Australia witnessed a political earthquake last weekend. A by-election for the federal seat of Farrer was won in a landslide by the populist, anti-immigration One Nation Party.
New Zealanders can be forgiven for having no interest in Australian by-elections. But the result in Farrer warrants their attention.
Farrer is predominantly a rural seat covering 127,000 sq km in southwestern New South Wales. Significantly, it’s been held by the centre-right Liberal/Nationals Coalition since its creation in 1949.
Just twelve months ago, in the 2025 national election, Farrer was easily won by the Liberal Party. Last Saturday, the Liberal candidate slumped to third place, and One Nation took the seat by a wide margin.
This is the first time One Nation has won a seat in Australia’s lower house.
Who is One Nation and why is its win so significant?
One Nation was founded in 1997 by Pauline Hanson, a Senator for Queensland since 2016, and a controversial figure in Australian politics for decades. She is perhaps best known outside Australia for having worn a full burqa in the Senate on two occasions.
It’s a ‘populist’ party, in the sense that it offers simple solutions to complex problems and cultivates an attitude of ‘us vs them’. It’s also a ‘nationalist’ party that promotes allegiance to Australia and strongly opposes immigration.
Its immigration policy includes deporting 75,000 ‘illegal immigrants’, introducing an 8-year waiting period for citizenship and welfare, refusing entry to migrants from nations ‘known to foster extremist ideologies’, and withdrawing from the UN Refugee Convention.
Timing is everything in politics and One Nation’s victory in Farrer together with its rapid rise in the polls in recent months indicates the party’s immigration policies are now gaining traction with more and more voters. There are two primary reasons for this.
The first is economic. The One Nation narrative blames migrants for housing shortages, inner-city congestion, and stretched public services, issues that concern many Australians.
The second is cultural. The Israel/Gaza crisis has created social unrest in Australia with constant pro-Palestinian protests and heightened tension between Muslim and Jewish communities. That tension has been exacerbated by the Bondi terrorist attack last December and the ongoing Royal Commission on Antisemitism and Social Cohesion.
Many voters oppose immigrants who bring their foreign conflicts with them to Australia and believe that the values of some immigrants are inconsistent with ‘Australian values’.
But it would be foolish to assume that the rise of One Nation is just about immigration.
There are broader forces at play here. A decline of trust in institutions, a growing sense of grievance and resentment, and a rejection of inner-city progressivism. Perhaps most tellingly a belief among many Australians that the political system no longer works for them and that they’ve been forgotten by the politicians.
This phenomenon is hardly unique to Australia. The same trends are obvious in the United States with the emergence of the MAGA movement. They’re also present in many other western countries e.g. the rise of the Reform Party in the UK, the AfD in Germany, and the National Rally in France.
Like many of those countries, Australia is seeing a growing number of disaffected citizens turn away from the parties that have previously dominated politics. The old two-party system – Labor vs the Liberal/Nationals Coalition – is breaking down.
A key factor in that breakdown is the fact that political ideology no longer fits neatly along the traditional single left/right axis – a right-wing business/middle class party competing against a left-wing workers’ party.
There are now (at least) two separate axes – cultural and economic. If you include an environmental axis the position becomes even more complex.
This explains the ongoing fragmentation of Australian politics and the emergence of what is rapidly becoming a five- or six-party system – Labor, the Greens, One Nation, the ‘Teal’ group of MPs, the Liberals, and the Nationals.
There’s a party for every combination of ideological positions.
One Nation sits on the cultural right but is centre left on the economy. And it strongly opposes action on climate change.
The two major parties have traditionally written off One Nation and its supporters as racist. But the Farrer result and recent polling suggest that approach is becoming untenable.
Some of One Nation’s positions represent a clear threat to both the major parties. For example, its cultural conservativism has appeal to many blue-collar voters who are an important part of Labor’s base, and to many older voters who are an important part of the Liberal base.
Is the rise of One Nation relevant to New Zealand? It certainly can’t be dismissed given that a similar trend has emerged in many other liberal democracies. And the MMP system does facilitate minority party representation.
The nearest kiwi equivalent to One Nation is NZ First, a populist, nationalist party but without the hard anti-immigrant edge.
The closest NZ politics has come to the One Nation vibe was the vehement reaction in 2023 to Three Waters and the Labour policy of co-governance. A revival of that policy or other Treaty of Waitangi initiatives might trigger a surge in right-wing populism.
Immigration is not currently a source of friction in NZ. That might change if there was an extended period of economic decline. History elsewhere shows that hard economic times can be a catalyst for an anti-immigrant movement.
For Australia, the big question is whether One Nation has peaked or will make further gains in the next federal election, due in 2028.
*Ross Stitt is a freelance writer with a PhD in political science. He is a New Zealander based in Sydney. His articles are part of our 'Understanding Australia' series.
4 Comments
Somehow One Nation was seen as preferable to the status quo, which suggests that the current political parties are now really, really out of step with voters.
Maybe the fault lies with a professional political class losing touch with the people they claim to represent, rather than the people becoming reactionaries?
Not just that, but if The Juice Media (check out their YouTube channel) are even vaguely accurate, which they would surely have to be, both major parties are incredibly corrupt and stealing from the public while also covertly removing their freedoms and protection under the law.
So, yeah, go for the loony fringe parties because what have you got to lose?
The fundamental pillar of democracy is the right to vote in free and fair elections. Theoretically delivering government for the people by the people.
Without compulsory voting, that theory is flawed because we get a government elected only by the people who chose to exercise that right to vote.
Personally, I find any long term vision for NZ absent from all political parties. No party hooks me with a vision I can hang my hat on. I'm left with a choice of which party(ies) is/are the least worst. Splitting my electorate and party votes between the electorate candidate voicing the "best policy mix" (highly subjective) and the party that will temper excess of the major party in a coalition government.
I'll vote, and I'll accept the outcome. But I have little hope that the coming election will deliver a government with vision stretching 10 years plus.
The vision I would like to see includes doing away with or at least reigning in the higher salaries commission (that has seen public sector remuneration climb to excessive levels, funded through taxes, rates and fee recoveries imposed on the masses, in a self feeding loop by manipulated benchmarking against private sector, domestic and international). In short a 20% cut to public sector employees pay rates at ministry/departmental level, including politicians, but excluding frontline delivery employees (police, health, education, emergency services, etc); and caps on senior management level remuneration within delivery arms, as a ratio of median remuneration amongst employees below manager status (say a ratio of x3?) would be a start.
There also needs to be a reigning in of the banking sector to lower debt levels across the board and reduce the excessive banking profits being siphoned off to across the ditch.
Uni-party transfer of power. High time equality of suffrage was returned to this country.
"...These recent attempts by iwi leaders to control local government show just how serious this tribal takeover has become. Just because the government changed, it doesn’t mean New Zealand is safe. Quite the opposite. With the framework for tribal rule already in place, iwi are now proactively hunting for every opportunity to impose their controls onto an unsuspecting public.
This is why other related election pledges, yet to be addressed – such as repealing or replacing Treaty principles in twenty-three pieces of legislation and overhauling the Waitangi Tribunal – need to be completed before the election.
It’s also why any party that pledges “to remove all race-based initiatives from legislation” as a bottom line during the election campaign, should be supported – because they understand that the only way to guarantee equal rights is for a nation to have colourblind statutes.
It’s what a number of OECD countries have already done – including Sweden, Finland, Austria, Holland, France, and Belgium. New Zealand now needs to now follow suit."
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