November 30, 2025 • 21 mins
When Pauline Hanson marched into the Senate last week wearing a burqa, it felt, for a moment, like we were back in the 1990s.
Those were the sorts of stunts – and anti-immigration rhetoric – that the former fish and chip shop owner from Ipswich used to pull when she first swept into power.
But, with a high-profile member of parliament on the verge of defecting to her party, and polling placing support for One Nation at its highest level since 1998, it appears that we are witnessing the second coming of One Nation.
Today, columnist and former associate editor of The Age, Shaun Carney, on what a rise in support for One Nation says about Australia.
Subscribe to The Age & SMH: https://subscribe.smh.com.au/
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
S1 (00:00):
From the newsrooms of the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.
This is the morning edition. I'm Samantha Sellinger Morris. It's Monday,
December 1st. When Pauline Hanson marched into the Senate last
week wearing a burqa. It felt for a moment like
we were back in the 1990s.
S2 (00:19):
She is disrespecting a faith. She is disrespecting the Muslims
out there, Muslim Australians. It's absolutely unconstitutional.
S1 (00:28):
Those were the sorts of stunts and anti-immigration rhetoric that
the former fish and chip shop owner from Ipswich used
to pull when she first swept into power. But with
a high profile member of parliament on the verge of
defecting to her party and polling placing support for One
Nation at its highest level since 1998, it appears that
(00:48):
we are witnessing the second coming of One Nation today.
Columnist and former associate editor of The Age, Shaun Carney,
on what a rise in support for One Nation says
about Australia. Welcome to the podcast.
S3 (01:05):
Hi, Samantha.
S1 (01:06):
So, Sean, we are talking to you on the afternoon
that Barnaby Joyce formally announced his defection from the National Party,
which we know clears his way to join One Nation.
I guess it symbolizes perhaps the increasing power that One
Nation has right now. I mean, you and I discussed
before recording that polling just this month put support for
the party at its highest levels in 27 years. So
(01:29):
is this surprising to you?
S4 (01:31):
It is surprising, really, Samantha, I think one of the
drivers of it is the terrible state in which the
Liberal Party and the National Party, but particularly the Liberal Party,
find themselves in. So it's sort of driving a lot
of this support. But there's probably something else at work
there as well, a general rearranging of political sympathies and, um,
(01:55):
views of the old parties and the newer parties across
the Australian electorate.
S1 (02:03):
And before we get into what's behind this rise in
support of the party, can you just help us rewind
to the beginning for a moment to give us a
sense of where Pauline Hanson and this party actually came from.
So tell us about when she established this party and
how she got her start. Like what was her platform?
S4 (02:18):
Come next March, it'll be 30 years since Pauline Hanson
was first elected to the federal parliament as the member
for the seat of Oxley. So she's been around politics
as an elected politician. That's how she started, anyway. There's
been a long period there in the middle where she
wasn't a member of Parliament, but of course she is now.
(02:38):
She's been around as long as Anthony Albanese. That was
his first election, too. So she's very much a known quantity. Very,
very few people have been around any longer than her.
She was the endorsed Liberal candidate for the safe labor
seat of Oxley in 1996.
S5 (02:59):
Six weeks ago, hardly anyone had ever heard of Pauline Hanson.
Now she's the name in just about every radio bulletin,
every television newscast and newspaper. But did you expect this
many people?
S2 (03:12):
No.
S5 (03:13):
Did you expect to be on the front page of
the newspaper practically every day?
S2 (03:19):
No.
S4 (03:20):
This relatively new member, who was aged 41, called Pauline
Hanson in owned a fish and chip shop in a
part of Ipswich in Queensland. She vaulted to national fame
even before the election because she made some remarks about
the undesirability of so much welfare for Aboriginals.
S6 (03:40):
With you, I'm indigenous. I was born here. I'm native
to the land.
S7 (03:44):
She's indigenous.
S6 (03:46):
Yes I am. Do you know the word indigenous? Yes
I do. Native to the land. I was born here.
Where's my land if it's not Australia?
S7 (03:54):
Oh, England.
S4 (03:56):
Some anti-Asian rhetoric as well. The Liberal Party sort of,
in a little bit of a panic, disendorsed her, but
she went on to win the seat with a swing
of almost 20%. That gave her a place in Australian
political history then and there.
S8 (04:12):
I call the honourable member for Oxley.
S6 (04:14):
I come here not as a polished politician, but as
a woman who has her fair share of night life's knocks.
S4 (04:24):
The following year she formed a party, One Nation. It
had a very much a philosophical stances which were really
about turning the clock back.
S9 (04:36):
Your website says that many consider Pauline Hanson to be
an outspoken soul that is simply ahead of her time.
