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a galaxy of factors whose orbits we can only guess....

One Nation can win the next federal election. Whether that comes to pass depends on a galaxy of factors whose orbits we can only guess. But now, for the first time, it’s possible to see how those orbits could deliver Pauline Hanson to the Lodge, even if it’s not the likeliest outcome.

 

Why One Nation can win the next federal election

BY Waleed Aly

 

Yes, this is about polling. But it’s about more than that. It’s about the forces beneath the numbers which are all heading in one direction. The only question is if and when those forces halt, and how far One Nation has gotten in the meantime.

Multiple polls have One Nation in first place on primary votes, ahead of Labor. That is obviously a sensational development, but actually the most seismic poll still had Labor in front, published late last week in this masthead. That’s because it showed the One Nation vote breaching what had previously been the great wall of Australian politics defined by two major characteristics: geography and formal education.

Simply, Labor dominated the cities and the tertiary educated. The Coalition and One Nation were left to fight over the rural vote, which can never be enough to deliver government. As long as this arrangement remained intact, One Nation could surge as much as it liked and not pose a serious threat. At most, it could replace the Coalition as a regionally based opposition party.

Now we learn One Nation has become more popular with women than with men. It is picking up younger, tertiary educated, high-income city voters. It has commenced its urban raid, crossing the containment lines that exclude it from government. People keen to write off One Nation as the party of angry, old, white men are now demonstrably wrong in exactly the way Democrats were wrong about Donald Trump in 2024.

In the latter case, Trump’s coalition turned out to be multiracial and intergenerational. He did well with women voters, even against a female candidate running hard on the issue of abortion. Now One Nation is showing signs of similar breadth. If a poll soon emerges showing it has growing support among migrant communities, there will be no reason for surprise.

We will spend enormous energy debating what the major parties’ response to this should be. We’ll examine the Albanese government’s every move to see if it can provide solutions to the electorate’s grievances and arrest the slide. If it cannot, we’ll deem it a failure of understanding, imagination or political competence. This overlooks the fact we’re seeing this pattern repeated in the US and the UK, to say nothing of France, Germany, Italy or Austria. And nowhere comparable in the world have establishment parties found a way to resist this movement once it gathered momentum.

In the US, it swallowed the Republicans. In the UK, Nigel Farage’s Reform party has crushed the Tories and is now crushing Labour. In France, the traditional major parties were swept away almost entirely, and Macron’s new centrist block only barely survives because parties conspire to keep the far-right out of power. Why should we assume Australia is an exception to this, that there’s some uniquely Australian rabbit to be pulled out of some hat?

These are deep, tectonic forces. We’re watching a broad, thoroughgoing rejection of the decades-long political consensus in Western politics. It’s not hard to point to the landmarks along this road of discontent – terrorism, the global financial crisis, Brexit, COVID, multiple rounds of inflation, AI’s onward march – but it’s the cumulative effect that matters: a near-constant sense of crisis, spanning the economic, social and political. The resulting sense is that the system itself is broken.

The problem for major parties is that whatever they now say, they symbolise that system. The benefit for insurgents is that whatever they say, they symbolise upending it. In that environment, it hardly matters what the establishment offers. The more deeply you’ve given up on the system, the less you’re even listening to the establishment any more. And the less critically you’ll examine the insurgency.

This is a politics of deep dissent. It is not unified by a shared worldview. Winding back immigration and climate policy are common touchstones, but little besides. The more we see One Nation members elected to parliaments, the more variety we see in what they actually believe. Most recently we have David Farley, freshly elected in Farrer, who values the contribution of migrants and thinks Muslims by and large respect and integrate into Australian culture. He’s happy to stand in front of the Aboriginal flag. What the movement agrees on most is the need to break the two-party system.

It works because there are no natural majorities any more. Instead, we have only majorities of dissent, cobbled together more around rejection than affirmation. That means the electorate constantly sends two consecutive messages: “We want change!” – then immediately, “Not that change!” Witness, for example, the response to Labor’s budget. Or, for that matter, any serious structural reform this century that asks someone to sacrifice something.

