Democracy Sausage with Mark Kenny
Aug 25, 2026 · 48 min · 12 segments
Why has David Farley's and Pauline Hanson's immigration number not matched up — and does it even matter to One Nation's supporters? What do focus groups really say when people explain…
Alex FeinGuest
Mark KennyHostMaria TaflagaHost
Now, I've been really fascinated by the confusion in One Nation this week over immigration.
This is like the Labor Party not being sure of its position on unionism or perhaps Medicare.
This was always the looming test, I think, for One Nation as it rose this year, how to translate the vibe into detailed, defensible policy, agreed policy.
We saw David Farley, the new lower house member for Faris, who's in Lee's old seat, which he won in that by-election not so long ago.
He had his own sort of somewhat bespoke definitions, but the aggregate number that he was talking about, 230,000 or so net overseas migration to Australia, It's not really different at all in any material terms from what Labor is proposing.
And, of course, Pauline Hanson was out pretty quickly saying that it was going to be significantly less, more like $130,000 all up.
So, you know, it's, as I say, real confusion there, Maria, in terms of what they stand for.
And for One Nation, it doesn't really get much more definitional than this immigration question, does it?
Well, I guess it's just a lesson in politics of making principles translate into reality, but also some of the things that we've been talking about in the past, about the nature of the constituency that's voting for her or flirting with voting for her and the needs of those communities, communities that are being shaped by the fact that there is Migration to the cities and the impact that that's having on regional and rural communities where she's getting a lot of her vote from.
And yet, as we've seen so much with One Nation and with populist parties around the world, this sort of populist insurgencies, as they're sometimes called.
And to some extent, contradictions like Pauline Hanson communing with billionaires or whatever, those sort of contradictions don't seem to really matter much to this burgeoning constituency of the disaffected.
And other contradictions in policy detail may also not matter because, and we see this with Trump, it just doesn't matter.
Nothing seems to prick the balloon, as it were, of this kind of inflated kind of public support.
Now, I've been really fascinated by the confusion in One Nation this week over immigration.
This is like the Labor Party not being sure of its position on unionism or perhaps Medicare.
This was always the looming test, I think, for One Nation as it rose this year, how to translate the vibe into detailed, defensible policy, agreed policy.
We saw David Farley, the new lower house member for Faris, who's in Lee's old seat, which he won in that by-election not so long ago.
He had his own sort of somewhat bespoke definitions, but the aggregate number that he was talking about, 230,000 or so net overseas migration to Australia, It's not really different at all in any material terms from what Labor is proposing.
And, of course, Pauline Hanson was out pretty quickly saying that it was going to be significantly less, more like $130,000 all up.
So, you know, it's, as I say, real confusion there, Maria, in terms of what they stand for.
And for One Nation, it doesn't really get much more definitional than this immigration question, does it?
Well, I guess it's just a lesson in politics of making principles translate into reality, but also some of the things that we've been talking about in the past, about the nature of the constituency that's voting for her or flirting with voting for her and the needs of those communities, communities that are being shaped by the fact that there is Migration to the cities and the impact that that's having on regional and rural communities where she's getting a lot of her vote from.
And yet, as we've seen so much with One Nation and with populist parties around the world, this sort of populist insurgencies, as they're sometimes called.
And to some extent, contradictions like Pauline Hanson communing with billionaires or whatever, those sort of contradictions don't seem to really matter much to this burgeoning constituency of the disaffected.
And other contradictions in policy detail may also not matter because, and we see this with Trump, it just doesn't matter.
Nothing seems to prick the balloon, as it were, of this kind of inflated kind of public support.
The rest of this transcript — segmented and speaker-labeled, so you land on the exact moment something was said
Search every transcript — by keyword, by phrase, or by meaning, across every show Radar indexes
Trends — what is surging across podcasts, measured against its own baseline
Alerts — when a name you follow appears in a newly indexed episode
No account is needed to search Radar.