Is that time 1950 ending multiculturalism.
S4 (04:48):
Going back to economic protection, unwinding economically liberal reforms, and
very much a sort of going back to a monoculture.
What was the appeal with, uh, Pauline Hanson to a
lot of people? Well, she was an unmediated figure. Authentic.
Not in any way middle class, not, uh, articulate in
(05:12):
the way that we people in the media like to
see Articulacy.
S5 (05:18):
Are you xenophobic?
S6 (05:21):
Please explain.
S5 (05:25):
Xenophobia means a fear of all things foreign.
S6 (05:30):
No, I don't think I am. No I'm not.
S4 (05:35):
She said what she thought, and it had resonance with
a lot of people who were uncomfortable with all the
changes that had been going on in the 70s, the
80s and the early 90s.
S1 (05:46):
I mean, she sure was unvarnished. I think many of
us remember her maiden speech. Uh, and it you know,
it shocked a lot of people, I think at the time, uh,
you know, she spoke about Australia being overrun by Asians.
She said she wanted to abolish multiculturalism. And, you know,
I think she wasn't a polished politician and she had
experienced a fair bit of hard knocks, you know. So
(06:08):
I'm just wondering, I guess, how much is there or
was there a cult of personality around Pauline Hanson at
the time that she was establishing herself? Because we often
talk about that cult of personality when we talk about
Donald Trump. Um, you know, a system which is like,
really centered around this charismatic leader. Is that what was
happening with Pauline Hanson?
S4 (06:27):
Yes, yes it was. She was a charismatic figure to
a lot of people, especially men and women, but especially men, um,
people who felt disconnected from the economic system. Men who'd
also felt a little bit unmoored by, uh, the feminist wave,
you know, positive discrimination, the decline of traditional Manufacturing and
(06:52):
blue collar jobs. Paradoxically, because it was a woman that
they sort of attached themselves to politically. But in that
1998 election, One Nation's first election, they got amazing numbers.
I think they got, uh, 8.4% of the the lower
house vote. That's the second. In fact, that's the highest
they've ever scored. Again, sort of counterintuitively, Hanson lost her
(07:15):
seat or lost her place in Parliament because she because
of a redistribution, she opted for another seat to stand in.
Looked like she would win it. She didn't. So she
was out of Parliament. And then she spent a long
time out of any parliament.
S1 (07:27):
That's right. But it was A11. It was about a
million votes. I think that One Nation won in that
1998 federal election. And it's interesting that you mentioned there
that she, of course, lost her own seat in the
national parliament, because I think that sort of foreshadows something
that we'll talk a bit about later, which is, uh,
the long standing chaos. I think that has sort of
always marked this party. But I guess what I wanted
to ask you is One Nation. So it had this
(07:50):
real explosion onto the political scene not long ago. ABC
election watcher Antony Green called it the most extraordinary emergence
of a party in modern Australian political history. So can
you tell us a bit about how the party really
threatened the power of the coalition, even back then?
S4 (08:08):
Well, uh, what happened in the vote in 1998 was
that the the Howard government held on, but they held
on with a majority of the lower house seats, but
not a majority of the vote. The Labor Party secured 51%
of the vote. And in fact, what had happened was
that large One Nation vote acted as a sort of
transmission belt of conservative votes to the Labor Party. So
(08:32):
they were very much a threat to the coalition back then. Basically,
all of the established parties refused to direct preferences to
One Nation. John Howard at the time was a little
reluctant to do it, but he was pushed into doing
it by his deputy, Peter Costello, although at the time
Howard could see that he didn't want to completely put
(08:55):
all of those One Nation supporters offside. So he took
credit in a way for allowing people to say what
they thought more easily. He saw the electoral potency of
One Nation and didn't want to completely declare it beyond
the pale, and that sort of became the orthodoxy for
(09:15):
quite a while. It's less so of the orthodoxy now,
which we might talk about a bit later.
S1 (09:19):
And so what happened after that? Because Pauline Hanson experienced
a long time in the political wilderness. Right.
S3 (09:25):
Mhm. Mhm.
S4 (09:27):
Yes. So there's so many divisions, arguments, court cases involving
one nation.
S10 (09:35):
Off the hustings and into court. Pauline Hanson and her
advisers interrupted the campaign to hear the judgment against the ABC.
The song I'm a Back Door Man was first played
on triple J last August, using the voice of Miss Hansen,
her words digitally rearranged.
S6 (09:51):
Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Seven. Eight. Racist. Rubbish. Racist. Hate. One. Two.
S10 (09:55):
Queensland's Court of Appeal dismissed the ABC's case, declaring the
song exposed Miss Hanson to ridicule and contempt.
