If a federal Liberal or Nationals leader had delivered Pauline Hanson\u2019s Press Club speech on Wednesday and given the same answers to journalists\u2019 questions, you might have declared them stark raving mad. You\u2019d certainly conclude they\u2019d thrown away any chance of winning a federal election due in two years, assuming they kept their job for that long.<\/p>\n
So many big targets, so many uncosted \u201cpolicies.\u201d A lot of Hanson\u2019s sentiments could appeal to many or most voters, but others, particularly when she was answering questions (workers are \u201clazy,\u201d childcare workers don\u2019t need qualifications, her slippery views about abortion), not so much. Left unmentioned were her strong anti-vaccination views, her adoration of Donald Trump, her fellow One Nation senator Malcolm Roberts\u2019s conspiracy theories, her backing from posh squillionaire Gina Rinehart, her attitudes to guns.<\/p>\n
She and her team would be happy with her performance: she was confident, strong, not for turning and avoided those tricky topics. The grievance theatre \u2014 everyone\u2019s picking on her but she keeps soldiering on \u2014 was on full show.<\/p>\n
Hanson is the leader of an insurgent party, so the rules that apply to the Libs and the Nats don\u2019t apply to her. But this insurgent party is suddenly leading the pollsters\u2019 primary vote figures in a three-way contest with Labor and the Coalition.<\/p>\n
That doesn\u2019t mean One Nation is \u201cahead in the polls\u201d any more than when, in the old days, the Coalition led in primary votes but lagged after preferences. If recent survey results were replicated at the ballot box, Labor would likely have the most seats \u2014 maybe a majority \u2014 followed by One Nation, daylight, and then the Coalition.<\/p>\n
If One Nation\u2019s primary support gets into the high thirties, though, a majority of seats might (depending on other parties\u2019 support) be on the cards. Somewhere between its current thirty-ish and that scenario, a One Nation\u2013led alliance with the Coalition becomes likely.<\/p>\n
Comparisons with Trump are limited: he took control of the major centre-right party, and hence its place in the country, its infrastructure, its finance and its rusted-on supporters. The United States has not seen the electoral splintering that\u2019s happened in other advanced democracies (if America still sits in that category).<\/p>\n
In Western Europe, where most countries use proportional representation to elect their lower houses, some far-right parties have topped the vote with very low numbers. Georgia Meloni\u2019s Brothers of Italy got 26 per cent in 2022, but along with her party\u2019s junior centre-right partners won a majority of the Chamber of Deputies seats. (That\u2019s the short version; the longer<\/a> one includes first-past-the-post single-member districts, which members of her coalition divided between them so as not to split the vote \u2014 similar to Liberal frontbencher Tony Pasin\u2019s recent thought bubble<\/a>.)<\/p>\n At the other end of the range of outcomes, Austria\u2019s Freedom Party won the most votes, 28.8 per cent, and the most seats in 2024 but remained totally out of government. In between, a few far-right parties won similarly modest vote pluralities and then entered government in some form, although not supplying the head of government.<\/p>\n France\u2019s lower house\u2019s electoral system is similar to ours: single-member districts, with its second round of voting rendering it all somewhat \u201cpreferential.\u201d Two years ago, Marine Le Pen\u2019s National Rally group topped the first round (like our primary vote) with 33 per cent, winning pluralities in a majority of districts. Other parties then selectively sat out the second round out to deny it victory.<\/p>\n In our compulsory preferential voting system, strategic non-contesting of seats (as advocated by Pasin) makes little sense, but recommending preferences to or away from other parties does. Labor always puts One Nation last on its how-to-vote cards, but at recent elections the Coalition has \u201cpreferenced\u201d One Nation ahead of Labor everywhere, largely because most of the very conservative Liberal and Nationals memberships would strongly object, and possibly defect, if they preferenced Labor.<\/p>\n