Conventional political wisdom suspects One Nation will falter upon facing the same policy scrutiny as major parties, beginning in earnest next week when Hanson addresses the National Press Club. But this makes two fragile assumptions: first, that One Nation’s roughness isn’t already priced in to its support; and second, that people will ultimately assess One Nation on the same terms they assess the major parties. That’s unlikely to be true for as long as One Nation remains an insurgent, building a coalition of dissent.

Perhaps that’s a week, a year, or the other side of the next election. No one knows, and everything depends on it. Perhaps the more used to One Nation we get, the less insurgent it will seem. In the UK, Reform is now being threatened by an even more hardline outfit, Restore Britain. Perhaps that could happen here. Meanwhile, we’re on the cusp of a serious, Iran-induced economic crisis. Will voters blame Trump for that and associate One Nation with him, or rage at the Albanese government and put One Nation over the top?

As I say, a galaxy of factors. But this is not a surge that can be managed away. One Nation is playing a different political game by a completely different set of rules, much as Trump did. The major parties cannot will those rules to change. Only time or a major disruption can do that. And only then will the surge abate.

Waleed Aly is a broadcaster, author, academic and regular columnist.

https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/why-one-nation-can-win-the-next-federal-election-20260611-p605s2.html

 

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         Gus Leonisky

         POLITICAL CARTOONIST SINCE 1951.

         RABID ATHEIST.

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THE INFLUENCE OF THE ZIONIST EFFLUENTS NEED ALSO TO BE TAKEN INTO ACCOUNT....

danger No 1....

 

Why One Nation endangers Australia’s homeless — and everyone else

By Michelle Pini

 

Does Australia have an illegal migrant problem, or do we have a compassion problem? Editor Michelle Pini discusses the tragic death of a young "non-resident" as One Nation dogwhistling intensifies.

IN DECEMBER, a young person died on the streets of Sydney’s CBD — his lifeless body unnoticed for six days. It is as though he were invisible, largely unseen even before his untimely death. He died alone.

You see, 32-year-old Bikram Lama, an international student from Nepal, was a “non-resident”. He was homeless when he died, the cause of his death still to be determined.

As a “non-resident”, Bikram was not entitled to social housing (or temporary housing), Centrelink, healthcare or any other support. Such things are reserved only for Australian citizens. Employment for non-residents is also restricted, with most only permitted to work less than 48 hours per fortnight.

 

In Australia, “non-residents” are undocumented people, asylum seekers, New Zealand citizens (who arrived after 2001) and temporary visa holders — many of these, international students, like Bikram. 

This is not an isolated situation. According to the City of Sydney, one in five homeless people is a non-resident of Australia. The situation is similar in other major Australian cities.

So when Pauline Hanson and her One Nation racist band speak about “illegal” migrants and try to blame all the woes of the disgruntled on them, these are the people they are vilifying. People like Bikram Lama. People who have, in fact, paid handsomely to come here. People who have done nothing wrong. People who are dying on the streets of wealthy, well-heeled politicians like Pauline Hanson and Barnaby Joyce, and the media moguls and miners who fund these politicians and their hatred, such as Gina Rinehart.

Australian universities are now serious, money-making businesses. They run effective international campaigns to recruit overseas students, who pay more than Australian citizens to study here.

The cost of studying in Australia for international students is estimated at between $45,000 and $95,000 per annum.

According to a Reserve Bank report, international students contribute over $50 billion to the economy annually.

One Nation’s immigration policies, however, aim to:

Deport 75,000 illegal migrants ... because ...
 

...Visa overstayers, illegal workers, and unlawful non-residents undermine national security, drive down wages, and take advantage of public services meant for Australians.

One Nation also aspires to:

‘End the student visa loopholes that turn study into a backdoor to permanent residency or low-wage labour.’

Like most One Nation rhetoric, the facts do not support its claims that temporary visa holders – students or others – are gouging our economy or rorting our support systems.

The reality is that many are not wealthy and must go to extreme lengths to be educated here. Bikram’s family struggled financially and had to sell a portion of their farmland in their remote village, south of Kathmandu, to send him to Australia to study computer science, in the hope of a better future.

