One Nation’s rise reflects deeper economic insecurity, political alienation and distrust in institutions. Defeating it requires more than condemnation.
At the Queensland ALP state conference on Sunday, 30 August 2026, Anthony Albanese described One Nation as part of a broader hard-right populist threat.
“Across the world, hard-right populists are on the march, peddling politics that is dangerous, divisive and downright dishonest.”
“We simply must defeat them. We owe it to history. We owe it to the nation, and we will defeat them.”
Has the Labor government finally acknowledged that One Nation is a threat to Australian democracy?
That is the question now confronting the government and the broader political establishment.
One Nation is no longer simply a protest vehicle for disaffected voters or a marginal force on the political right. Its growing influence is reshaping political debate, pressuring the major parties and exposing the depth of public dissatisfaction with Australia’s economic and institutional arrangements.
The rise of One Nation is not the disease. It is a symptom – and a warning that Australia’s democratic and economic foundations are losing legitimacy.
The real question is not why One Nation exists.
It is why so many Australians are prepared to listen.
Recent polling makes that warning difficult to dismiss.
On the basis of a five-poll median calculation (Demos, YouGov, Morgan, Newspoll, Redbridge) in August, the following results were produced:
ON: 27 per cent, LNP: 21 per cent, ALP: 29 per cent, AG: 12 per cent, others 10 per cent.
Economic insecurity has become political insecurity.
And political insecurity has created an opening for political fragmentation.
That fragmentation is visible in the weakening of traditional party loyalties.
That does not make One Nation capable of being a governing party.
But it does make it a political force capable of changing the behaviour of conservative politics in this country, as we have seen overseas.
The broader trend is more important still.
Trust in government, in business and in the legacy media remains low. Cost-of-living pressures dominate voters’ concerns, while confidence that political parties understand ordinary households remains weak.
Many Australians no longer believe the political system, or the economy, works for them. There is great power in connecting genuine material insecurity to a broader sense of political alienation.
Hard-right authoritarianism prospers when economic hardship is translated into cultural grievance and exclusionary nationalism.
This is the critical political transformation we are witnessing.
A shortage of housing can become an argument against migrants rather than a consequence of inadequate construction, supply chain shortages, infrastructure and public housing.
Complex economic problems have become cultural conflicts.
Material insecurity has produced resentment.
And resentment can be mobilised against groups portrayed as outsiders, or against institutions portrayed as part of a corrupt establishment.
With the help of the big tech algorithms and international field testing, One Nation’s politics has found fertile ground.
On migration, multiculturalism, international institutions, Indigenous recognition, religious diversity and gender identity, it advances a narrower conception of national identity and belonging.
One Nation’s spin merchants’ argument is that Australia has lost control of its future; that established institutions have failed; and that national cohesion requires a more culturally uniform society.
Increasingly, this political outlook is reinforced by conspiracy narratives.
One Nation figures have promoted or echoed claims associated with the so-called ‘Great Reset’, warned about ‘globalist’ influence through organisations such as the United Nations and World Health Organization, and portrayed climate-change policies as mechanisms through which international actors seek to undermine national sovereignty.
These ideas are part of a much wider global movement.
Their significance is not that every One Nation voter accepts every conspiracy theory.
It is that they encourage a broader distrust of expertise, independent institutions and democratic decision-making.
Once government, scientists, universities, international organisations and mainstream media are all presented as components of one corrupt establishment, there is little room left for institutional trust.
And when political opponents are portrayed not as people with different views but as enemies of the nation, parliamentary compromise itself becomes suspect.
Authoritarian nationalism defines Australian identity narrowly, privileging an idealised cultural norm and treating some forms of religious, ethnic or political difference as a problem of security or social cohesion.
One Nation’s positions on Muslim immigration, refugees, multicultural programs, Indigenous recognition, diversity issues and leftist political activism need to be understood within this framework.
But there is a fundamental difference between strengthening national cohesion and demanding cultural conformity.
Australia’s multiculturalism has produced national prosperity.
This prosperity has depended upon people from different backgrounds participating as equal citizens in common democratic institutions.
A democracy protects individual rights precisely because citizenship cannot depend upon belonging to the cultural majority.
Take One Nation’s proposal for photographic identification on Medicare cards.
The policy is presented as an answer to Medicare fraud and alleged losses of billions of dollars.
Much of the identified problem concerns provider non-compliance, inappropriate billing and administrative error.
The lesson is broader.
One Nation is good at finding grievance and scapegoats, rather than solutions.
The same applies to international health cooperation. One Nation advocates withdrawal from the World Health Organization and has opposed vaccine mandates.
But withdrawing from international health cooperation does not solve the underlying problems created by infectious disease.
The same principle applies to climate change.
But portraying climate science primarily as an instrument of international political control converts a complex policy question into a conspiracy narrative.
Australia is not simply America ten years later.
The political systems are different.
Our electoral system is fair.
Our institutions remain more stable.
Our society is still less polarised.
But the transmission of political ideas is now virtually instantaneous.
Anti-establishment rhetoric, distrust of expertise, hostility towards immigration, attacks on mainstream media, online influencer politics and claims of lost national sovereignty circulate globally in real time.
History offers an important warning.
The collapse of confidence in neoliberalism does not automatically produce a progressive alternative.
The end of one political settlement does not guarantee the beginning of a better one.
This is where Labor faces its greatest challenge.
The struggle against One Nation cannot be reduced to electoral arithmetic.
Labor cannot defeat authoritarian populism simply by condemning it, nor, as the Liberals do, by trying to imitate it.
It must demonstrate that democratic government can address the conditions that have produced this alienation.
The Honourable Kim Carr FAHA FTSE is a former Minister for Higher Education, Innovation, Industry, Science and Research, and served as Senator for Victoria for over 29 years. He made a significant national contribution in these policy areas. He was an active interlocutor at Senate Estimates and a key member of many Senate Inquiries into Australia’s Innovation system. He is widely regarded as a staunch champion of Australia’s universities and publicly funded research agencies. Most recently he was Vice Chancellor’s Professorial Fellow at Monash University (2022-2025). He was awarded the Academy of Science Medal in 2022 – only the second politician, following Bob Hawke in 1990, to be so honoured.