The crowd, clad in orange One Nation T-shirts and flying Australian flags, appear certain they’re in the winners’ circle, with cries of “prime minister” sounding in the rabble.
The pack greeted Pauline Hanson and her newest recruit, the former Liberal turned Sky News commentator Cory Bernardi, in Adelaide on Tuesday high on news of a surge in the polls.
South Australia’s March election will be the first real test of the growing One Nation vote which is feeding off the chaos in the federal Coalition – or the alliance formerly known as.
Hanson has historically been a leader who inspires total devotion, often followed by swift desertion, disorganisation, disqualifications, and complaints she is running a “dictatorship”.
Will her tactics work in SA, where the Liberal party is in a particularly parlous state, and the Labor vote so strong?
The retired ABC election guru Antony Green has mapped One Nation polling federally and found of “the first 25 seats to watch”, 12 would be in Queensland and just one in SA.
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That one seat is Barker, held by Liberal Tony Pasin – an ally of conservative power player and fellow backbencher Alex Antic.
So the national figure of a 22% primary vote for One Nation might not hold up in SA.
Polling in October put state Labor on a two-party preferred lead of 66 to the Liberal party’s 34 – the premier, Peter Malinauskas, is clearly heading for a landslide victory under those figures.
But since then, opposition leader Vincent Tarzia stood down in favour of rising star and moderate Ashton Hurn – which could have an effect on those numbers.
Bernardi and Hanson sounded optimistic about picking up seats in the lower house.
With generous financial support, better campaigning and better candidates than they’ve managed in the past, plus a shift in mood colouring the unpredictability of three-way contests – they might.
But their real hope is winning one or two spots in the state’s upper house – and both hope to be the opposition.
“Whether we have one seat, we have five seats or 22 seats, we will be the strongest voice of opposition that this government has ever faced,” Bernardi says.
“We’re going to contest every seat. We’re going to have a full ticket in the upper house. We’re going to work very hard for our candidates, and I hope they’re all rewarded.
“To be honest, I’d love to be the official opposition in this state. But you know what? Even if we don’t have the most numbers of seats, I promise you, we will have the strongest, the most effective voice.”
In the upper house, 11 seats are up for grabs – and it’s a grab bag of people, many of whom are singing from the same song sheet as One Nation.
And Bernardi isn’t the only former Liberal in the mix.
Former Liberal member turned Family First senator Bob Day will run candidates in both houses for the Australian Family Party. Day’s former chief of staff Rikki Lambert is running for the Nationals. The Family First candidate is former Liberal candidate Deepa Mathew.
Jing Lee, who quit the Liberals after getting caught up in a rightwing abortion bill debacle, is running as an independent.
There is another element of unpredictability in One Nation’s rise. The anti-woke, anti-Islam, anti-immigration, anti-multiculturalism, anti-renewables mob have found their voice in March for Australia protests and through One Nation.
But there might be a cohort in these latest polls that balk at actually ticking the One Nation box when it matters. And it can be reinforced by the experience of voters as the campaign trail heats up.
At Tuesday’s press conference, the ebullient crowd’s cheers turned to jeers as soon as Hanson was asked a tough question by Guardian Australia’s Sarah Martin about failing to declare flights on billionaire Gina Rinehart’s private jet.
Hanson struggled to come up with a cohesive answer, and her supporters erupted in fury at the questioning. “Who cares?” they yelled at the press, as people began to jostle one another. “Did you have something for breakfast?”
“What is your agenda?” Carlos Quaremba said, and repeated it. It was almost the sole contribution to the press conference for the One Nation state president, who has been relegated to second spot on the ticket by Bernardi.
But the more disturbing response to a reporter’s valid question came from someone in the crowd who was heard saying: “She’s going to get lynched.”
Tory Shepherd is a senior reporter for Guardian Australia
