MARK RILEY: One Nation has done something remarkable, but the populist party will inevitably experience a fall
One Nation’s remarkable rise will be followed by a fall. But Pauline Hanson’s forces will wreak havoc on the political landscape in the meantime.
An electoral earthquake hit Australia last Saturday night.
Its epicentre was in Adelaide, but the shockwaves are being felt across the country.
One Nation the disrupter became One Nation the destroyer of the major parties’ traditional support bases.
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By continuing you agree to our Terms and Privacy Policy.The Liberal Party was the biggest victim. But Labor better watch out. It is next.
Premier Peter Malinauskas secured an historic victory, yet he was not the biggest story of the night. Pauline Hanson was.
It was Labor’s biggest ever win in South Australia.
It is leading in 33 of the 47 Legislative Assembly seats on the current count.
The Liberals are ahead in just four. That includes only one urban Adelaide seat, Bragg.
The party that was reduced to only nine of 88 urban seats nationally at last year’s Federal election is now dying in metropolitan electorates at a State level.
The Liberals’ chronic urban malaise is looking terminal.
It is being annihilated on the centre right by the teals and Labor and now it is being demolished on the conservative right by One Nation.
It is a political pincer movement that is leaving the great party of Menzies facing extinction.
Counting will continue for several days yet, but One Nation is in the hunt for four Lower House seats — the same number as the Liberals.
It seems unlikely that Pauline Hanson’s party will emerge as the official opposition. But it will effectively act like one. For now.
What One Nation has achieved is remarkable. The populist party of grievance formed in rural Queensland had no right to make such a large impression in the state of the free settlers.
But it did.
The main reasons are twofold. First, to rephrase John Howard’s famous quote, the times suit Pauline Hanson.
Many things can be said about the fiery Queensland redhead but one is without dispute — she is consistent.
Some would say she is consistently shocking, provocative, outrageous, bordering on insurrectionist. But she is consistent.
Love her or loathe her, the people know exactly where she stands.
And the people are now gravitating towards her as the pressures of contemporary life inspire a building movement around the world that challenges the reflexive respect we have for the central pillars of modern democracy — institutions, authority, the rule of law and more.
And while the people are moving towards her, the Liberals and Labor are moving in the opposite direction, approaching the people and asking them what they want.
I still believe the rise of One Nation will be transitory. It has never been able to impose the ideological and administrative discipline that is essential to keeping a major political party on track.
And I don’t believe it will now.
Every boom in its 30-year political journey has always been followed by a catastrophic bust. This one will, too. But it just might take longer to happen this time.
In the meantime, One Nation will plunder not just the Liberal Party’s traditional support base, but also Labor’s.
Seats don’t get more blue collar, more working class or more traditionally Labor than Elizabeth in South Australia.
The home town of Cold Chisel frontman Jimmy Barnes and the inspiration for his hit Working Class Man is a spit-and-sawdust community of hard-working Australians who believe they have been spat out by the system.
They’ve seen the car makers pull out of their area, followed by streams of associated fabricators and service industries with thousands of jobs going with them.
They feel abandoned by the ideals of the labour movement. And on Saturday night a huge number of them switched their vote to One Nation.
Labor suffered a 16.4 per cent swing against it in Elizabeth, which should make it shudder to its bones.
There are many Elizabeths on the urban fringes of Australia’s great cities. If Federal Labor doesn’t hear the messages sent to it in its South Australian heartland on Saturday night then it could face the same fate as the Liberal Party.
The people of South Australia have spoken. It is now up to the major parties federally to determine exactly what it is that they have said and respond quickly.
If they don’t, they will be the next victims of Pauline Hanson’s political earthquake.
Mark Riley is the Seven Network’s political editor
