Despite One Nation having only two House of Representatives seats, politically-savvy observers now believe it is possible the insurgent party could be the de facto opposition that Labor faces in 2028. <\/p>\n
Two Redbridge polls have carried this message. <\/p>\n
The first, a seat-by-seat mapping of the country, published by the Australian Financial Review last month, suggested that in an election held now, the Coalition would be almost wiped out by the One Nation surge. <\/p>\n
The latest poll, taken in the wake of the budget and published by the AFR on Sunday, has One Nation ahead of Labor (for the first time) and the Coalition continuing to languish. One Nation\u2019s primary vote was 31% to Labor\u2019s 28% with the Coalition at 20%. <\/p>\n
One Nation, it seems, is the party that\u2019s received a \u201cbounce\u201d from an unpopular budget, up four points in a month, while both Labor and the Coalition went backwards. <\/p>\n
As preferred prime minister, Pauline Hanson trails Anthony Albanese 25% to 31%, with Angus Taylor on 14%. <\/p>\n
The day Taylor set foot in parliament in 2013, or indeed before that, he was seen as a potential leader, a possible future prime minister. When Pauline Hanson arrived in the House of Representatives in 1996, she was regarded as a political outsider, disendorsed by the Liberals for racist comments.<\/p>\n
Now Hanson is being asked \u2013 seriously \u2013 if she wants to be prime minister. <\/p>\n
When that question was put to her on Sky by Andrew Clennell on Sunday, Hanson repeated it, rhetorically, before answering: <\/p>\n
Do I want to be prime minister?<\/p>\n
Well, I\u2019ll tell you what, I won\u2019t knock back the job Andrew, because I believe that I have the ability to do it. I\u2019m not going to underestimate myself or say \u2018no, I can\u2019t do it\u2019 because you know, have a look at what we\u2019ve got now. Really? Honestly?<\/p>\n
She echoed her self-confidence on Monday. <\/p>\n
Most leaders in Hanson\u2019s situation (a senator, leading a party with just six seats in total, including both houses) would probably have demurred, saying \u201cwe\u2019re a long way from talking about that\u201d. <\/p>\n
But in that answer we see the unvarnished Hanson \u2013 a woman who both believes in herself, and thinks \u2013 and resents \u2013 that she has been underestimated all her political life. Of course she\u2019s convinced she could do the job \u2013 and she has reached the stage of saying that outright. <\/p>\n
Taylor must have difficulty believing things have come to their present pass. A senior minister in the Morrison government, which had won a \u201cmiracle\u201d election victory, he now presides over a party that appears to be declining by the week, with its supporters and some of its rank-and-file members jumping to Hanson. <\/p>\n
Albanese, for his part, can\u2019t quite get his head around the fact that a woman who does not even bother turning up for parliamentary business when she doesn\u2019t feel like it, and used to be a near political pariah for her more extreme views, is now, according to the polls, in line to win a heap of lower house seats at the next election. <\/p>\n
The attention has been on the threat One Nation poses to the Liberals and Nationals, but within Labor, the strategists are taking seriously the rapidly changing political landscape. <\/p>\n
Although the election is two years off and everything could change, Labor planning is underway for the contingency that come 2028, the main fight could be between the government and One Nation, with the Coalition a secondary player. <\/p>\n
In 2025 Albanese had to adapt, and adopt appropriate tactics, to combat what appeared to be a surging Coalition (in retrospect that was probably never as real as it looked at the time). Next election, a similar adaptation to new circumstances might be required. <\/p>\n
The challenge for Labor, while being mulled over currently, is in the future. For the Liberals, things are desperate now. <\/p>\n
In this situation, the wisdom of installing Tony Abbott as their federal president is still an open question for Liberals. <\/p>\n
Shadow Treasurer Tim Wilson said Abbott\u2019s role would be \u201cadministrative\u201d. <\/p>\n
Abbott\u2019s take certainly seemed more expansive. \u201cI don\u2019t expect to be in the media every day,\u201d he told the ABC. <\/p>\n
\u201cBut on the other hand, I do think that my presence now, in this senior role will demonstrate to people who might have been sceptical that the Liberal Party is fair dinkum about abolishing net zero, fair dinkum about cutting back mass migration, fair dinkum about scrapping taxes – because my government was actually very good at that.<\/p>\n
“My presence, I think, is an indicator that the Liberal Party hasn\u2019t forgotten how to be a very, very good government.<\/p>\n
“Look, the party president, is the organisational leader, not the political leader. But I don\u2019t think there\u2019s ever been a party president who\u2019s taken a vow of silence, and I\u2019m certainly not going to start.\u201d<\/p>\n
Taylor\u2019s problem is that Abbott is better media talent than he is, and their mutual problem is that Abbott loves the spotlight.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Despite One Nation having only two House of Representatives seats, politically-savvy observers now believe it is possible the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":708611,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[43,44,41,39,42,40],"class_list":["post-708610","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/708610","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=708610"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/708610\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/708611"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=708610"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=708610"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=708610"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}