Do voters really want Pauline Hanson in charge of Australia’s nuclear submarine fleet? Or negotiating with Xi Jinping and Donald Trump?
According to the latest Resolve Political Monitor, that’s exactly what they want.
A whopping 33 per cent of voters nominated Hanson as their preferred prime minister in this poll, giving her a 4-percentage-point lead over Anthony Albanese, while One Nation has edged ahead of Labor on the primary vote too, leading 29 per cent to 28 per cent.
If the current rise in One Nation’s vote continues over the next two years, the party will not only win a slate of new seats in 2028 – many of them to be occupied, presumably, by people who have never been in parliament before – it will be sitting on the government benches on the eve of the arrival of the nation’s first Virginia-class submarines under the AUKUS agreement.
It doesn’t get more real than that.
Hanson’s extraordinary transformation from political fringe dweller to player on the main stage has taken place in a matter of months, and it hasn’t come about because she has suddenly shifted what she stands for, announced a raft of new policies or launched a particularly effective attack on Labor over broken promises.
Quite the opposite.
Hanson’s views haven’t changed in 30 years. It’s that certainty about what she stands for that is part of her appeal to voters who are suffering through a cost-of-living crisis, disillusioned with the major parties, angry about the federal budget and generally fed up.
Voters want “not the status quo”, and that is what One Nation, boosted by the recruitment of Barnaby Joyce and the election of David Farley in the seat of Farrer, stands for.
But while the numbers and the trend are bad for Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, spare a thought for Angus Taylor, who, after just four months as Liberal leader, has seen the Coalition primary vote fall to a level lower than it reached under Sussan Ley – in fact, the worst ever reported in the Resolve poll.
Taylor and his team have been hammering away at Labor in the month since the budget, and it has worked. Support for the three key budget measures – changes to the capital gains tax, negative gearing and trusts – has fallen by an average of about 5 percentage points and opposition to the changes has risen by a similar amount.
Hanson has done little hard work on the budget critique, in contrast, and she has been criss-crossing the country attending fundraisers and appearing on Sky News to throw the occasional jab at Labor.
Taylor throws the mud, but Hanson gets the benefit.
Some of the damage to the Coalition has been self-inflicted. For example, why anyone in the Coalition thinks it’s a good idea for it to tie itself up in arcane public debates about the party’s preferences strategy for an election that is two years away is anyone’s guess.
Voters don’t care about preferences; they care about being listened to.
And Hanson, by flying around on a private plane given to her by billionaire mining magnate Gina Rinehart and raking in millions of dollars in donations, has convinced plenty of Australians that she is one of them, and that she understands their everyday troubles.
The change in which party people expect will win the next election underscores the dramatic realignment. Typically, nearly twice as many people have favoured Labor over the Coalition in this metric, even as the two parties’ primary vote has ebbed and flowed each month.
In April, Resolve added a third option, “someone else”: in the space of just three months, the numbers have shifted dramatically.
When first asked in April, 38 per cent of voters said Labor; 22 per cent nominated the Coalition; and 16 per cent said someone else. Now, 34 per cent expect a Labor win; just 16 per cent expect a Coalition win; and 28 per cent of people said One Nation – reversing the two right-wing opposition blocs.
This poll is bad news for Labor and diabolical for the Coalition.
James Massola is chief political commentator. He was previously national affairs editor and South-East Asia correspondent. He has won Quill and Kennedy awards and been a Walkley finalist. Connect securely on Signal @jamesmassola.01Connect via X or email.