Indeed, if anyone is being rorted, it is temporary residents who pay exorbitant fees to study here and are then left to their own devices – without a support system in sight – when they are unable to sustain life here and are also unable to return home.

Bikram fell into hardship and failed to renew his passport, and as his life and hopes of a better future spiralled into homelessness, he lost contact with his family.

According to an ABC report:

‘…it wasn't until the Nepali embassy contacted Bikram's family to identify his body, which had decomposed so badly that DNA samples, dental records and fingerprints were requested, that they had any sense of what his life had become.’

But this is not only about Bikram Lama — devastating though his story is. And it’s not just about immigration — hot topic though it is, courtesy of a spike in global interest in so-called “populist” parties like Pauline Hanson’s One Nation.

Despite the baseless dog-whistling, in case it isn't enough to bring students here under the false pretence of a better life and then let them live and die on our streets when their money runs out, Hanson wants to:

'Introduce an eight-year waiting period for citizenship and welfare, ensuring new arrivals contribute before they take.'

And finally, if we should occasionally find our hearts and take in people seeking asylum, One Nation wants to:

'Withdraw from the UN Refugee Convention because Australia will not be dictated to by foreign organisations when deciding who we accept into our nation on humanitarian grounds.'

This latter claim is perhaps the most ludicrous, since although party to the UN Refugee Convention, Australia has frequently violated it, most notably during the Abbott/Turnbull/Morrison regime, which tortured refugees on Nauru and Manus Island for a decade.

Indeed, if Australians need a group of people towards which to direct our angst for the failings of our society, we need to look no further than demonstrably racist politicians like Hanson. Pauline Hanson's One Nation, which was prepared to sell off politicians to America's National Rifle Association (NRA) and whose chief of staff is a convicted criminal. One Nation, whose leader accepts private planes as gifts from billionaires and whose own salary jumped by $100,000 to $340,900 per annum after fellow rorter, Barnaby Joyce, defected to One Nation, making it an official “minor party”.

In return for their eye-watering salaries, this dogwhistling rabble continues to spread hate and division. It promises to help battlers, but instead, Hanson has voted against all of the following relief measures:

  • raising JobSeeker;
  • Disability Royal Commission reforms;
  • increased childcare subsidies;
  • paid family support;
  • workplace protections;
  • public school funding;
  • TAFE and university funding; 
  • affordable housing measures;
  • social housing; and (of course)
  • any measures that may assist new arrivals.

This story is not only about Bikram Lama or other non-residents.

This is about our compassion, or lack of it. Many Australians are doing it tough. Inequality is soaring, both here and globally. While the Albanese Government is at least attempting to address some of these issues, there is still much work to be done. This is undeniable.

But if we are comfortable blaming our problems on the most vulnerable, if we are okay with allowing young people – who have already paid for the privilege to be here and who have much to contribute – to sleep on our streets, desperate and alone, and if we are happy to walk past them, even as they take their last breaths, the problem lies with us.

 

This editorial was originally published as part of the Independent Australia weekly newsletter. Subscribe to IA to access all our work from as little as $1.15 per week and help power our journalism throughout 2026.

Follow managing editor Michelle Pini on Twitter @vmp9 and Bluesky @michellepini.bsky.social, and Independent Australia on Twitter at @independentaus, Facebook HERE and Instagram HERE.

 

https://independentaustralia.net/politics/politics-display/why-one-nation-endangers-australias-homeless--and-everyone-else,21161

 

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PLEASE VISIT:

YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT — SINCE 2005.

         Gus Leonisky

         POLITICAL CARTOONIST SINCE 1951.

         RABID ATHEIST.

         WELCOME TO THIS INSANE WORLD….

 

worry....

 

How worried should we be about Pauline Hanson?

ETTE MEDIA

https://www.ettemedia.com/yt-video-tj57npobumg/

 

 

READ FROM TOP.

PLEASE VISIT:

YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT — SINCE 2005.

         Gus Leonisky

         POLITICAL CARTOONIST SINCE 1951.

         RABID ATHEIST.

         WELCOME TO THIS INSANE WORLD….