Australia's two-party system is facing its reckoning. A structural rupture reflecting an electorate that has had a gutful of the cookie-cutter politicians who are only in it for themselves, feasting on the largesse of the system.
That's what's now confronting the major parties.
For more than a century, Australian politics has been built on the Labor versus non-Labor divide. By 1909, Alfred Deakin's anti-Labor fusion hardened the mould, creating a binary contest that has defined our democracy ever since. It only solidified after World War II with the formation of the Liberal Party.
The duopoly has been challenged before. The Democrats styled themselves as the Senate's conscience, 'keeping the bastards honest'. The Greens carved out territory on Labor's left. The Teals eviscerated the Liberals' moderate heartland in lower house contests around the country, and rural independents have intermittently exposed the Nationals.
Yet these disruptions remained satellites orbiting the two-party sun, they didn't threaten to replace it. The current One Nation surge is very different.
Polling shows One Nation ahead of both the major parties. Its primary vote has only recently overtaken Labor's, but it's been well ahead of the Coalition's for some time now.
We are watching a direct assault on the established political order, but the most revealing thing isn't just the polling, it's the collapse of the old containment lines. People are openly spruiking their plan to vote for One Nation, and that's happening right around the country.
It's no longer a dirty little secret.
A vote for Pauline Hanson is no longer a dirty little secret, says Daily Mail political editor Peter van Onselen. (Hanson is pictured)
For years, Hansonism was politically manageable because it was socially and geographically fenced off. It was regionally based, supporters weren't tertiary educated. They were mostly male, older, and felt alienated. Today, however, One Nation has generated support amongst women, younger voters, city voters and even titans of industry - the educated class are coming on board.
It has become a national vehicle for expressing dissent with the status quo until it becomes the new status quo.
Crucially, the social cost of saying 'I might vote for Pauline' isn't what it once was. In the late 1990s, her rise carried a stigma in mainstream society that pushed supporters into the political shadows. Today, however, the dirty secret has become dinner table conversation, and not so dirty anymore, including among the affluent.
It's been completely normalised on talkback radio. Sections of the business community are flirting with Hansonism, billionaires too.
Like the hidden Trump voters in 2016, the hidden Hanson supporters have emerged emboldened, unapologetic, and unashamed, joined by a whole new cohort of advocates.
I hear it every day where I live, where once it would have been unthinkable to declare your support for One Nation.
This should terrify the major parties. For younger voters, the racial controversies of 1996 are ancient history, while for older voters, time has dulled the outrage. Hanson's views on radical Islam are seen by many through the prism of social cohesion and standing up for Australian values, not racism.
The major parties should be terrified by this
But Hanson's support goes deeper than that.
Many Australians now thinking about voting One Nation are driven by cost-of-living fury, immigration anxiety, housing affordability and an all-consuming desire to punish the established political class. Then there are those who are just sick and tired of bloated government spending too much and racking up endless debt.
Voters aren't poring over One Nation's platform and concluding Hanson has mastered the machinery of government, or how to fix the national problems. They know the party is rough and unpredictable. Power brings access to resources to build a detailed policy response to match the rhetorical brushstrokes.
To voters who have lost faith in the political class, polish is not a virtue, it is part of the problem.
And the mainstream media's attempts to discredit or demonise Hanson reflect the fourth estate's own demise. The attacks look cheap, ideological and condescending. For the most part they simply reinforce why change is necessary in Canberra. The possibility that One Nation might blow up the system is no longer disqualifying. For a growing cohort of voters, it's the whole point now.
This revolt transcends conservative civil war now. Australians are abandoning an untrustworthy Labor government, while rejecting a Coalition that offers neither convictions nor competence. Together, Labor and the Coalition look like a protection racket for a political order voters have stopped respecting.
Nonetheless, it's the Coalition most at risk in the longer term, especially the junior partner, the Nationals, who could be wiped out at the next election. Across the democratic world, centre-right parties that thought they could manage populist insurgencies have instead been consumed by them.
Donald Trump became the face of the Republican Party, Nigel Farage appears to have historically diminished the British Conservatives. Once voters decide the establishment itself is the problem, offering a slightly more polished version of that establishment is no answer.
Many Australians now thinking about voting One Nation are driven by cost-of-living fury, immigration anxiety, housing affordability and an all-consuming desire to punish the established political class,' writes PVO
Nor is this disillusionment the electorate feels confined to voting One Nation. Tack on the Greens, the Teals, and the sprawling independent vote, and it's no wonder the primary support for the majors is in the toilet.
If Albo had been remotely honest with voters, rather than dismissively breaking election promises within 12 months of his re-election, perhaps Labor wouldn't have also fallen victim to the wrath of the public. But his dissatisfaction rating of 60 per cent, according to Newspoll, sums up his broken bond with the public.
They no longer like him, trust him, or respect him.
For decades, compulsory preferential voting has masked the decay of the primary votes of the majors. The system produced a neat two-party answer to almost everything. But when a third party's primary vote rises above that of both major parties, the two-party system is by definition dead, if the polling translates on election day.
While One Nation, the teals and the Greens are very different political beasts, holding diametrically opposed views on a host of issues, they are united by a belief that the major parties no longer deserve automatic authority. Disillusioned voters therefore have a smorgasbord of ideological options to choose from when fleeing the major parties.
Political taboos rarely collapse overnight; they are dismantled conversation by conversation, until the unthinkable becomes unremarkable. The challenge for team Hanson is to make the shift stick into the medium and longer term.
Hanson isn't playing the same game as Albo or Angus Taylor, which is precisely why they are struggling to lay a glove on her. None of which guarantees she will occupy the Lodge after the next election. For a start, the election isn't due for nearly two years. One Nation remains organisationally fragile, its candidate base is uneven, and the closer it gets to power, the more scrutiny it will face.
Preferences will likely deny it power to some extent, but Hanson doesn't need to win government to fundamentally alter the nation. If One Nation were to become the official opposition, even for a single parliament, the consequences could be long-lasting.
The Coalition's claim to be the natural alternative would disintegrate. Labor would confront an anti-establishment force it has no idea how to defeat. The old architecture of Australian politics would be undone.
Australia's two-party system has survived wars and depressions. It survived Hanson the first time in the late 1990s because it could contain her. Previous minor parties never came close to challenging the dominance of the majors.
This time is different. Hanson is more savvy. The quiet part is now being said out loud within the Australian community. Voters are openly declaring their plan to vote for One Nation, in the hope that doing so wrecks the system.
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