Dennis Denuto said it was “the vibe”. Kids today would call it a “vibe shift”.
According to Cory Bernardi, the prodigal son of right-wing politics and the face of One Nation’s unlikely ascension in South Australia, 100 voters could give you 100 reasons why they’re unhappy — from cost-of-living to hospital wait times — but ultimately it all boils down to one thing.
“It’s the vibe that, ‘It’s not working for us anymore, we don’t believe you anymore and we just want someone to stick up for us,’” Mr Bernardi told news.com.au.
The 56-year-old former Liberal Senator, former Sky News commentator and long-time conservative culture warrior is running at the top of the One Nation upper house ticket in South Australia’s election on Saturday, which is shaping up as the first major test for the right-wing party following the implosion of federal Liberals earlier this year.
Mirroring national trends, polls have put One Nation ahead of the Liberals with a primary vote of 22 per cent to 19 per cent — the lowest for the party in national history — while Premier Peter Malinauskas and his government are poised to be returned in a landslide with a primary vote of 38 per cent.
Labor currently holds 29 of 47 seats, and could end up with a bigger majority as One Nation support eats into the Liberal vote.
South Australian opposition leader Ashton Hurn, reacting to Wednesday’s Advertiser/YouGov poll during the leaders’ debate, conceded there was “no doubt that we’ve had some challenges”.
Mr Malinauskas and Ms Hurn both cautioned South Australians casting ballots for One Nation, dismissing it as a “Queensland-focused” party.
Political commentator Steve Price said on Sky News last-minute polling showed One Nation could “wipe the Liberal Party off the map”.
With complex preference flows and strong independents in rural electorates where One Nation polls highest, whether it can translate its strong primary vote into actual seats is an open question.
Speaking to news.com.au from Adelaide three days before South Australians cast their vote, Mr Bernardi was playing down One Nation’s chances.
“I don’t want to speculate [on seats] but we all see the polls,” he said.
“The sentiment is really positive wherever we go. People are looking for hope, they think One Nation represents change and they need that change in the hope of making their lives easier and putting our country first.”
Polls show One Nation’s support in Adelaide is strongest in areas like the working-class suburb of Elizabeth in the outer northern suburbs, which was devastated by the closure of the Holden factory in 2017 — Australia’s last carmaker.
At the last state election in 2022, One Nation polled 9.9 per cent in Elizabeth, 8.8 per cent in neighbouring Taylor and 8.2 per cent in Kaurna, in Adelaide’s outer southern suburbs.
In rural South Australia, One Nation’s strongest results were 11 per cent in Frome — which takes in towns north of the capital including the infamous Snowtown — 8.1 per cent in the southeast seat of MacKillop, and 9.9 per cent in Chaffey in the northeast Riverland region.
“There are pockets of South Australia where I think One Nation is enjoying overwhelming support — a lot of forgotten communities, people who feel overlooked by what I call the uniparty,” Mr Bernardi said. “We’ve got to change the way we vote.”
Mr Bernardi was unveiled last month as Pauline Hanson’s star recruit, brought out of retirement after his resignation from the Liberal Party and the Senate in 2020.
With a history of inflammatory statements on same-sex marriage, Islam and abortion, Mr Bernardi, like his leader, has long drawn the ire of progressives.
Last week he said he stood by comments he made nearly 14 years ago linking same-sex marriage to social acceptance of bestiality but later lamented the “rookie error”, telling the ABC he should have simply avoided being drawn on previous remarks.
On the campaign trail, though, Mr Bernardi wasn’t letting up on the culture war.
Earlier this month he shared a video mocking a banner at Adelaide University with the Aboriginal greeting “Niina Marni” — meaning, “Hello, how are you?” in the Kaurna language — claiming it was “empty symbolism” and “trying to erase our history”.
“Here I am at the Niina Marni Centre,” he said. “I don’t know what that is, and nor does anyone else, to be honest.”
The comments were described as disappointing by Kaurna elder Tim Agius.
‘Covid woke people up’
Reflecting on One Nation’s rising fortunes, Mr Bernardi argued discontent with the “uniparty” represented a broader collapse of trust in institutions post-Covid.
“They’re imitations of each other, but what I think Covid did is wake people up to the fact that you can’t believe what they tell you,” he said.
“There’s a scepticism about the promises and the words of the uniparty politicians.”
He cited immigration — One Nation’s flagship issue nationally which in South Australia takes a back seat to other concerns like cost-of-living — as a key example.
“We keep being told that we need more people to come into the country to fix the skills crisis or that crisis, but yet after bringing millions of people into the country in recent years the problems are even bigger,” he said.
“The rhetoric of the uniparty does not match the lived reality for people. We’re seeing that in every aspect — cost-of-living, lack of access to government services, the taxation burden, you name it. People just feel this country is being lost to them and it should be their country. I think there’s a sense we need to do something different.”
He attributed the collapse of the Liberals to “laziness” and “entitlement” within what he described as a “power sharing arrangement” with Labor.
“Funding laws, election laws, they’ve done everything they can do to entrench the duopoly,” he said.
