For decades, Pauline Hanson has been seen as a comic punchline rather than a serious political figure. Yet she is more in line with the political spirit of our era than you might think.
In a new poll, the One Nation Party is now the second most popular in the country, with 22% of the primary vote. How did we get here?
Pauline Hanson was elected in the QLD federal seat of Oxley in the 1996 federal election. Hanson won preselection for the Liberals, but was soon disendorsed following a letter to the local newspaper.
In it, she wrote regarding indigenous Australians, “How can we expect this race to help themselves when governments shower them with money, facilities and opportunities?…This is what is causing racism.”
Despite being disendorsed by the Liberals, because she had still been officially a Liberal candidate when the election was called, she was elected with the Liberal vote and ended up entering parliament as an independent.
In her maiden speech she warned of Australia being “swamped by Asians” and said, “I and most Australians want our immigration policy radically reviewed.” She founded the One Nation Party and, at the 1998 election, won 36% of the primary vote.
Though she was defeated by the unified preferences of other parties and replaced by a Liberal, 1996 nonetheless represented a watershed. Oxley, in the suburbs between Brisbane and Ipswich, had been seen as one of the safest possible Labor seats.
Yet after the Mabo and Wik land rights decisions and Keating’s pivot to Asia, areas like Oxley abandoned Labor for populist conservatism and haven’t looked back.
Thirty years later, the parallels to our current situation are obvious. The progressive bloc – the inner-city well-to-do, public sector employees, the Gen Y and Z middle-class locked out of home ownership, and new migrants – is in government and ascendant. Yet the Voice referendum result showed that the bloc’s preferences are hardly assured to win the day.
There’s no doubt that millions of people agree with exactly the sentiments Hanson has been expressing since 1996. They’re also often the ones on the wrong side of the cost-of-living, just as they were in Oxley in 1996 after the Keating and Hawke privatisations and abandonment of industrial subsidies.
One Nation has also been astute in adopting new grievances, essentially becoming the party of grievance. They’ve brought in anti-vaccine and anti-renewable fringe concerns, positioning themselves as the home of anyone who feels on the wrong side of the cultural and political consensus.
In 1996, it was John Howard, with a handful of One Nation policies on his platform, who broke the progressive consensus. This time, with Teal candidates holding firm in the inner city, Hanson may end up breaking the Liberal Party instead.
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