Why is One Nation resonating?

From Trump and Farage to Le Pen and Hanson, conservative politics is undergoing a profound realignment driven by mass immigration, high energy costs, economic insecurity and distrust of elites

Let me begin with a confession.

I have long believed that commentators, like politicians, should acknowledge when they change their minds and even get things wrong. Too often we in the media revise our positions without admitting it.

Journalists are not so different from the politicians we scrutinise: the power of the U-turn and reverse gear in our profession is frequently up to the highest international standards.

So let me make an admission.

In the aftermath of the Coalition’s electoral drubbing 13 months ago, I wrote several pieces in The Australian, the Australian Financial Review and The Spectator Australia arguing that the Liberal Party’s crisis was being overstated.

I was pushing back against the prevailing wisdom in the Canberra press gallery -- namely, the claim that the Coalition’s central problem was the loss of affluent metropolitan voters to the teal independents.

At the time, Professor Mark Kenny warned that the Liberals are “risking terminal contraction” unless they “rediscover their progressive urban liberalism and own it very strongly”.

Niki Savva observed: “The Liberal Party is now dying, and that’s what the voters are telling them, that they are completely at odds with mainstream Australians”.

But the mainstream Australians Niki Savva had in mind are not necessarily the affluent, highly educated, inner-city Voice-voting, ABC-viewing voters who have gravitated towards the teals.

Nor are they clamouring for the kind of “progressive urban liberalism” Mark Kenny has in mind.

Rather, they are the Australians who live beyond the inner-city postcodes and who increasingly feel disconnected from a political and cultural establishment that appears more interested in symbolic causes than practical concerns.

They work hard, pay their taxes and play by the rules. Yet many believe that governments of both Labor and Coalition persuasions have failed to address the issues that most directly affect their lives.

They worry about declining living standards, the rising cost of housing, pressures on infrastructure, and whether their children will enjoy the same opportunities they themselves once took for granted.

They question whether current immigration levels are sustainable and whether governments have adequately considered the consequences for housing affordability, social cohesion and public services.

They wonder why Australia continues to impose costs on itself in pursuit of climate objectives that will make little difference to global emissions unless the world’s major emitters follow suit.

And they increasingly resent what they regard as a widening gap between the cultural priorities of ordinary voters and those of political, media and professional elites.

Whether those concerns are always justified is beside the point.

The political reality is that they are widely held -- and increasingly influential.

Which explains why One Nation is now plainly a more durable and significant force in Australian politics than many in the establishment care to admit.

To be fair, Angus Taylor has improved the Coalition’s position since the instability and limitations of his predecessor, Sussan Ley.

According to Newspoll, following the budget, Taylor became preferred prime minister over Anthony Albanese -- an achievement lost on Ley and Peter Dutton.

The Opposition leader’s budget reply -- especially his critique of the government’s capital gains tax and negative gearing changes -- was serious and effective.

His recent Menzies Research Centre lecture on immigration was particularly impressive: thoughtful on questions of national culture and social cohesion, while also recognising that current immigration levels are widely regarded by Australians as unsustainable.

But the cold political reality is this: neither Angus Taylor nor Matt Canavan -- both of whom, I should say, are friends of mine and people I admire -- has yet succeeded in stopping the Coalition’s electoral drift towards One Nation.

Indeed, One Nation is performing far better than almost anyone would have predicted six months ago.

A year ago, its primary vote was barely six per cent.

Today, according to the latest RedBridge polling, support has surged to 31 per cent primary vote – a level that would have seemed fanciful at the beginning of this year.

Indeed, One Nation now polls ahead of both Labor and the Coalition on the primary vote. Among some younger cohorts, it attracts more support than either Labor or the Greens.

[Millennials prefer One Nation 30 to 28; Gen x prefer Hanson to Albanese 30 to 27.]

More than six in ten Australians believe the country is heading in the wrong direction.

Now, individual polls should always be treated with caution. But taken together, these figures suggest something larger may be occurring than a temporary protest vote.

We may well be witnessing the early stages of a deeper political realignment.

What seems unmistakable, moreover, is that Australia’s turbulence is not occurring in isolation. It mirrors the fracturing of the Right across much of the Western world.