“‘We’re slightly less bad than the other mob. We’ll manage the decline in living standards slightly better. We’ll get a turn eventually.’ It’s not good enough. They never anticipated they would come under threat. That’s why Labor are putting One Nation last everywhere, the Liberals are preferencing The Greens in some seats ahead of us. The complete lack of application by the Liberals … they’re happy being in opposition.”
He added, “If you’ve got a government [without an effective opposition] they can get away with blue murder, which is what we’ve seen with Malinauskas.”
Mr Bernardi said Ms Hanson, while a fixture for decades in Australian politics, was being seen with fresh eyes by many voters.
“Pauline Hanson has been true to her word and stuck to her guns through hell or high water,” he said.
“They know she’s not for changing. We are tapping into … younger people, there’s older people, those born and bred here for generations [as well as new arrivals]. They’re flocking to this lady because they know she’s true to her word, they know she’s a great patriot and she’s been warning [of these issues] for 30 years.”
Part of the controversial Senator’s new-found appeal, Mr Bernadi believed, was the sense among her voters that she had been targeted by the “system”.
Ms Hanson famously spent 11 weeks in jail in 2003 after being convicted of electoral fraud, only for the convictions to be overturned on appeal.
“For 30 years Pauline Hanson has been maligned and demonised by self-interested uniparty politicians,” Mr Bernardi said.
“That’s another example to people of how they distrust the system now. They’ve attacked Pauline Hanson because they didn’t want her to do exactly what she did — capture the hearts and minds of people who believe this is a great country and want it to continue to be. They love her for her resilience, her tenacity, she doesn’t talk in bubbles like the rest of the politicians, she’s just the real deal.”
Growing public debate over Australia’s immigration level, however, is undeniably the key driver of One Nation’s rise.
“Pauline Hanson has been warning about some of the dangers of mass migration for many years,” Mr Bernardi said.
“People believe her, she genuinely believes it’s an important issue. No one’s going to believe the Liberal Party who have pursued mass migration and suddenly say they’re going to change policy.”
Concerns over immigration, Mr Bernardi said, have broadened from debates over “culture” into “competition for housing stock which is being driven by migration, access to government services, health services, infrastructure”.
“People see things that are making their lives worse but keep being told mass migration is to the great benefit to this country,” he said.
“All of these things are coming home to roost and it’s undeniable. That I think is driving a lot of people’s unhappiness. The reality is we need to pause it to make sure we can provide the services necessary [but] we should also be very discerning on who we let into our country. We need people who are going to add value, make a positive contribution to the Australian way of life.”
He added that of the more than 300,000 net migrants in 2023-24, “less than 2000 had a trade construction skill”.
“If we really need tradies we should be investing [in training them here] … but if you’re saying we need to bring people in because of the skills we desperately need then we need more technicians, not nail technicians,” he said.
‘Eight-hour blackouts’
Mr Bernardi said for South Australian voters, “front and centre is cost-of-living and access to government services and housing”.
“People are deeply worried about groceries, utilities, government costs and services, the ambulance ramping at hospitals,” he said.
“In regional areas there are very few specialists available, people have to travel at great expense. In the community where I live it’s nothing to have an eight-hour blackout once or twice a month, yet you’re still paying [through the nose] for electricity. People feel like they’re being left behind and can’t get ahead and they want some hope.”
The most common attack from its South Australian critics is that One Nation is a party of grievances without solutions.
Mr Malinauskas has described One Nation as a “policy-free zone”.
On its website, One Nation South Australia lists a range of policies, from opposing further gun restrictions after the Bondi attacks to supporting coal and nuclear power, and addressing the housing crisis.
On the latter point, One Nation South Australia says it would “reduce demand for housing and rental accommodation in Australia by substantially lowering immigration to a level that can be sustained in the long term” by capping immigration at 130,000 for all visa categories including foreign students — something that can only be done at the federal level.
Mr Bernardi insisted issues affecting voters could be tackled “reasonably easily if there’s a will to do it, but you have to admit there’s a problem first”, highlighting One Nation’s healthcare policy, in particular its plan to address the ambulance ramping crisis.
Patients in South Australia face some of the longest waits in the country for emergency care and urgent surgery, the Australian Medical Association SA has warned, with 2025 marking a record year for ambulance ramping.
“Malinauskas will apologise for ambulance ramping but hasn’t got a solution,” Mr Bernardi said.
“There’s a relatively easy solution but they [only listen] to what the bureaucrats tell them. The ambos [say] firstly, there has got to be more discretionary choice of care [given to] the paramedics themselves. There are regular people who ring up at the same time every week claiming the same ailment because they need company and they get their hand held on the ambulance ramp for six to eight hours before they’re sent home.”
Second, he said, many patients in the hospital system simply “shouldn’t be there” and belonged in aged care or mental health facilities.
“Third, a lot of people waiting on beds for a doctor to discharge them are still occupying an acute care bed,” he said.
“Ambos tell me you can get six recliner chairs [in the space it takes for one acute bed], it would be easy to reposition wards so you can have 36 to 40 people waiting. That’s a very simple, practical measure that both doctors and ambos have told me will free up beds.”
These sorts of solutions were “not rocket science”, Mr Bernardi added.
“People in that area have got good ideas, but bureaucrats and the ministry [don’t want to listen].”
