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COMMENT
The penny has dropped at Labor headquarters that One Nation isn’t just a threat to the Coalition – it’s coming for them, too.
Its federal arm is now taking out ads on social media pleading for people to donate between $10 and $27.22 (an oddly specific number) to help the ALP fight One Nation.
One ad warns that “One Nation is on the rise” and “we are building the campaign needed to respond now, before it escalates”, including “reaching voters directly and countering misinformation in key areas”.
Then it asks you to punt up $27 to “fund this important work”.
Why would Labor be so interested in directly contacting people to warn them against voting for One Nation?
A second ad says “Pauline Hanson thinks she can form government with Angus Taylor”, and that “if they win working people pay the price – through cuts to public services and attacks on wages”.
Labor is “ready to fight back” – but it wants $10 from you.
Funny.
I thought Labor had a 94 seat majority and the idea of them losing government any time soon was fanciful?
Another social media ad asks for $27.22 which will “go straight towards reaching voters, countering misinformation, and funding the organising needed to push back”.
A pop up on the NSW Labor website asks for $15 or $27 to “help fight the rise of the far-right” next to a photo of Pauline Hanson.
Gee, the Coalition will be so grateful for all this campaigning Labor is doing to stop its biggest threat. That’s why they’re doing it, right?
No.
Labor is scared.
The ALP has realised that it, too, is under threat.
A Redbridge Group and Accent Research poll released this week, based on a survey taken before the release of the federal budget, found that if an election were held now, One Nation would become the official federal opposition with between 46 and 59 seats – a median of 53.
That would be up from the two they currently hold in New England and Farrer – the former through Barnaby Joyce’s defection from the Nationals and the latter won at a by-election this month.
Labor was estimated to win between 70 and 82 seats with a median of 76 – the number needed to form a majority government.
The poor old Coalition was projected to win between seven and 21 seats, with the median showing 12 Liberals, and the Nationals completely wiped out.
The Coalition, which currently holds 41 seats – 27 Liberal and 14 National – would clearly be big losers in that equation. It more or less wipes them off the map.
But Labor could, arguably, be even bigger losers. It may not spell the end of the ALP as a political force – it is the one party that has survived the entirety of federation thus far – but on these numbers, it could possibly cost them majority government.
That would be an extraordinary repudiation of the Albanese government – and a similarly extraordinary endorsement of One Nation.
It shouldn’t come as a surprise.
People living in the suburbs are those doing it hardest at the moment. They’re the people struggling to get by and those most likely to feel the everyday effects of mass migration. So even Labor voters are p**sed off and looking to One Nation.
And we already have the evidence that One Nation can do well in outer suburban seats that have traditionally been safe Labor territory.
At the South Australian election in March, 13 of 47 seats were calculated with a Labor versus Liberal two-party-preferred result compared to 25 – a majority – being between Labor and One Nation.
In the outer northern suburbs, Labor suffered a 17.9 per cent swing in the electorate of Light and now holds the seat with a 1.6 per cent margin against One Nation.
In Elizabeth, also in the northern suburbs, Labor had its margin reduced from 20.5 per cent to 4.5 per cent by One Nation.
The new electorate of Ngadjuri, which largely replaced Frome, took in parts of the old Light and reduced the Liberal Party’s notional margin from 8.1 per cent to 3.2 per cent.
On the strength of that, and the expectation of a thumping Labor victory, the Labor MP for Light, Tony Piccolo, was sent in to contest Ngadjuri.
The idea was that an established Labor MP, gaining a few thousand voters from his old electorate, would be able to beat the Liberals in a new electorate.
Except that One Nation later rocked up, split the vote and ended up winning with a 7.5 per cent margin – ousting two sitting MPs in the process.
In another northern suburbs seat, Taylor, Labor lost 15.5 per cent of the 2PP to One Nation.
That was in a state election which, of course, can have no effect on the federal issue of immigration. And One Nation has only grown in popularity since March.
Albo and co are frightened by that. And they should be.
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