The breach of trust fuelling One Nation

The polling trend since the last election dramatises the movement. There is a steady erosion of both Labor and Liberal votes and a rise in One Nation’s.

The Bondi Hanukkah massacre appears to have temporarily arrested the Coalition’s decline, likely because the event placed questions of authority and public order at the centre of the national conversation in an otherwise politically dormant period. The subsequent anti-Semitism legislation then appears to have reversed that stabilisation, coinciding with a renewed and steeper shift to One Nation.

What we are seeing, then, is the pro-individual, pro-free-enterprise wing of the Coalition being shaken loose during Covid, when collectivist and paternalist solutions were imposed by the party they still regarded as home.

They initially placed their faith in Peter Dutton to restore the party’s instincts. Instead, the subsequent election defeat against a government they deeply disliked, followed by the Coalition’s failure to differentiate itself on immigration and civil-liberties questions, deepened their institutional disillusionment.

The final phase – where One Nation begins to eclipse the Coalition – reflects the growing belief that an establishment duopoly has emerged, of which these voters no longer feel part.

Covid broke trust. Immigration organised the break. The anti-Semitism legislation completed it.