S4 (10:02):
Eventually, Pauline Hanson was expelled from One Nation in 2002,
and in the following year she was convicted of electoral
fraud and spent 11 weeks in jail while her appeal
was being heard, and she won that appeal and the
the conviction was overturned. I mean, she's really she has
(10:24):
been through the wars. You could say she's an incredibly durable,
not just durable, but you would have to say resilient
person to have gone through all of that. And her
positions haven't changed. There's no flip flopping from Pauline Hanson,
but One Nation really was on its uppers. Now she
ended up rejoining One Nation in 2013. And yet that
(10:47):
2013 election, the party was really on its uppers. It
secured 0.1 of one percentage point that election. But since
she rejoined, the party's numbers have gone up and at
the last election, I think they got somewhere in the
order of 6.5%, which is their second best outing. And she,
of course, entered the parliament in 2016 and then was
(11:09):
re-elected in 2022, in the Senate.
S1 (11:11):
Incredible. And you mentioned just there that, you know, with
Pauline Hanson, she hasn't been flip flopping, but has her
focus on immigration and race changed or softened at all,
or is she just as strident and really extreme as
she's always been?
S4 (11:25):
She's gone heavier on the Muslims, um, on being anti-Muslim,
as evidenced by the burka stunt that she's done twice now.
It's still the same menu of grievances. Yeah, it hasn't changed.
S1 (11:47):
We'll be back in a minute. Well, this is really
what I wanted to ask you. I wanted to talk
a bit about, I guess, what are the sort of
cultural factors that have been happening that perhaps, you know,
were a part of her rise then we've spoken about that.
And then now, because we know back in the 90s,
indigenous rights were hotly being debated. You know, the prime
minister at the time, John Howard, was refusing to issue
(12:09):
an apology to the Stolen Generation. That was massive. There was,
of course, a lot of discussion about native Title, but
just bringing it forward to now, does the rise that
we're seeing in support for One Nation reflect a surge
in racism in Australia, or is it more that issues
have arisen, you know, that expose what was already there?
S4 (12:28):
I think at all times there there is a, um,
a hard cohort within the society, within the electorate who
will have the views that she has. It's a matter
of how much a politician or a political organization wants
to harness them and move them forward, uh, to, uh,
(12:50):
sort of attract and then solidify support. I do think
there are economic and social and practical circumstances that favor
simple solutions to complex problems, right? Um, we do have
a substantial intake of migrants or, you know, our migration
(13:11):
numbers are still relatively high. We have, uh, enormous segments
of the community who are priced out of home ownership. Uh,
there are in sort of the growing parts of our
major cities, all sorts of infrastructure pressures. And so the
(13:32):
easiest way of explaining that away is that too many
people are coming in. Uh, the problem in reality is
that if we were to just cut migration, Zero migration,
which is their basically their proposition. The economy would tank
because we we import growth. We import demand by bringing
(13:52):
those people in. That's really, I think one of the reasons,
aside from the sort of, uh, awful shambles that the
liberals are in, um, I think that actually is another
explanation for the rise in the polls, I think. I
think it's worth checking ourselves a little bit. Um, Samantha,
not just you and me, but all of us. These
(14:15):
are just poll numbers. You know, a poll is a
snapshot in time. And we tend sometimes because we get
used to polls and we read them, we sort of think, oh,
their vote is 18%, which is what it was in
the Red bridge or, you know, 12 in the, in
the poll. But that's just what people are suggesting in
(14:35):
the surveys, whether on Election Day they would do that.
It's a different thing. However, those numbers are very substantial
for what was very much a fringe party. Uh, so
it's definitely it's a real thing we're talking about. Yeah,
that's for sure. That's for.
S1 (14:52):
Sure. It's it's an important point. I mean, we're not
having a federal election for years, so. Yes, like.
S4 (14:57):
Thank heaven for that.
S1 (14:57):
Yeah. That's right. We've been through enough.
S4 (15:00):
Yeah, I think so.
S1 (15:02):
And just a bit further on what we're seeing, you know,
on the streets of our cities, really, because we've had
these marches for Australia where I think we saw a
lot of real anti-Indian sentiment in in particular, of course,
we saw neo-Nazis gathering, uh, for protest on the steps
of parliament in both New South Wales and Victoria. And
like you say, we hear a lot of mainstream political debate,
(15:23):
you know, that links the housing crisis to the number
of immigrants here. So does this help one nation?
S4 (15:30):
One nation believes so because the Canberra, uh, March for
Australia is the rubric under which these, um, these marches
and demonstrations were held. both Pauline Hanson and her fellow
Senator Malcolm Roberts spoke. So they have attached themselves to
these demonstrations. Uh, these marches. And, um, looks like they're
(15:56):
part of a movement, a larger movement.
