to vet out the whackers and grifters. Like Tammy Tyrrell, elected in Tasmania on Jacqui Lambie’s ticket, then quitting to become an ‘independent’ – and now dropping any pretence and openly defecting to Labor.
An even bigger challenge is finding big names to lead the charge in states outside One Nation’s Queensland redoubt. Two former coalition big names, Barnaby Joyce and Cory Bernardi, massively boosted One Nation’s stocks in NSW and South Australia respectively. With the clock fast ticking down to an election in Victoria, the race is on to find a Victorian Barnaby or Cory.
Fresh off a historic win in Farrer, One Nation is wasting no time turning its gaze further south.
If Pauline Hanson’s party can capture a federal seat in southern NSW on Victoria’s doorstep, you can best believe the party reckons it can win a string of regional and outer-suburban Victorian electorates.
And with Hanson’s chief of staff James Ashby recently spotted in the halls of state parliament, it’s clear attention is turning to Victoria.
But there’s one glaring problem. What One Nation has in Queensland and NSW – recognisable, battle-hardened figureheads – it lacks in Victoria. Current upper house MP Rikkie-Lee Tyrrell (no relation to Tassie turncoat Tammy) isn’t a household name. State president Warren Pickering doesn’t set the suburbs alight. The party knows it needs a Victorian Cory Bernardi: someone with profile, credibility and the ability to drag disaffected coalition voters across the line.
Moira Deeming, the principled Liberal who refused to bend the knee on women’s rights, would seem to be a no-brainer. With a strange gluttony for punishment, she’s staying put for now after winning preselection. Other names floated include former Northern Territory chief minister Adam Giles, now running Gina Rinehart’s Victorian cattle and clothing operations. He’d be taking a serious pay cut, but his outsider status and willingness to back One Nation publicly make him an intriguing prospect.
The smart money, though, would be on the man who’s everything Andrew Hastie promised to be, but squibbed on.
Heston Russell is the Melbourne-based former commando who has built a formidable public profile suing the ABC for defamation and standing up for Ben Roberts-Smith. He founded the short-lived Australian Values Party (Angry Victorians division) before folding it into One Nation.
Asked whether he was considering making a tilt at state politics for One Nation, Russell told us he was currently supporting the party’s Victorian division in screening candidates as well as strategy and policies.
“It has been a genuinely exciting and inspiring process seeing the quality of people stepping forward who want to contribute positively to Victoria’s future,” he said.
“That is my focus at the moment and, through a robust process, the team, leadership positions and future direction will be determined in due course.”
That is certainly not a ‘no’.
But the clock is merciless. Victoria goes to the polls in November. Jacinta Allan’s government is a rotting carcass of debt, crime and ideological failure, yet the Liberals remain a pale imitation. One Nation has the policies and the momentum: secure borders, cheap energy, law and order and an end to the NDIS rort and African gang nonsense. What they need now are credible candidates who can sell that message in seats the majors have abandoned.
Recruiting quality in a hurry is never easy. One Nation has been burned before. Getting it right in Victoria could be the difference between consolidating as a permanent third force and fading back into protest vote territory. One Nation has to move fast, but move smart. Find the right Victorian face and they could deliver the political earthquake Melbourne’s establishment deserves.
There’s precedent, too: in 1931, Tasmanian Joe Lyons split with the Jim Scullin Labor party over its socialist economic policies, and joined forces with Robert Menzies and the Nationalist Party, which had lost to Scullin in 1929, forming the United Australia Party.
The next year, the UAP handed Labor one of the most humiliating drubbings in its history.
