One Nation’s surge in popularity, up to a 22% primary vote in the latest Guardian Essential poll after outrage over Pauline Hanson’s comments about Australian Muslims, has been largely explained as a Coalition problem: disillusioned Liberal or National voters, exhausted with conservative chaos, parking their vote with another rightwing party. But this week’s Essential poll, showing 45% of Labor voters surveyed were open to voting for One Nation, holds warning signs for the government too.
The mood inside Labor could be summarised as alert, but not alarmed. Ministers are already sharpening their attack lines on One Nation – its opposition to Labor’s cost of living and industrial relations policies, Hanson’s ties to Gina Rinehart – but the government is cognisant that a bread-and-butter focus on tax, housing and social issues is needed to plug any leakage to the rightwing populist party.
“Whilst there will be a cohort that will drift to One Nation, because of [the party’s] divisive nature and their lack of real policies, it’s less likely to affect us,” says Labor MP Mike Freelander.
This week’s Essential poll found 58% of respondents were open to voting for One Nation at the next federal election, which is due by 2028. That includes 12% of people currently voting Labor who said they’d definitely vote One Nation next time, while another 33% were open to it.
For Coalition voters, 17% said they would definitely vote One Nation, with 51% open to it.
Hanson’s office was contacted for comment.
A One Nation source said the party wasn’t entirely surprised by the polling, noting it had long courted traditional blue-collar Labor voters who may feel as if that party’s focus was on cities, professional workers and younger people.
Opinion polls are a point-in-time reflection of mood, and many veteran observers doubt one-fifth of the electorate will actually vote for One Nation. The looming South Australian election and the New South Wales Farrer byelection will test One Nation’s on-ground organisational skills.
But Labor’s strategy to hold off a One Nation insurgency is becoming clearer.
“They don’t represent working people … they oppose every advance that trade unions have ever made,” Albanese told Nine host Karl Stefanovic’s podcast this week. He rattled off One Nation’s opposition to ‘same job same pay’ legislation which targets labour hire loopholes mostly in the mining sector, increases to penalty rates and pay increases for aged care workers.
Labor’s biggest One Nation scare in 2025 was in the mining-rich Hunter region of NSW, where Hanson’s candidate Stuart Bonds got to the final two-party preferred count, although Labor’s Dan Repacholi held his seat 59-41.
Repacholi says he’ll keep talking to constituents about health and economic policies, and ‘same job same pay’. He has called Hanson’s comments about Muslims “disgusting”.
“It’s about getting out there and talking to people, having conversations at the pub, clubs, footy, knocking on their doors about what we’re helping them with,” he says.
“We live in a vibrant community in Australia, the Hunter is no different, and unfortunately some people are being tarnished.”
The environment minister, Murray Watt, from One Nation’s Queensland heartland, conceded last week Labor would lose some votes, but his pitch to “battlers” considering switching was about Hanson’s opposition to reforms on housing, cheaper medicines and wages.
Kos Samaras, a former Labor strategist who is now a director of polling group Redbridge, says that language isn’t accidental. He concedes “a small fraction” of Labor voters have already moved to One Nation, painting a picture of the typical voter being in their 40s or 50s, working in the care economy, retail, hospitality or industry – in other words, someone benefiting from better conditions at work.
But Samaras cautions against over interpreting polls about Labor voters’ openness to One Nation. Potential Labor-to-Hanson voters are turned off by One Nation’s extreme criticism of multicultural Australia, he claims, and he doesn’t expect Labor to follow with tough crackdowns on migration.
There’s also the “fed up” factor – people voting not solely on policy, but because they are frustrated by the major parties and the cost of living. While One Nation has not presented a workable policy agenda or economic solutions, some voters may be willing to back a party promising to upturn the system.
On a new online donations campaign, One Nation points to the polls saying the party needs “your help to break the party system”.
Combating this pitch is tough. Labor sources say rebuilding trust in government by delivering on promises and acting as a stable hand takes time; there’s also a recognition that Labor shouldn’t get caught up in conservative culture wars.
One outer suburban Labor MP reckons there has always been an element of “red” One Nation voters, or working-class Labor voters flirting with Hanson, but that a focus on jobs, cost of living and infrastructure will stem that tide.
Freelander concurrs.
“We need to be positive about what we’ve done in the last few years. We need to focus on the fact that Australia is a country of immigrants and our economy requires a certain amount of immigration,” he says.
Peter Lewis, executive director of Essential, says there are “templates about how not to respond” to rightwing populist movements. He urges Labor not to echo Hillary Clinton’s “basket of deplorables” comments about Donald Trump’s supporters, or to follow the British Labour government’s crackdown on migrants in the face of Nigel Farage’s anti immigration party Reform UK.
“Labor could go the long way round and get them from the left rather than the right … economic agendas, wages, workers rights is the way to get them back,” Lewis told the Australian Politics podcast.
Albanese himself caught flak from leftwing critics for saying some “good people” attended anti-immigration March For Australia rallies last year, while condemning rallies for giving a platform to neo-Nazis. The assistant minister for citizenship, customs and multicultural affairs, Julian Hill, this week called for progressives to not dismiss “legitimate concerns” about migration levels.
“The trap for progressives is to fail to acknowledge that concerns are real,” Hill said.
Lewis predicts Labor will stick with its focus on day-to-day policy and service delivery, but he says the May budget could be an opportunity for the government to pick a fight – on capital gains tax, negative gearing or some other totemic issue – to show battling Australians that Albanese is paying attention to their concerns about inequality.
“There needs to be some differentiation for people who would normally see themselves as progressive … but who want to see a fairer economy,” he says.
“If that’s not being delivered by the mainstream, we see how that movie ends, and it’s happening all over the world.”
