Who are the new One Nation voters?

Probably the biggest thematic was just dissatisfaction with politics as usual.

And,

look, we've seen that variously over the years, come and go, starting with the Australian Democrats.

And there have been a bubble of right-wing parties who've never really kind of gotten much traction apart from once in Queensland and It's mainly been Pauline Hanson.

Interestingly, I think, and this is with the new recent change with the Green leadership, we started to see a bit of a surge there too.

So I think there are people looking on that side as well as the other side.

But, yeah, just out of fashion with politics as usual, there is the immigration strain and obviously since COVID, you know, there were massive numbers coming in and that's been easy to weaponise by the Murdoch media and other mainstream media.

I think there's a sense as well from a lot of them that, you know, smaller interest groups and identity politics have kind of taken over because small interest groups are very well organised and they make themselves heard.

And I think it is a general sort of feeling that the majority of Australians, if you like, haven't been represented in where politics has gone in the last five years.

Yeah.

I think what's interesting to me is that this anti-major party sentiment has been kicking around a long time.

I mean, we saw, you know, the 2022 poll was huge for independents and Greens, the 2025 election, not so much.

But then you go right back to Pauline Hanson's last surge in 1998 when she did quite well in Queensland and then had a crack at a big federal campaign.

It all fizzled out though.

Hansonism had a moment.

People were sick of the major parties and she went away and then she came back.

But it was quite stagnant for a while.

Why right now is it accelerating like this? And do you think it's going to be different to the 90s?

A couple of reasons.

And one of the people I spoke to made a very salient point, I think, about COVID.

People saw what the government can do and the control that it can have.

And, you know, depending on where you were, obviously you're in Victoria, Rachel, but even everywhere, you know, and one of the guys I spoke to was a fireman who had led the anti-vaccine campaign down there.

Now, he's not some hippie anti-vaxxer.

He's just a bloke from who seems to be, was pretty much a Labor voter and just decided she didn't want to be forced to do that.

And as time goes on, we'll see COVID as a real tipping point for a lot of things.