One of the clearest diagnoses of this phenomenon comes from the prominent British journalist Andrew Neil -- one of the sharpest observers of politics in the English-speaking world.

Speaking last year at the Centre for Independent Studies Consilium conference on the Gold Coast, Neil argued that centre-right parties across advanced democracies are being hollowed out from their right flank -- not because the Left has surged, but because conservative voters are drifting toward movements promising tougher responses to immigration, economic insecurity and cultural dislocation.

Meanwhile, distrust of political, media and professional elites has hardened across much of the democratic world.

All this has created fertile ground for insurgent populist movements speaking more bluntly about borders, sovereignty and economic anxiety, while mainstream conservative parties struggle to adapt.

We all know about the United States where the Republican Party has not merely splintered; it has undergone what Neil describes as a hostile takeover by Donald Trump.

But also think of Britain where Nigel Farage’s Reform Party is drawing support from disillusioned Conservatives through hard-line positions on immigration and climate policy, while simultaneously appealing to working-class Labour voters with an interventionist economic agenda.

Think of France, where the traditional centre-right Republicans and the Socialists have both collapsed in support, while Marine Le Pen’s National Rally continues to grow by combining cultural conservatism with economic nationalism.

Think of Italy where Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy dominates the Right.

Think of Germany, where the Christian Democrats have returned to office even as Alternative for Germany surges in opposition.

Indeed, across Scandinavia – crikey, even Sweden! -- and much of central Europe, populist-right parties are now governing, shaping coalitions or exercising significant influence.

Australia is plainly not immune from these trends.

To be sure, there is considerable overlap between the conservative wing of the Liberal party and One Nation.

Both oppose high immigration, costly net-zero policies and many establishment cultural orthodoxies, with its devotion to three flags and identity politics.

The larger divide is economic. Traditional Liberal philosophy emphasises fiscal restraint, lower taxation and productivity-enhancing reform.

One Nation reflects a far more protectionist and interventionist instinct, echoing the economic nationalism increasingly common among populist movements abroad.

History cautions against prematurely writing off established parties. But it also suggests that political realignments, once under way, can gather momentum remarkably quickly.

And this brings me back to Andrew Neil’s warning.

Neil argued that many Australians still assume the populist convulsions reshaping Britain, Europe and the United States will somehow bypass this country.

Perhaps they will.

Perhaps support for the major parties will recover.

Perhaps One Nation’s rise will prove temporary.

Perhaps the old political equilibrium will reassert itself.

Perhaps.

But Britain elected a mainstream Labour government in 2024 America did the same in 2020.

Yet within remarkably short periods, both political systems became more volatile, more polarised and more hostile to establishment parties.

As Neil put it: political change often happens slowly — and then suddenly.

Remember the warning signs are increasingly visible: weak productivity growth, stagnant living standards, unaffordable housing, persistently high migration, still very high energy costs and deepening public frustration with political and cultural elites.

To say again: these pressures are not uniquely Australian. They are the same underlying forces that have destabilised centre-right parties across much of the democratic world.

Neil’s larger warning was that mainstream conservative parties like our Liberal Party cannot assume that modest policy adjustments or conventional budget responses will be enough to restore trust.

Nor can they assume that what has happened elsewhere cannot happen here.

You see, voters who feel economically squeezed, culturally ignored and locked out of national prosperity eventually stop listening to managerial politics.

They begin looking instead for parties and movements willing to speak more bluntly -- and more disruptively -- about borders, identity, sovereignty and economic insecurity.

Which means the challenge facing the Liberal Party -- and indeed the National Party -- is deeper than the next budget cycle or the next election campaign.

It is about whether the centre-right can reconnect with voters who increasingly believe that the political class no longer understands their lives, shares their values, or even recognises their frustrations.

Many of these voters are less interested in ideological labels than practical outcomes. They want governments that appear competent, responsive and grounded in common sense.

And Neil’s final point was perhaps the most uncomfortable of all: there can be no genuine renewal of the mainstream conservatives parties like the Liberal Party until they acknowledge how badly many of their traditional supporters feel let down last time they were in power.

If there is a path back for parties like the Liberals, he suggested, it may not begin with a slogan or even a policy program.

It may begin with an apology.

This was a speech delivered to the Sydney Institute on Wednesday night June 3, 2026.