The far-right One Nation party is drip-feeding information to the Victorian public.<\/p>\n
Pauline Hanson\u2019s surging popularity \u2014 driven by a cost of living crisis, underperforming major parties and the conflating of immigration with liveability \u2014 has seen the one-time fringe-dwellers thrust front and centre.<\/p>\n
It matters, with 14 weeks to go until the Victorian election. <\/p>\n
Voters know what they\u2019re getting from Labor as the spectre of Daniel Andrews, Jacinta Allan and a mountain of debt haunt the party. <\/p>\n
They are beginning to see what they\u2019ll get from a Coalition led by a fresh-faced Jess Wilson guiding the Liberals beyond infighting to present a legitimate alternative government.<\/p>\n
And they are apparently besotted with the prospect of something very different \u2014 a staggering number of former Labor voters are intending to swing to One Nation in November.<\/p>\n
We have in front of us, for the first time since Federation, a genuine three-horse race, according to academics and pollsters who have Labor, the Coalition and One Nation all hovering around 25 per cent of primary voting intention.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
How far One Nation will go in Victoria is seen as a litmus test for the party\u2019s broader ambitions. Whether they are taking it seriously is another thing entirely.<\/p>\n
This week, Victorians were drip fed a handful of new candidates for One Nation. <\/p>\n
They include former AFL ruckman John Barnes, a man who played 202 games for Geelong and Essendon and suffered a permanent brain injury from repeated knocks to the head.<\/p>\n
Barnes\u2019 condition is so serious that his wife in 2018 said it caused him to fly into violent fits of rage that felt like \u201che was going to kill someone\u201d<\/a>.<\/p>\n Despite that, he will contest the seat of Essendon.<\/p>\n Also coming off the bench for One Nation is Garner Smith, the candidate for the safe Nationals seat of Murray Plains, a man who once suggested he\u2019d \u201cbe more worried if he didn\u2019t go in for a feel\u201d after AFL star Dustin Martin allegedly touched a woman\u2019s bare breast.<\/p>\n The comment led to immediate backlash<\/a>, but Mr Smith doubled down, writing: \u201cTo all you triggered, whingeing, whining, bleating, bitching, offended losers, instead of getting a skinny soy latte with a twist of lemon, head to your local independent hardware store, buy a bag of cement and harden the f**k up.\u201d<\/p>\n Hairdresser Michael Piastrano is also in the mix in November for One Nation, where he goes head-to-head in the seat of Berwick against former Opposition Leader Brad Battin.<\/p>\n His colourful background includes comments he made when running for the Liberal Party in 2022 when he suggested former Premier Daniel Andrews \u201cwill be brought to justice for the murder of 800 people\u201d<\/a> \u2014 a reference to his handling of the pandemic.<\/p>\n What\u2019s clear to those who study politics in Victoria is that at a certain level, it does not matter who One Nation puts up \u2014 or what they say or how competent they are \u2014 because \u201ceveryone hates the Labor Party\u201d.<\/p>\n Dr Emily Foley, a postdoctoral research fellow at Flinders University and the University of Canberra, is based in Melbourne.<\/p>\n She has been keeping an eagle eye on the perfect storm that has developed in Victoria. Rising crime, a flailing government and the sense that the public purse has been catastrophically mismanaged are all working to push voters towards One Nation.<\/p>\n \u201cIt really is a three-horse race,\u201d she told news.com.au this week, and the statistics back up the assessment.<\/p>\n A new poll of Victorians, which Dr Foley was a part of, shows almost half of respondents who voted Labor in the 2022 Victorian election \u2014 which Labor won in a landslide \u2014 will vote differently in November.<\/p>\n As much as 11 per cent of them will change their vote to Ms Wilson and the Coalition, but 13 per cent say they\u2019ll vote One Nation.<\/p>\n The Accent Research poll found the most pressing reason is cost of living concerns \u2014 worryingly for Labor, just 18.8 per cent of respondents in the poll think new Premier Ben Carroll and his team are best able to deal with cost of living pressures.<\/p>\n It begs the question: If Victorians are most concerned about the economy, why are so many turning to One Nation, when the party has refused to outline a single policy?<\/a><\/p>\n Dr Foley has a theory.