S1 (15:59):
Yeah. I mean, it's it's definitely an astonishing moment. And
you have to wonder, you know, is the environment in
Australia right now ripe then, for One Nation's support just
to continue to increase. And like, what do you think
that means for our multicultural communities? Like do you have
any sense of wariness amongst some communities. You know, that
they're feeling sort of on notice that they might be targeted,
I guess.
S4 (16:19):
Well, that seems to be the feedback from, uh, a
number of different groups and communities. But I think there's
also something else going on here, um, which is there's
a bit of a tussle between One Nation and elements
of the Liberal Party and the National Party to grab
that cohort of voters who feel that way about some
(16:42):
of these issues. Um, and you can see it with
some of the things, not so much the race thing
with Andrew Hastie. I wouldn't suggest that, but a more populist,
this idea of getting on the populist train, trying to
get people who were disaffected with the way life is
going in mid 2020s Australia and coming up with some
(17:04):
good old fashioned solutions. You know that this is something
that isn't just exclusive to one nation. I'll give you
the example of what happened in the seat of Hunter
back in this year's election. Uh, a labor seat in
a coal area that ended up being after preferences were
distributed that became a labor versus one nation seat. Now
(17:28):
labor ended up with a almost a ten point margin.
But all of these minor parties, the march of Patriots,
or whatever they're called, the the family first. Palmer. Yeah.
S1 (17:39):
All parties.
S4 (17:39):
Yeah. They all. They all preferenced. And the National Party, too,
are National party voters would have preferenced the One Nation
candidate so that they were they were the opponent, the
other likely winner of that seat. So this is how
it sort of feeds in. So there's something larger going
on on the non-Labor side of politics, I think.
S1 (18:01):
Well, John, this takes me to where I wanted to
wrap up, which is that, you know, this is really broad. Arguably,
this is really something that we're seeing in global politics.
You know, the rise in populism. You see that with
the Donald Trump presidency. And we see that with the
rise in popularity of Nigel Farage and his right far
right reform UK party. So what's happening there, do you think?
(18:22):
Is this just a reflection of a broader global trend
towards the right, this rise of one nation, or is
what's happening globally perhaps influencing Australians to support a similar
stance here?
S4 (18:34):
There are definitely I think sometimes we we tend to
undervalue the economic drivers of whatever change this is the
commonalities there. That was a that's been a big driver
for the Make America Great again. The whole Trump thing
was Rust Belt people in the Rust Belt or people
in the rural areas feeling completely closed off from prosperity
(19:00):
and a sense of hope. So there's some of that
going on in Australia, a little less, I think, because
and I know this is a very it's almost like
you almost need to put this on a business card
and just hand it out to everyone. It's it's becoming
a bit too predictable. But it needs to be said.
Our system of compulsory voting and preferential voting provides some
safeguards to this happening to a substantial extent at this
(19:25):
stage anyway, because there's a buy in that's built into
our system where people do actually have to engage and
to some degree willingly, in large proportion compared with those
other countries. So I think that's something that we've got
that might stave off what's going on there. I don't
think the I don't want to use the term pejorative
(19:48):
term contagion, but whatever you want to call it, that
trend might not necessarily find its way here. In some ways,
it's up to the Liberal Party to get its act
together and become a sort of mainstream party for a
larger cohort of people, and that that can stave it
off for two.
S1 (20:06):
Which is a real if at the moment, isn't it?
S4 (20:08):
But things can change. This time last year, not many
people in the Labor Party thought Labor Party could win
a majority of the seats in the lower house and
hold government that way. Five, six months later, they won
in a landslide. You know, things can change pretty quickly.
(20:29):
You know, it depends on performance, foresight and just having
the right energy, saying the right things at the right time.
So it's always interesting, isn't it?
S1 (20:38):
Yeah. It is never a foregone conclusion, always an interesting
space to watch. So we're so lucky to have your insights.
Thank you so much for your time.
S4 (20:46):
Thank you Samantha I appreciate it.
S1 (20:54):
Today's episode of The Morning Edition was produced by Tammy Mills.
Tom McKendrick is our head of audio. To listen to
our episodes as soon as they drop, follow the Morning
Edition on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
Our newsrooms are powered by subscriptions, so to support independent journalism,
visit the page or smh.com.au. Subscribe. And to stay up
(21:19):
to date, sign up to our Morning Edition newsletter to
receive a summary of the day's most important news in
your inbox every morning. Links are in the show. Notes.
I'm Samantha Selinger. Morris, thanks for listening.
From the newsrooms of the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.
