CAMERON MILNER: Pauline Hanson and One Nation replace Coalition as Australia’s anti-establishment force

Politics as usual is done, as One Nation continues to gain more and more voter support.

Pauline Hanson was elected to Parliament in the same year as Anthony Albanese. She’s now in her absolute ascendancy while Albanese is leading the most unpopular Labor outfit since Julia Gillard more than a decade ago.

Hanson is the alt-Right’s answer to Bob Hawke. No longer is the movement led by old men you suspect spent their childhoods pulling wings off butterflies.

She is gaining supporters among women, young and migrant communities fed up with Albanese’s lies and the Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dumber offering of the once “major” parties.

It’s a similar uprising that saw Donald Trump ride the MAGA wave to the White House and that Nigel Farage hopes will have him take Whitehall.

One Nation is no longer just taking votes from the Liberals and Nationals, but as recent polls show, has become the most popular party at the expense of Labor.

Preferences however, remain a major stumbling block for either conservative party to wrest government from Labor in 2028.

And that’s why arrogant Albanese and his smug Albanistas think none of this matters.

They look to the two-party preferred figure, not the rapidly eroding Labor primary, to justify the lies and four years of doing nothing in office and continuing with more of the same.

You can see Albanese channelling his inner Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen — “Don’t you worry about that’” — at his recent press conferences.

Labor’s response has been predictable. Albanese, without a quiver of shame, openly blamed Hanson for seeding division in the community. No reflection on his failure to govern for all.

Meanwhile, Angus Taylor offers up more old-school media opportunities. Totally controlled, nowhere near a member of the public and with a toffy voice and look-down-the-nose approach to politics.

Is it any wonder that Australian voters have simply had enough of the BS from Canberra?

The Liberals’ vote is in the gutter because they aren’t the alternative in voters’ minds. Pauline and One Nation hold that title.

Voters have seen what politics as usual has got them: sweet FA.

They are rightly angry that while they are being crushed by the cost-of-living crisis, politicians in Canberra look ever more out of touch and even more self-serving than usual.

We had the attack on Hanson’s attendance record at Senate Estimates.

Members of the Canberra press gallery thought that was so clever they even opined on the matter, not to mention no one in the real world gives two hoots about Senate Estimates in the first place.

While Hanson is out rolling pumpkins at country shows and being mobbed like a rock star in shopping centres, the rest of the Canberra political elite are sitting in the Qantas Chairman’s Lounge or using their chauffeur-driven Comcar as an Uber.

In Anika Wells’ defence, at least it wasn’t a RAAF jet to Avalon like the Deputy PM was so fond of using.

But at a time when politics in Western democracies around the world is being sorely tested, how can they be so tone-deaf and out of touch?

While Albanese and Taylor pull up their respective drawbridges and simply talk to the commentariat rather than the community, their votes will only continue to fall.

Part of Hanson’s appeal is simply that she’s out meeting real people.

She doesn’t think having dinner with lobbyists and corporate lackeys at fundraising events is a substitute for consultation and listening to voters under real pressure.

Both Labor and the Liberals are now baked in as part of our institutional furniture. Is it therefore no wonder that voters’ distrust and disillusionment with politics as usual has also degraded their view of these institutions as well.

It’s truly a feat to see so much despair in the system when so many of the disillusioned voters also rely so heavily on government support to make ends meet.

While Taylor and Albanese rail against Hanson, the simplest antidote would be to actually talk to angry voters, to meet the people on high streets and in the shopping centre crowds.

The grim reality, though, for Labor, is that Albanese is too arrogant. For the Liberals, Taylor is too aloof.

Meanwhile, it’s the end of days for politics as usual.

Hanson and One Nation are now leading a genuinely populist wave of change being demanded by voters who simply have had enough of the same old, same old.

Cameron Milner is a former Queensland Labor State secretary