Pauline Hanson says it’s “just the start”.
On one level, she’s absolutely right. A large section of voters has clearly had a gutful – of rising costs, of political drift, of feeling like neither side is speaking to them. You don’t get 20 per cent of the vote accidentally. That kind of surge is earned, seat by seat, grievance by grievance.
But what unfolded in South Australia wasn’t a conservative revival. It was a mass conservative split. And every time that happens, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese gets a little safer.
Labor’s vote – 39 per cent – barely shifted. The Greens lifted their vote to 11 per cent. The Liberals, as counting continued, collapsed to 19 per cent. One Nation surged to 20 per cent.
And the result? A stronger Labor government and a weaker opposition.
The Liberals were just about wiped out in metropolitan Adelaide, commonly finishing fourth behind Labor, One Nation and the Greens. Just a handful of regional and rural seats remain.
That’s the contradiction at the heart of Hanson’s momentum. The anger is real – palpable in outer suburbs and regional centres where people feel squeezed and ignored. But the political effect of that anger is the exact opposite of what many of those voters want.
Because under Australia’s electoral system, protest votes don’t just register. They redistribute.
Hanson can talk about “undercurrents” and a nation that’s “had a gutful”. She can claim vindication after 30 years in politics. But she also – tellingly – admits she’s “been in this position before and it all falls apart because of preferences and the rest of it”.
That’s not a footnote. It is the whole story.
Australia’s electoral system is brutally efficient at punishing divided sides of politics. One Nation can harvest protest votes in outer suburbs and regional centres – and it is, spectacularly – but unless it can convert them into seats, those votes flow. And more often than not, they flow straight back to Labor.
In seat after seat – Elizabeth, Port Adelaide, Light, Taylor – One Nation didn’t just hurt the Liberals, it bled Labor too. But, in the end, it was Labor that benefited, surviving on preferences while the right fractured itself into irrelevance.
This is the paradox at the heart of Hanson’s rise: the louder the movement, the more secure Labor becomes.
A vote for One Nation in the lower house, in most cases, doesn’t elect a One Nation MP. It helps decide which major party or independent wins. And right now, it’s helping Labor win – again and again.
That’s why this is such a nightmare for the Liberals and Nationals. Jess Wilson’s opposition in Victoria will be horrified as it works to oust a tired and unpopular Labor government. But split the right-of-centre vote down the middle, and you don’t get a new government – you get the same one, with a bigger buffer.
One Nation may well win the Farrer byelection, but there’s a reason Labor won’t contest the seat vacated by Sussan Ley. Why get blood on your hands when both Coalition parties will battle it out with a Climate 200 independent and One Nation? Either way, Labor wins.
And so the cycle continues: disaffected voters drift to One Nation, the Liberal vote collapses, preferences save Labor, and Hanson declares momentum.
Expect hundreds of column inches in the coming days dedicated to a panicked Coalition’s response federally to the issues.
South Australian Liberal leader Ashton Hurn declared there was clearly a large core of South Australians who are “sick to death of the status quo”. But simply lurching to the left or right is unlikely to be an answer in itself.
So yes, Hanson is tapping into something powerful. A genuine, growing discontent. A cohort of voters who have had enough. As Labor Premier Peter Malinauskas points out, his side of politics has a responsibility to address it.
Because Labor isn’t totally in the clear. No doubt Malinauskas’s popularity has helped cushion Labor in outer suburbs. Add a swing of another few per cent and – with strong preferences from the Liberals – you would be looking at a handful of seats at risk of going from Labor to One Nation.
But unless One Nation’s voters also reckon with the consequences of where their preferences land, they’re not changing the system. They’re reinforcing it.
Hanson calls it a movement. And in raw political energy, it is.
But in electoral terms it’s something else entirely: a very effective way to keep Labor in power.
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Rob Harris is the national correspondent for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age based in Canberra. He is a former Europe correspondent.Connect via email.