There are two striking features about Pauline Hanson and her One Nation party. The first is that this inherently combustible political outfit has endured, in one form or another, for nearly 30 years. The second is that in all this time, Victoria has been largely immune to its grievance-based appeal.
There has long been a resident smugness about this, as though the inability of One Nation to reach beneath the Barassi Line is evidence of a higher level of political sophistication. In the same way that Kyle and Jackie O’s failure to attract local listeners to their radio show is cited as proof of Melbourne’s discerning taste, we like to think that when it comes to Hanson, we’ve long had her pegged.
In 1998, when Hanson’s nascent party contested its first federal election, it carved out 8.4 per cent of the national vote but only 3.7 per cent in Victoria. At the federal election last year, One Nation’s share of the Senate vote was just 4.4 per cent in Victoria, the lowest return of any state or territory where it stood a candidate.
It was not until 2018 that One Nation registered as a political party with the Victorian Electoral Commission and 2022 that it stood candidates in a Victorian state election. Even after Invergordon dairy farmer Rikkie-Lee Tyrrell secured One Nation’s first seat in the Victorian parliament, it was dismissed as an electoral aberration rather than the start of something serious.
At the start of this state election year there should no smugness. Not from a deeply unpopular Labor government trying to win a historic, fourth consecutive term with, more likely than not, a record low share of the primary vote. Not from a Coalition which knows that whenever One Nation rises, it is Liberal and Nationals MPs who cop it in the neck.
One Nation, for the first time in Victoria, is building a political base here. It is recruiting members and opening local branches. It is vetting candidates and plans to field one in every seat at the November election. Its state president, former Senate candidate Warren Pickering, says a Victorian policy platform will be released in coming months, with a focus on crime, energy, promoting Australian values in schools and scrapping Victoria’s historic treaty with its First Peoples.
“We realise there is an opportunity here and more appetite for One Nation than there has been previously,” he says. “There is a very real possibility that we could secure the balance of power in the upper house.”
On this, Pickering gets no argument from Kos Samaras, a former Labor strategist now working as a political researcher and consultant with Redbridge. According to a national Redbridge/Accent Research poll published this week by the Financial Review, primary support for One Nation has leapfrogged the combined vote for the Liberals and Nations to 26 per cent.
The same poll shows that among Generation X, the normally dependable, middle child of Australian demography, One Nation is Australia’s most popular party.
Although these figures are skewed by hefty support for One Nation in parts of Hanson’s home state of Queensland and in regional NSW, Samaras says the Victorian state election rather than next month’s poll in South Australia presents One Nation’s biggest opportunity this year.
In the lower house, some of Labor’s most marginal seats – Bass, Pakenham, Hastings, Ripon and Yan Yean – are regional or suburban fringe areas where One Nation’s message could resonate. Suburban seats like Melton, Berwick and Frankston could also be fertile ground. Like Pickering, Samaras can see One Nation winning enough upper house seats to either hold the balance of power or share it with the Greens.
This would leave Victoria’s next government reliant on an anti-immigration party to enact its legislative agenda.
It would also give One Nation access to substantial public money, courtesy of the VEC’s Administrative Expenditure Funding scheme, to establish a party headquarters, hire staff and grow its presence in Victorian politics. If the party secured six upper house seats, it would be eligible for annual payments of more than $500,000 a year.
Much of this depends on what the Allan government does with its long-mooted reforms to upper house voting.
Labor’s dominant left faction is pushing for the party to scrap above-the-line voting for the Legislative Council, also known as group ticket voting, which can result in candidates with tiny shares of the vote securing enough preferences to get elected. The parliament’s Electoral Matters Committee has recommended the practice be scrapped. A Greens reform bill is already before the parliament.
If group ticket voting is abolished, it is likely to boost the number of Greens MPs, shrink the representation of the Nats and end the involvement of micro-parties in Victorian politics. As Shooters, Fishers and Farmers MP Jeff Bourman reflects, this would result in a parliament with less political diversity and fewer distinct voices.
It will also supercharge One Nation’s electoral prospects in Victoria. Glenn Druery, a political consultant who understands better than anyone the intricacies of group ticket voting, believes the system serves as a guard against One Nation’s electoral ambitions. “What happens if the GTV goes?” he asks. “It is Christmas for One Nation.”
Chip Le Grand is state political editor.
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Chip Le Grand leads our state politics reporting team. He previously served as the paper’s chief reporter and is a journalist of 30 years’ experience.Connect via email.