<\/p>\n \u201cYes, there\u2019s no Victorian-specific policies, they\u2019re slowly drip-feeding candidates, but I don\u2019t think that necessarily matters,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n \u201cThere an element of \u2018it\u2019s time\u2019 (that Labor is ousted), compounded by cost of living issues, the scandals around corruption. I don\u2019t think it matters whether One Nation has Victoria-specific policies because people are sort of over it.\u201d<\/p>\n One Nation is riding a popularity surge, but Dr Foley is cautious about how far that will take them.<\/p>\n \u201cDo I think it is a temperature check for the nation? I\u2019m not sure. But I wonder if this election will be the peak. Is 30 per cent the ceiling for One Nation? I think they will have significant electoral success (but) there are key questions around One Nation\u2019s capacity to sustain organisationally (and) all the conflicts that they\u2019ve had with candidates.\u201d<\/p>\n Those conflicts eat away at One Nation\u2019s credibility. The party that Deputy Leader Barnaby Joyce described as \u201cone of the gayest in Australia\u201d earlier this month can\u2019t seem to get out of its own way at times.<\/p>\n In South Australia, One Nation nominated Bruce Preece, a man accused of domestic abuse, according to the ABC<\/a>. <\/p>\n They hired convicted rapist Sean Black to run the federal election campaign, a man who a sentencing judge said used violence to dominate his wife, including an instance where he dragged her by the hair from a shower to rape her.<\/p>\n \u201cYou told her it wasn\u2019t rape, because she was your wife,\u201d District Court Judge Glen Cash told Black before he was jailed in 2018<\/a>.<\/p>\n A One Nation candidate who ran for the upper house in Western Australia in 2025, Parminder Singh, said gay people were mentally ill.<\/p>\n \u201cNo-one born anything \u2026 I blame on the parents because parents are too busy,\u201d he said in a video interview with a Perth comedian<\/a>.<\/p>\n Dr Foley said despite the missteps, there\u2019s another element working in One Nation\u2019s favour in Victoria, one she refers to as the Mark Latham effect.<\/p>\n \u201cThe fact that One Nation appeals to the working class \u2014 the sort of Mark Latham effect.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen you see this number of former Labor votes going to One Nation, it\u2019s really clear, particularly in those outer western suburbs of Victoria for example, that their anger is palpable and they feel really let down by Labor.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat you have is a cohort of arguably working class Labor families \u2014 whose parents and grandparents were Labor voters \u2014 who actually have never felt a social, political or cultural affinity to the Coalition.<\/p>\n \u201cThey could be traditional blue-collar families or migrant families, first or second generation, who would never feel like the Coalition would be their sort of people.<\/p>\n \u201cOne Nation is drawing from history \u2014 Pauline Hanson\u2019s grandfather was a member of the Labor executive \u2014 and they\u2019ve positioned themselves as the sort of new party for these working class folk.\u201d<\/p>\n In South Australia in March, Labor waltzed to victory with a huge margin. But there was still a swing towards One Nation.<\/p>\n Premier Peter Malinauskas is incredibly popular and South Australia is Labor heartland.<\/p>\n The problem for Victorian Labor is that they have nobody like Peter Malinauskas.<\/p>\n Former Premier Daniel Andrews sharply divided Victorians, especially during the pandemic, but helped secure a landslide for Labor in 2022 as the revolving door of Coalition leaders offered futile resistance.<\/p>\n Things are different now.<\/p>\n \u201cThe difference in Victoria is that everyone hates the Labor Party,\u201d Dr Foley said.<\/p>\n \u201cThe Liberal Party are slowly cutting through. It\u2019s taken a long time, they\u2019ve had a bunch of instability. They haven\u2019t seemed particularly competent, other than the last few months.\u201d<\/p>\n Jess Wilson has managed to do what John Pesutto and Matthew Guy and Brad Battin could not. <\/p>\n On social media, she is a charismatic and powerful presence and she is promising to crack down on issues that matter most to Victorians \u2014 spending and crime.<\/p>\n The latest polling has the three-horse race for primary votes evenly split. That in itself is unheard of in contemporary politics.<\/p>\n \u201cIs One Nation able to sustain that in the long term?\u201d Dr Foley asked this week. <\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m unsure about that.\u201d<\/p>\n Read related topics:Melbourne<\/a>Pauline Hanson<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The far-right One Nation party is drip-feeding information to the Victorian public. Pauline Hanson\u2019s surging popularity \u2014 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