This is the morning edition. I'm Samantha Sellinger Morris. It's Monday,
December 1st. When Pauline Hanson marched into the Senate last
week wearing a burqa. It felt for a moment like
we were back in the 1990s.
S2 (00:19):
She is disrespecting a faith. She is disrespecting the Muslims
out there, Muslim Australians. It's absolutely unconstitutional.
S1 (00:28):
Those were the sorts of stunts and anti-immigration rhetoric that
the former fish and chip shop owner from Ipswich used
to pull when she first swept into power. But with
a high profile member of parliament on the verge of
defecting to her party and polling placing support for One
Nation at its highest level since 1998, it appears that
(00:48):
we are witnessing the second coming of One Nation today.
Columnist and former associate editor of The Age, Shaun Carney,
on what a rise in support for One Nation says
about Australia. Welcome to the podcast.
S3 (01:05):
Hi, Samantha.
S1 (01:06):
So, Sean, we are talking to you on the afternoon
that Barnaby Joyce formally announced his defection from the National Party,
which we know clears his way to join One Nation.
I guess it symbolizes perhaps the increasing power that One
Nation has right now. I mean, you and I discussed
before recording that polling just this month put support for
the party at its highest levels in 27 years. So
(01:29):
is this surprising to you?
S4 (01:31):
It is surprising, really, Samantha, I think one of the
drivers of it is the terrible state in which the
Liberal Party and the National Party, but particularly the Liberal Party,
find themselves in. So it's sort of driving a lot
of this support. But there's probably something else at work
there as well, a general rearranging of political sympathies and, um,
(01:55):
views of the old parties and the newer parties across
the Australian electorate.
S1 (02:03):
And before we get into what's behind this rise in
support of the party, can you just help us rewind
to the beginning for a moment to give us a
sense of where Pauline Hanson and this party actually came from.
So tell us about when she established this party and
how she got her start. Like what was her platform?
S4 (02:18):
Come next March, it'll be 30 years since Pauline Hanson
was first elected to the federal parliament as the member
for the seat of Oxley. So she's been around politics
as an elected politician. That's how she started, anyway. There's
been a long period there in the middle where she
wasn't a member of Parliament, but of course she is now.
(02:38):
She's been around as long as Anthony Albanese. That was
his first election, too. So she's very much a known quantity. Very,
very few people have been around any longer than her.
She was the endorsed Liberal candidate for the safe labor
seat of Oxley in 1996.
S5 (02:59):
Six weeks ago, hardly anyone had ever heard of Pauline Hanson.
Now she's the name in just about every radio bulletin,
every television newscast and newspaper. But did you expect this
many people?
S2 (03:12):
No.
S5 (03:13):
Did you expect to be on the front page of
the newspaper practically every day?
S2 (03:19):
No.
S4 (03:20):
This relatively new member, who was aged 41, called Pauline
Hanson in owned a fish and chip shop in a
part of Ipswich in Queensland. She vaulted to national fame
even before the election because she made some remarks about
the undesirability of so much welfare for Aboriginals.
S6 (03:40):
With you, I'm indigenous. I was born here. I'm native
to the land.
S7 (03:44):
She's indigenous.
S6 (03:46):
Yes I am. Do you know the word indigenous? Yes
I do. Native to the land. I was born here.
Where's my land if it's not Australia?
S7 (03:54):
Oh, England.
S4 (03:56):
Some anti-Asian rhetoric as well. The Liberal Party sort of,
in a little bit of a panic, disendorsed her, but
she went on to win the seat with a swing
of almost 20%. That gave her a place in Australian
political history then and there.
S8 (04:12):
I call the honourable member for Oxley.
S6 (04:14):
I come here not as a polished politician, but as
a woman who has her fair share of night life's knocks.
S4 (04:24):
The following year she formed a party, One Nation. It
had a very much a philosophical stances which were really
about turning the clock back.
S9 (04:36):
Your website says that many consider Pauline Hanson to be
an outspoken soul that is simply ahead of her time.
Is that time 1950 ending multiculturalism.
S4 (04:48):
Going back to economic protection, unwinding economically liberal reforms, and
very much a sort of going back to a monoculture.
What was the appeal with, uh, Pauline Hanson to a
lot of people? Well, she was an unmediated figure. Authentic.
Not in any way middle class, not, uh, articulate in
(05:12):
the way that we people in the media like to
see Articulacy.
S5 (05:18):
Are you xenophobic?
S6 (05:21):
Please explain.
S5 (05:25):
Xenophobia means a fear of all things foreign.
S6 (05:30):
No, I don't think I am. No I'm not.
