In 1997, when I was presenting the Country Hour on the ABC, I was sitting in an outside broadcast van at an agricultural field day in Northern Victoria about to interview the then member for Farrer and deputy prime minister, Tim Fischer, and the deputy opposition leader, Gareth Evans.
Pauline Hanson had just been elected to the House of Representatives and had subsequently launched One Nation. The two major-party veterans knew this was a threat.
Off-air, they put their heads together in quiet agreement to resist One Nation’s populist tenets – anti-multiculturalism, economic nationalism and protectionism – an early Australian version of Trump’s America First posturing.
It was a rare insight into bipartisan reason, where two powerful men put principle over politics.
How things have changed.
Almost 30 years later, the highly respected Tim Fischer is sadly no longer with us. And the Coalition, in its death throes, is now validating the divisive, xenophobic, ascendant One Nation by preferencing them in his former seat.
This move may well deliver One Nation its first election win in the lower house in the federal parliament. In doing so, the Coalition may be putting the final nail in its own coffin.
And given the place the seat of Farrer holds in the history of conservative politics – Robert Menzies hosted the formative Albury Conference there in 1944 – arguably the Liberal party is coming home to be buried.
After admitting the party had “breached trust” with its supporters, it was Angus Taylor himself who said it was a case of “change or die” but it may well be both as he panders to the fringes in a bid for survival.
Surely this kind of positioning has little appeal in the urban seats that provide the only pathway to government unless the Coalition wants to be the minor party in a One Nation administration?
It’s not a new strategy from the Libs. At the 2025 election they actively preferenced One Nation above Labor and, in many cases, community independents, including myself in the seat of Goldstein, where political ambition blatantly overpowered principle.
Here, there was an active disinformation campaign in which the Liberals accused independents like myself of being pseudo-Greens in an attempt to appeal to an “anti-woke” sentiment in the community.
If you actually look at the voting record of independents on motions, legislation and amendments, in the last parliament most voted roughly 50/50 for and against those moved by the Coalition, Labor and Greens, proving their considered approach to politics. Statistics show similar reasoned decision making during this term.
In contrast Taylor has voted with One Nation’s Barnaby Joyce 99.8% of the time and the Liberals vote with Pauline Hanson as much as 90% of the time in the Senate.
Any remnants of so-called moderate Liberalism are long gone.
In the case of Farrer, Taylor is trying to divert attention from this by claiming, falsely, that a vote for community independent Michelle Milthorpe is a vote for the Greens.
In fact, a vote for the Liberals is a vote for One Nation candidate David Farley, who at this stage is a nose ahead of Milthorpe in the polls (30.9% v 30%) and is therefore predicted to win thanks to Liberal preferences.
“We don’t want to see teal policies for Farrer or the nation,” Taylor told ABC’s Insiders.
Leaving aside the fact that the term “teal” is a lazy construct used to label a group of independents who have their own individual views, policies and approaches to representing their communities, what are their actual policies?
They include tax reform to better spread wealth, improve innovation and productivity and help young people thrive, women’s safety and economic empowerment, truth in political advertising, integrity in government, increased funding for medical research and banning gambling ads.
In contrast, One Nation is all ideology and no policy, something even the Liberal party is campaigning on. Yet it’s an ideology that the Liberals are breathlessly fanning in an ill-fated attempt to save themselves to the detriment of a united, hopeful and future-focused nation.
On election day in 2022 I took my then 13-year-old daughter into the polling booth with me as I cast my vote, having initially resisted but then agreed to run because of exactly this kind of selfish and shortsighted politics.
When I put my Liberal opponent above the One Nation candidate on my ballot, she told me I had the numbers in the wrong order.
I told her that I would always put One Nation last.
I had seen Tim Fischer and Gareth Evans put principle over politics.
It can be done.
Zoe Daniel is a three-time ABC foreign correspondent and the former independent member for Goldstein
