This is not a drill. One Nation has surged in the polls. The same finding has been confirmed by a range of pollsters, from Resolve for this masthead, to YouGov, to the typically left-leaning Essential. The encrypted apps ran hot this week as political types sent each other the latest shock-horror. But it comes as absolutely no surprise to those of us who keep an eye on UK and European politics. Australia is late as usual, but we always eventually arrive.
The circumstances which brought us here are the same that have played out over there. First, there is a rise in late-stage-Liberal ennui as the transgressive professors of the sandstone halls of tertiary pontification vie to outdo one another in proving that the West is not best. Before liberating slaves, our ancestors participated in the buying and owning of human beings. Before extending the principle of individual worth to everyone, some of our ancestors tried to deny it.
Relativised and thus demoralised, generations of young people enter the world with a mission to right the wrongs of previous generations who attempted to right the wrongs of their forebears.
That creates the perfect logic for immigration policy which welcomes all, not just as our equals, but potentially our betters. After all, they didn’t share in the Western tradition we’ve learnt to robustly critique. Some were enslaved by colonial powers before they were liberated by the same.
Next, the laissez-faire attitude to immigration fails. Because a healthy multiethnic society needs a common sense of purpose and values, not a mystical faith that a multiplicity of cultures brought together in one place will (for the first time ever in the history of the world) just work out how to get along with no spats.
The natives – those who’ve been on the land long enough to forget any other – get restless. The people who haven’t been to university to learn that they are fundamentally in the wrong start to wonder why they have to work out how to manage this multicultural project. Because new migrants, for the most part, settle in low-income areas while they establish themselves in their new land, not in the upmarket haunts of the hyper-educated sophisticates who argued for them.
Cultures clash, as cultures have always done. Maybe the ways of the old country don’t gel with the ways of the new country, but no-one explains to the newbies why we do things the way we do them here. Parallel societies emerge. There is intergroup violence; people install bulletproof shutters on their houses. The urbans watch it through the media with the detachment of a Tarantino film. After all, it’s not near us.
And then something happens which is near us. The publishers of a secular satirical magazine are killed for a “blasphemous” cartoon. Attendees at a pop concert are attacked and murdered. Vehicles start careening into Christmas markets. A Hanukkah event at an iconic beach is targeted by gunmen.
Voters flock to the political party which has a clear, simple message about immigration: there’s too much of it. And the wrong people.
That’s National Rally in France, the Alternative for Deutschland in Germany, Reform UK. And it’s One Nation here.
These parties don’t just take votes from the right. A poll last year by Spectre Strategy found that One Nation was winning votes from people who had previously voted for Labor as well as the Liberal and National parties.
And their vote rises until they are the real opposition against the major party consensus.
Despite the huge increase in people preferring One Nation, I don’t think the same thing will happen here.
First of all, Anthony Albanese has his political A-team back on board. After a very shambolic Christmas period in which he bungled the response to the Bondi terror attacks, initially refusing to acknowledge the links to radical Islamist thinking which the gunmen declared, he’s suddenly corrected course. The professionals are back from holiday and they’re guiding him to safer ground.
Albanese’s apology to the Jewish community at the Sydney Opera House was well-crafted and well-received. His speech at the National Citizenship and Flag Raising Ceremony on Australia Day pointedly quoted Ben Chifley in addressing the new Australians: “You have come to a country where democracy is not just a platitude but something which is practised.” To political observers, the message is clear: the Labor Party is trying to seize the high ground on integration before the Liberal and National parties can sort themselves out.
Secondly, the anti-immigration parties cemented their hold in the UK and Europe before the COVID pandemic maxed out government credit cards. The parties had no need for economic credentials. Not so in Australia.
While the shock of the Bondi attack took the media and the nation’s attention away from the mid (financial) year fiscal update in December, the government’s spending problem is starting to be noticed. The Australian Financial Review revealed a $57 billion “black hole” in the numbers that Treasurer Jim Chalmers went to the federal election with. With interest rates expected to go up on Tuesday, Chalmers is in the uncomfortable position of having to watch his woo-woo plan to manifest abundance fail.
One Nation can’t step in here. Voters might believe that Pauline Hanson will stop immigration, but her party’s credibility on economic issues is non-existent.
A country can have two serious problems at once, but with no serious party of opposition the problems will only be solved insofar as politically convenient to the leader of a one-party state.
There is a void in politics which no-one is filling while the Liberals and the Nationals focus on their internal power struggles. It can only be filled by a grouping who can take up the fight on finances as well as immigration – any other constellation will fail.
Until then, One Nation’s vote will keep growing – as affronting, symbolic and ineffectual as a raised middle finger. Which is what Australians are giving the whole accursed lot in Parliament House.
Parnell Palme McGuinness is an independent insights and advocacy strategist. She has done work for the Liberal Party and the German Greens.
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