S4 (05:35):
She said what she thought, and it had resonance with
a lot of people who were uncomfortable with all the
changes that had been going on in the 70s, the
80s and the early 90s.
S1 (05:46):
I mean, she sure was unvarnished. I think many of
us remember her maiden speech. Uh, and it you know,
it shocked a lot of people, I think at the time, uh,
you know, she spoke about Australia being overrun by Asians.
She said she wanted to abolish multiculturalism. And, you know,
I think she wasn't a polished politician and she had
experienced a fair bit of hard knocks, you know. So
(06:08):
I'm just wondering, I guess, how much is there or
was there a cult of personality around Pauline Hanson at
the time that she was establishing herself? Because we often
talk about that cult of personality when we talk about
Donald Trump. Um, you know, a system which is like,
really centered around this charismatic leader. Is that what was
happening with Pauline Hanson?
S4 (06:27):
Yes, yes it was. She was a charismatic figure to
a lot of people, especially men and women, but especially men, um,
people who felt disconnected from the economic system. Men who'd
also felt a little bit unmoored by, uh, the feminist wave,
you know, positive discrimination, the decline of traditional Manufacturing and
(06:52):
blue collar jobs. Paradoxically, because it was a woman that
they sort of attached themselves to politically. But in that
1998 election, One Nation's first election, they got amazing numbers.
I think they got, uh, 8.4% of the the lower
house vote. That's the second. In fact, that's the highest
they've ever scored. Again, sort of counterintuitively, Hanson lost her
(07:15):
seat or lost her place in Parliament because she because
of a redistribution, she opted for another seat to stand in.
Looked like she would win it. She didn't. So she
was out of Parliament. And then she spent a long
time out of any parliament.
S1 (07:27):
That's right. But it was A11. It was about a
million votes. I think that One Nation won in that
1998 federal election. And it's interesting that you mentioned there
that she, of course, lost her own seat in the
national parliament, because I think that sort of foreshadows something
that we'll talk a bit about later, which is, uh,
the long standing chaos. I think that has sort of
always marked this party. But I guess what I wanted
to ask you is One Nation. So it had this
(07:50):
real explosion onto the political scene not long ago. ABC
election watcher Antony Green called it the most extraordinary emergence
of a party in modern Australian political history. So can
you tell us a bit about how the party really
threatened the power of the coalition, even back then?
S4 (08:08):
Well, uh, what happened in the vote in 1998 was
that the the Howard government held on, but they held
on with a majority of the lower house seats, but
not a majority of the vote. The Labor Party secured 51%
of the vote. And in fact, what had happened was
that large One Nation vote acted as a sort of
transmission belt of conservative votes to the Labor Party. So
(08:32):
they were very much a threat to the coalition back then. Basically,
all of the established parties refused to direct preferences to
One Nation. John Howard at the time was a little
reluctant to do it, but he was pushed into doing
it by his deputy, Peter Costello, although at the time
Howard could see that he didn't want to completely put
(08:55):
all of those One Nation supporters offside. So he took
credit in a way for allowing people to say what
they thought more easily. He saw the electoral potency of
One Nation and didn't want to completely declare it beyond
the pale, and that sort of became the orthodoxy for
(09:15):
quite a while. It's less so of the orthodoxy now,
which we might talk about a bit later.
S1 (09:19):
And so what happened after that? Because Pauline Hanson experienced
a long time in the political wilderness. Right.
S3 (09:25):
Mhm. Mhm.
S4 (09:27):
Yes. So there's so many divisions, arguments, court cases involving
one nation.
S10 (09:35):
Off the hustings and into court. Pauline Hanson and her
advisers interrupted the campaign to hear the judgment against the ABC.
The song I'm a Back Door Man was first played
on triple J last August, using the voice of Miss Hansen,
her words digitally rearranged.
S6 (09:51):
Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Seven. Eight. Racist. Rubbish. Racist. Hate. One. Two.
S10 (09:55):
Queensland's Court of Appeal dismissed the ABC's case, declaring the
song exposed Miss Hanson to ridicule and contempt.
S4 (10:02):
Eventually, Pauline Hanson was expelled from One Nation in 2002,
and in the following year she was convicted of electoral
fraud and spent 11 weeks in jail while her appeal
was being heard, and she won that appeal and the
the conviction was overturned. I mean, she's really she has
(10:24):
been through the wars. You could say she's an incredibly durable,
not just durable, but you would have to say resilient
person to have gone through all of that. And her
positions haven't changed. There's no flip flopping from Pauline Hanson,
but One Nation really was on its uppers. Now she
ended up rejoining One Nation in 2013. And yet that
(10:47):
2013 election, the party was really on its uppers. It
secured 0.1 of one percentage point that election. But since
she rejoined, the party's numbers have gone up and at
the last election, I think they got somewhere in the
order of 6.5%, which is their second best outing. And she,
of course, entered the parliament in 2016 and then was
(11:09):
re-elected in 2022, in the Senate.
