Pat Conroy says One Nation polling boost a Coalition problem, rejects ALP blame for Pauline Hanson spike

A Senior Labor Minister says the surge in support for One Nation is a Coalition failure, rather than a verdict on the Albanese Government.

Speaking exclusively to The Nightly, Pat Conroy, who was promoted into Cabinet last year as Defence Industry Minister, said that he did not think Pauline Hanson’s populist anti-immigration party were Labor voters.

“I understand why people are expressing dissatisfaction with how the Coalition is running their show, they just knocked off their first female leader after nine months,” Mr Conroy said.

“I believe that the vast majority of the people that in public polling are expressing support for One Nation are disaffected Coalition voters and those other minor parties are the right aggregating.

“I’m sure that there could well be people who voted for Labor at the last election that are always thinking about … well, I think probably the best way of saying is, we’ve got to continue to earn their support, and we’ll continue to do that.

“But I think the rise of One Nation in public polling is a reaction to the Coalition and their failure to be an opposition, but as Penny Wong said, you can’t out-Pauline, Pauline.”

He said that Australian elections would always be won in the middle.

“And you govern from the middle, and you deliver for the Australian people. And I’m confident as long as we focus on addressing the priorities of the Australian people, which is, cost of living, investing more in health, making sure people have good jobs, and we build manufacturing, that our government will continue to be supported,” he said.

One Nation climbed another two points in Redbridge’s polling released on Monday and published by the Nine newspapers.

The poll showed Labor’s primary vote declining from 34 per cent last month to 32 per cent in February. One Nation’s vote climbed from 26 per cent to 28 per cent while the Coalition remained steady at 19 per cent, despite the Liberals dumping Sussan Ley as leader and switching to Angus Taylor.

But Mr Taylor recorded a higher net favourability of minus 1 compared to both Prime Minister Anthony Albanese who is at minus 13 and Ms Hanson who is on minus 2.

The survey of 1006 Australians was taken between last Monday and Friday. Movements worth two percentage points are within the margin of error.

Separately, Newspoll which is published by News Corp showed Labor’s primary vote on 32 per cent and One Nation’s support static at 27 per cent with the Coalition on 20 per cent.

Political historian Frank Bongiorno, Professor of History and Public Ideas at the University of Canberra, said voters were more likely to switch on the spectrum of right and left like the UK, where Labour lost a historically safe seat to the Greens last week in a byelection, and Reform UK has eaten away at Tory supporters.

“It’s conceivable that One Nation could threaten Labor eventually but for the foreseeable future the much stronger threat is to the Coalition,” Professor Bongiorno said.

He added that right-wing politics was fracturing in a way not seen before in Australian political history.

“It’s unprecedented because it’s seemingly being driven by deep ideological and cultural differences on the right of the political spectrum — over the appropriate role for government in the economy, over immigration, multiculturalism and national identity, over energy and climate change, and over gender,” he said.

“There have been periods of fracturing before, such as the early 1930s and early 1940s, but those divisions were based on more superficial differences.

“The right back then was better able to find things to agree about. The modern Liberal Party emerged in the 1940s over such agreement — such as over the mixed economy - and is now unravelling because it can’t find its own internal centre ground.”