PAUL MURRAY: Why Labor needs to be wary of rise of One Nation

If the Farrer by-election last weekend proved anything it is that the old Labor-Liberal domination of Australian politics is all but gone.

Even though Farrer is not broadly representative of most national seats, the result exemplifies how the electoral landscape is becoming balkanised with the legacy parties routinely having to rely on one or several smaller ones to win power.

This is hardly a recipe for stable government.

Labor has needed Greens preferences to get into power for many years and the Liberals have almost always needed Nationals preferences and seats to form a coalition government in Canberra.

But Farrer ended up as a two-party preferred contest between One Nation and a Climate 200-funded semi-teal independent when Labor decided not to contest a seat in which it usually polled about 15 per cent and the Liberals got pulverised to a primary vote even lower than that despite being the incumbents.

Welcome to the new reality.

What Pauline Hanson witheringly refers to as the uniparty – claiming there is little difference between Labor and the Liberals – were bystanders in the fight, prompting a result that gives a glimpse into the nation’s balkanised political future.

The results in booths where Labor traditionally had polled well suggest the majority of the party’s voters in Farrer went to One Nation which key ALP strategist, Senator Murray Watt, labelled just last week as “racist and xenophobic.”

In both Farrer and the Nepean by-election in Victoria the weekend before, where Labor also did not run a candidate even though it usually polls above 30 per cent, none of its vote flowed to the Greens. In Farrer, the Greens went backwards considerably to just 2.3 per cent.

So how racist and xenophobic can One Nation be if big numbers of Labor voters choose it rather than the Greens when their party of choice doesn’t show up?

What is Watt saying about a section of his own voters who don’t have a problem with One Nation? They obviously like Hanson’s party more than the watermelons.

Labor hates being reminded that One Nation preferences usually split about 50 per cent in their direction and have often contributed to getting its candidates over the line.

Its decision not to contest the two by-elections has let the genie out of the bottle: Many Labor voters will happily plump for One Nation before supporting the even more toxic Greens, the party it relies on to win government.

Those Labor voters who flirted with Pauline Hanson over the past two weekends will likely spring back to the ALP when they can, but the party’s strategists need to rethink how they handle a surging One Nation, which it will continue to demonise at some risk.

And they will look like hypocrites if the only way they can counter the rise of One Nation is by insulting those who vote for it – who also vote for them.

It’s a bit like Hilary Clinton’s “basket of deplorables” gaffe which propelled Donald Trump to his first presidential victory.

Farrer has the city of Albury at its eastern end and stretches westwards along the Murray River through a series of regional centres to the city of Griffith. So part urban, part rural.

Teal-like independent Michelle Milthorpe won all eight Albury seats with primary votes as high as 43 percent, but One Nation’s David Farley took everything else through towns like Balranald where his personal vote was 54.5 per cent.

However, and more importantly, One Nation outpolled the Liberals and Nationals everywhere.

Even in urban Albury, the impressive Farley got a primary vote as high as 30 per cent while the Liberals – who had held the seat since 2001 through dumped leader Sussan Ley – struggled to get above 15 per cent.

The Liberal candidate was no star, but the party’s vote was probably also depressed by a backlash against the way Ley was ousted.

As a result of its success in the two by-elections, One Nation now has the clear aspiration to replace the Liberals and Nationals as a party of government on the right. Its next big test will be the Victorian State election in November.

It’s show time for One Nation. The Budget was an important opportunity for the party to put policy meat on the bones of discontent. It needed to be more than slogans.

The acid was on Hanson to offer a comprehensive and credible alternative to Labor’s economic prescription that could stand up to the deep scrutiny her policies have never really received in the media.

Apart from a few issues like immigration and net zero, most people would have no idea about One Nation’s policies.

Liberal leader Angus Taylor got to make the official Opposition Budget response on Thursday, but One Nation as a minor party in the parliament does not get the same formal opportunity.

Taylor’s speech contained significant policy development of real consequence in taking the Liberals back to its conservative roots, but was immediately criticised as being One Nation-lite.

On Wednesday I approached the offices of three senior One Nation Federal MPs asking for a detailed Budget response. Only WA Senator Tyron Whitten’s office engaged:

“This Budget shows Labor cannot be trusted with anything they say or promise.

“It’s a Marxist, communist Budget which attacks hard-working Australians who have sacrificed and saved to invest. Labor is using this Budget to build a taxpayer-funded war chest for the next Federal election.

“Rather than create inter-generational equity, this Budget creates inter-generational poverty.”

It contained a few more lines of rhetoric but not one skerrick about what One Nation would do differently. No detailed policy projection.

Hanson made a five-minute statement in the Senate on Wednesday, purportedly to respond to the Budget, but really concentrated on the Farrer result.

She also offered no policy alternatives and didn’t even refer to the contentious broken promises.

“They said One Nation was a party of grievance, a party of protest, a party that would always be on the fringe,” Hanson complained, while tacitly confirming in the rest of her speech that it remains a fairly accurate depiction.

“They said we were racist, illegitimate and divisive. They said we might get the odd Senate seat but would never win a seat in the House of Representatives. But then something happened in South Australia a few weeks ago.

“That state’s political landscape was reshaped by a One Nation earthquake. We won as many seats as the Liberals did and we smashed their primary vote. We achieved massive swings in safe Labor seats and made them marginal.

“We demonstrated we could convert our surge in the polls into votes. They panicked, suddenly realised One Nation was a real chance in the Farrer by-election and did everything they could to stop us. They spent a fortune and created attack websites and social media accounts.

“They put up billboards all over the electorate. They bullied our volunteers. They ran dozens of hit pieces in the media, and there was a lot of cheap mudraking.”

Those latter comments were obviously aimed at the Liberals and Nationals and demonstrate a high level of antipathy, even though Hanson in recent weeks had held out the prospect of working with the coalition parties to oust Labor.

Admittedly, Hanson did better in a speech on Thursday, promising to end bracket creep, slash immigration numbers and ban foreign ownership of farmland and water assets.

She proposed cutting the GST to zero on building materials for homes up to $1m for the next five years – but didn’t say it would take the agreement of all States and territories – introducing income splitting for families with at least one dependent child and allowing age pensioners and veterans to work without losing benefits.

“One Nation will reallocate the resources from the fool’s errand of Australia changing the weather to invest in coal-fired power, nuclear, irrigation, freight rail, ports and roads,” Hanson said.

However, she offered no way of paying for any of her ideas other than apparently ending renewable energy subsidies. Hardly enough.

One Nation needs to transition from harnessing discontent to developing comprehensive and costed policy solutions for the nation’s many problems if it is to become a party worthy of the Treasury benches.

It might be unrealistic to expect this change will happen quickly, but if Hanson’s 29-year-old party is not to deflate again – as it has done several times in its history – it needs to grow up. Fast.

Can anyone imagine One Nation winning enough support at the 2028 election to form government combined with what remains of the coalition parties, through both preferences and some form of partnership agreement?

And does anyone really have any confidence such an arrangement could work?

Or will One Nation become just like the teals whose main role in politics is to stop any conservative party winning enough seats to replace Labor in government?