S1 (11:11):
Incredible. And you mentioned just there that, you know, with
Pauline Hanson, she hasn't been flip flopping, but has her
focus on immigration and race changed or softened at all,
or is she just as strident and really extreme as
she's always been?
S4 (11:25):
She's gone heavier on the Muslims, um, on being anti-Muslim,
as evidenced by the burka stunt that she's done twice now.
It's still the same menu of grievances. Yeah, it hasn't changed.
S1 (11:47):
We'll be back in a minute. Well, this is really
what I wanted to ask you. I wanted to talk
a bit about, I guess, what are the sort of
cultural factors that have been happening that perhaps, you know,
were a part of her rise then we've spoken about that.
And then now, because we know back in the 90s,
indigenous rights were hotly being debated. You know, the prime
minister at the time, John Howard, was refusing to issue
(12:09):
an apology to the Stolen Generation. That was massive. There was,
of course, a lot of discussion about native Title, but
just bringing it forward to now, does the rise that
we're seeing in support for One Nation reflect a surge
in racism in Australia, or is it more that issues
have arisen, you know, that expose what was already there?
S4 (12:28):
I think at all times there there is a, um,
a hard cohort within the society, within the electorate who
will have the views that she has. It's a matter
of how much a politician or a political organization wants
to harness them and move them forward, uh, to, uh,
(12:50):
sort of attract and then solidify support. I do think
there are economic and social and practical circumstances that favor
simple solutions to complex problems, right? Um, we do have
a substantial intake of migrants or, you know, our migration
(13:11):
numbers are still relatively high. We have, uh, enormous segments
of the community who are priced out of home ownership. Uh,
there are in sort of the growing parts of our
major cities, all sorts of infrastructure pressures. And so the
(13:32):
easiest way of explaining that away is that too many
people are coming in. Uh, the problem in reality is
that if we were to just cut migration, Zero migration,
which is their basically their proposition. The economy would tank
because we we import growth. We import demand by bringing
(13:52):
those people in. That's really, I think one of the reasons,
aside from the sort of, uh, awful shambles that the
liberals are in, um, I think that actually is another
explanation for the rise in the polls, I think. I
think it's worth checking ourselves a little bit. Um, Samantha,
not just you and me, but all of us. These
(14:15):
are just poll numbers. You know, a poll is a
snapshot in time. And we tend sometimes because we get
used to polls and we read them, we sort of think, oh,
their vote is 18%, which is what it was in
the Red bridge or, you know, 12 in the, in
the poll. But that's just what people are suggesting in
(14:35):
the surveys, whether on Election Day they would do that.
It's a different thing. However, those numbers are very substantial
for what was very much a fringe party. Uh, so
it's definitely it's a real thing we're talking about. Yeah,
that's for sure. That's for.
S1 (14:52):
Sure. It's it's an important point. I mean, we're not
having a federal election for years, so. Yes, like.
S4 (14:57):
Thank heaven for that.
S1 (14:57):
Yeah. That's right. We've been through enough.
S4 (15:00):
Yeah, I think so.
S1 (15:02):
And just a bit further on what we're seeing, you know,
on the streets of our cities, really, because we've had
these marches for Australia where I think we saw a
lot of real anti-Indian sentiment in in particular, of course,
we saw neo-Nazis gathering, uh, for protest on the steps
of parliament in both New South Wales and Victoria. And
like you say, we hear a lot of mainstream political debate,
(15:23):
you know, that links the housing crisis to the number
of immigrants here. So does this help one nation?
S4 (15:30):
One nation believes so because the Canberra, uh, March for
Australia is the rubric under which these, um, these marches
and demonstrations were held. both Pauline Hanson and her fellow
Senator Malcolm Roberts spoke. So they have attached themselves to
these demonstrations. Uh, these marches. And, um, looks like they're
(15:56):
part of a movement, a larger movement.
S1 (15:59):
Yeah. I mean, it's it's definitely an astonishing moment. And
you have to wonder, you know, is the environment in
Australia right now ripe then, for One Nation's support just
to continue to increase. And like, what do you think
that means for our multicultural communities? Like do you have
any sense of wariness amongst some communities. You know, that
they're feeling sort of on notice that they might be targeted,
I guess.
