Victoria has long been immune to Pauline Hanson’s charms. Not any more
Pauline Hanson and her One Nation party have two striking features. The first is that this inherently flammable political outfit has survived in one form or another for nearly 30 years. The second is that throughout all this time Victoria has been largely immune to complaint-based recourse.
There has long been a built-in complacency about this, as if One Nation’s failure to reach below the Barassi Line was evidence of higher levels of political complexity. In the same way that Kyle and Jackie O’s failure to attract local listeners to their radio shows has been cited as evidence of Melbourne’s discerning taste, we like to think that when it comes to Hanson, we’ve long had him pegged.
In 1998, when Hanson’s nascent party contested its first federal election, it won 8.4 per cent of the national vote but only 3.7 per cent in Victoria. At last year’s federal election, One Nation’s share of the Senate vote was just 4.4 per cent in Victoria; this was the lowest return of any state or territory in which he ran.
One Nation did not register as a political party with the Victorian Electoral Commission until 2018 and did not field candidates in Victorian state elections until 2022. Even after Invergordon dairy farmer Rikkie-Lee Tyrrell won One Nation’s first seat in the Victorian parliament, it was dismissed as an electoral aberration rather than the start of something serious.
There should be no complacency at the beginning of this state election year. This is not because a deeply unpopular Labor government is trying to win a historic fourth consecutive term with what is likely to be a record low primary vote. Not from a Coalition that knows that whenever One Nation rises, it is Liberal and National MPs who do it.
One Nation is building a political base here in Victoria for the first time. It recruits members and opens local branches. It is vetting candidates and plans to nominate one candidate for each seat in the November election. The state’s leader, former Senate candidate Warren Pickering, said a Victorian policy platform would be released in the coming months focusing on crime, energy, promoting Australian values in schools and scrapping Victoria’s historic treaty with First Peoples.
“We recognize that there is opportunity here and that there is more desire for One Nation than there has been before,” he says. “There is a very real possibility that we can secure the balance of power in the Upper House.”
Pickering takes no argument on this from Kos Samaras, a former Labor Party strategist who now works as a political researcher and consultant in Redbridge. According to a national Redbridge/Accent Research survey published this week by Financial ReviewPrimary support for One Nation brought the combined vote for the Liberals and Nations to 26 per cent.
The same poll shows One Nation is Australia’s most popular party among Generation X, the normally reliable middle child of the Australian demographic.
Although these figures are skewed by strong support for One Nation in parts of Hanson’s home state of Queensland and regional NSW, Samaras says the Victorian state election, rather than next month’s poll in South Australia, presents the biggest opportunity for One Nation this year.
In the lower house, some of Labour’s most marginal seats – Bass, Pakenham, Hastings, Ripon and Yan Yean – are regional or suburban areas where One Nation’s message could resonate. Suburban seats such as Melton, Berwick and Frankston can also be fertile ground. Like Pickering, Samaras can see One Nation winning enough seats in the upper house to maintain the balance of power or share it with the Greens.
This will leave Victoria’s next government dependent on an anti-immigration party to enact its legislative agenda.
This will also give One Nation access to significant amounts of public money to set up a party headquarters, hire staff and grow its presence in Victorian politics, thanks to the VEC’s Executive Expenditure Funding scheme. If the party wins six seats in the upper house, it will be entitled to annual payments of more than $500,000 a year.
Much depends on what the Allan government does about long-debated reforms to upper house votes.
Labour’s dominant left wing is pressing for the party to scrap above-the-line voting for the Legislative Council, also known as group ticket voting, which could result in candidates with small vote shares securing enough preference to be elected. Parliament’s Electoral Affairs Committee recommended that the practice be cancelled. The Greens’ reform bill is currently before parliament.
If group ticket voting is abolished, the number of Greens MPs is likely to increase, the representation of the National Party will decrease and micro parties will cease to participate in Victorian politics. As Shooters, Fishers and Farmers MP Jeff Bourman puts it, this will result in a parliament with less political diversity and fewer diverse voices.
This will also boost One Nation’s electoral hopes in Victoria. Political consultant Glenn Druery, who understands the intricacies of caucus ticket voting better than anyone, believes the system serves as a hedge against One Nation’s electoral ambitions. “What happens if GTV leaves?” he asks. “Christmas for a Nation.”
Chip Le Grand is the state political editor.
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Chip Le Grand leads our state politics reporting team. He had previously served as the newspaper’s chief correspondent and was a journalist with 30 years of experience.Connect via email.
