{"id":556390,"date":"2026-03-22T05:41:23","date_gmt":"2026-03-22T05:41:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/556390\/"},"modified":"2026-03-22T05:41:23","modified_gmt":"2026-03-22T05:41:23","slug":"one-nation-surge-helps-labor-despite-voter-discontent-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/556390\/","title":{"rendered":"One Nation surge helps Labor despite voter discontent"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Rob<\/p>\n

March 22, 2026 \u2014 10:53am<\/p>\n

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Pauline Hanson says it\u2019s \u201cjust the start\u201d.<\/p>\n

On one level, she\u2019s absolutely right. A large section of voters has clearly had a gutful<\/a> \u2013 of rising costs, of political drift, of feeling like neither side is speaking to them. You don\u2019t get 20 per cent of the vote accidentally. That kind of surge is earned, seat by seat, grievance by grievance.<\/p>\n

\"PaulinePauline Hanson said One Nation\u2019s strong performance in the South Australian election was just the beginning.Aresna Villanueva<\/p>\n

But what unfolded in South Australia <\/a>wasn\u2019t a conservative revival. It was a mass conservative split. And every time that happens, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese gets a little safer.<\/p>\n

Labor\u2019s vote \u2013 39 per cent \u2013 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.<\/p>\n

And the result? A stronger Labor government and a weaker opposition.<\/p>\n

Related Article\"SA<\/a><\/p>\n

The Liberals were just about wiped out <\/a>in metropolitan Adelaide, commonly finishing fourth behind Labor, One Nation and the Greens. Just a handful of regional and rural seats remain.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s the contradiction at the heart of Hanson\u2019s momentum. The anger is real<\/a> \u2014 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.<\/p>\n

Because under Australia\u2019s electoral system, protest votes don\u2019t just register. They redistribute.<\/p>\n

Hanson can talk about \u201cundercurrents\u201d and a nation that\u2019s \u201chad a gutful\u201d. She can claim vindication after 30 years in politics. But she also \u2013 tellingly \u2013 admits she\u2019s \u201cbeen in this position before and it all falls apart because of preferences and the rest of it\u201d.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s not a footnote. It is the whole story.<\/p>\n

Australia\u2019s electoral system is brutally efficient at punishing divided sides of politics. One Nation can harvest protest votes in outer suburbs and regional centres \u2013 and it is, spectacularly \u2013 but unless it can convert them into seats, those votes flow. And more often than not, they flow straight back to Labor.<\/p>\n

In seat after seat \u2013 Elizabeth, Port Adelaide, Light, Taylor \u2013 One Nation didn\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n

This is the paradox at the heart of Hanson\u2019s rise: the louder the movement, the more secure Labor becomes.<\/p>\n

A vote for One Nation in the lower house, in most cases, doesn\u2019t elect a One Nation MP. It helps decide which major party or independent wins. And right now, it\u2019s helping Labor win \u2013 again and again.<\/p>\n

Related Article\"One<\/a><\/p>\n

That\u2019s why this is such a nightmare for the Liberals and Nationals. Jess Wilson\u2019s 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\u2019t get a new government \u2013 you get the same one, with a bigger buffer.<\/p>\n

One Nation may well win the Farrer byelection, but there\u2019s a reason Labor won\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n

And so the cycle continues: disaffected voters drift to One Nation<\/a>, the Liberal vote collapses, preferences save Labor, and Hanson declares momentum.<\/p>\n

Expect hundreds of column inches in the coming days dedicated to a panicked Coalition\u2019s response federally to the issues.<\/p>\n

\"SASA Premier Peter Malinauskas was returned comfortably.Alex Ellinghausen<\/p>\n

South Australian Liberal leader Ashton Hurn declared there was clearly a large core of South Australians who are \u201csick to death of the status quo\u201d. But simply lurching to the left or right is unlikely to be an answer in itself.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Because Labor isn\u2019t totally in the clear. No doubt Malinauskas\u2019s popularity has helped cushion Labor in outer suburbs. Add a swing of another few per cent and \u2013 with strong preferences from the Liberals \u2013 you would be looking at a handful of seats at risk of going from Labor to One Nation.<\/p>\n

But unless One Nation\u2019s voters also reckon with the consequences of where their preferences land, they\u2019re not changing the system. They\u2019re reinforcing it.<\/p>\n

Hanson calls it a movement. And in raw political energy, it is.<\/p>\n

But in electoral terms it\u2019s something else entirely: a very effective way to keep Labor in power.<\/p>\n

Cut through the noise of federal politics with news, views and expert analysis. Subscribers can sign up to our weekly Inside Politics newsletter<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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\"RobRob Harris<\/a> is the national correspondent for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age based in Canberra. He is a former Europe correspondent.Connect via email<\/a>.From our partners<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"March 22, 2026 \u2014 10:53am Save You have reached your maximum number of saved items. Remove items from…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":556005,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[64,63,44],"class_list":{"0":"post-556390","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-australia","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/556390","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=556390"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/556390\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/556005"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=556390"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=556390"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=556390"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}