S4 (16:19):
Well, that seems to be the feedback from, uh, a
number of different groups and communities. But I think there's
also something else going on here, um, which is there's
a bit of a tussle between One Nation and elements
of the Liberal Party and the National Party to grab
that cohort of voters who feel that way about some
(16:42):
of these issues. Um, and you can see it with
some of the things, not so much the race thing
with Andrew Hastie. I wouldn't suggest that, but a more populist,
this idea of getting on the populist train, trying to
get people who were disaffected with the way life is
going in mid 2020s Australia and coming up with some
(17:04):
good old fashioned solutions. You know that this is something
that isn't just exclusive to one nation. I'll give you
the example of what happened in the seat of Hunter
back in this year's election. Uh, a labor seat in
a coal area that ended up being after preferences were
distributed that became a labor versus one nation seat. Now
(17:28):
labor ended up with a almost a ten point margin.
But all of these minor parties, the march of Patriots,
or whatever they're called, the the family first. Palmer. Yeah.
S1 (17:39):
All parties.
S4 (17:39):
Yeah. They all. They all preferenced. And the National Party, too,
are National party voters would have preferenced the One Nation
candidate so that they were they were the opponent, the
other likely winner of that seat. So this is how
it sort of feeds in. So there's something larger going
on on the non-Labor side of politics, I think.
S1 (18:01):
Well, John, this takes me to where I wanted to
wrap up, which is that, you know, this is really broad. Arguably,
this is really something that we're seeing in global politics.
You know, the rise in populism. You see that with
the Donald Trump presidency. And we see that with the
rise in popularity of Nigel Farage and his right far
right reform UK party. So what's happening there, do you think?
(18:22):
Is this just a reflection of a broader global trend
towards the right, this rise of one nation, or is
what's happening globally perhaps influencing Australians to support a similar
stance here?
S4 (18:34):
There are definitely I think sometimes we we tend to
undervalue the economic drivers of whatever change this is the
commonalities there. That was a that's been a big driver
for the Make America Great again. The whole Trump thing
was Rust Belt people in the Rust Belt or people
in the rural areas feeling completely closed off from prosperity
(19:00):
and a sense of hope. So there's some of that
going on in Australia, a little less, I think, because
and I know this is a very it's almost like
you almost need to put this on a business card
and just hand it out to everyone. It's it's becoming
a bit too predictable. But it needs to be said.
Our system of compulsory voting and preferential voting provides some
safeguards to this happening to a substantial extent at this
(19:25):
stage anyway, because there's a buy in that's built into
our system where people do actually have to engage and
to some degree willingly, in large proportion compared with those
other countries. So I think that's something that we've got
that might stave off what's going on there. I don't
think the I don't want to use the term pejorative
(19:48):
term contagion, but whatever you want to call it, that
trend might not necessarily find its way here. In some ways,
it's up to the Liberal Party to get its act
together and become a sort of mainstream party for a
larger cohort of people, and that that can stave it
off for two.
S1 (20:06):
Which is a real if at the moment, isn't it?
S4 (20:08):
But things can change. This time last year, not many
people in the Labor Party thought Labor Party could win
a majority of the seats in the lower house and
hold government that way. Five, six months later, they won
in a landslide. You know, things can change pretty quickly.
(20:29):
You know, it depends on performance, foresight and just having
the right energy, saying the right things at the right time.
So it's always interesting, isn't it?
S1 (20:38):
Yeah. It is never a foregone conclusion, always an interesting
space to watch. So we're so lucky to have your insights.
Thank you so much for your time.
S4 (20:46):
Thank you Samantha I appreciate it.
S1 (20:54):
Today's episode of The Morning Edition was produced by Tammy Mills.
Tom McKendrick is our head of audio. To listen to
our episodes as soon as they drop, follow the Morning
Edition on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
Our newsrooms are powered by subscriptions, so to support independent journalism,
visit the page or smh.com.au. Subscribe. And to stay up
(21:19):
to date, sign up to our Morning Edition newsletter to
receive a summary of the day's most important news in
your inbox every morning. Links are in the show. Notes.
I'm Samantha Selinger. Morris, thanks for listening.
Popular Podcasts
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
Are You A Charlotte?
In 1997, actress Kristin Davis’ life was forever changed when she took on the role of Charlotte York in Sex and the City. As we watched Carrie, Samantha, Miranda and Charlotte navigate relationships in NYC, the show helped push once unacceptable conversation topics out of the shadows and altered the narrative around women and sex. We all saw ourselves in them as they searched for fulfillment in life, sex and friendships. Now, Kristin Davis wants to connect with you, the fans, and share untold stories and all the behind the scenes. Together, with Kristin and special guests, what will begin with Sex and the City will evolve into talks about themes that are still so relevant today. "Are you a Charlotte?" is much more than just rewatching this beloved show, it brings the past and the present together as we talk with heart, humor and of course some optimism.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.