Labor is on the Nose and Its Own Voters are Walking to One Nation, and that’s a Mighty Fine Thing, Too!
Something remarkable is happening in Australian politics, and Victoria may be where the political earthquake finally becomes impossible to ignore. Labor is on the nose, but the really interesting part is not simply that voters are abandoning it. It is where some of those voters are going.
They are going to Pauline Hanson's One Nation.
For decades, the Australian political establishment had a comfortable story about One Nation. Hanson supposedly represented angry conservatives, disaffected rural voters and former Liberal and National voters who had wandered too far to the Right. Labor's working-class heartland, meanwhile, was presumed to be protected by generations of political loyalty, trade-union organisation and cultural identification with the Labor Party. That picture is breaking down.
Victoria provides a fascinating laboratory because Labor has governed the state since 2014 and for all but four years since 1999. What was once an electoral fortress has become highly unstable. The November 28 state election is now shaping up as a potentially historic contest rather than another routine Labor victory. Recent polling has shown Labor struggling badly, while One Nation has emerged as a major political force rather than a minor protest party.
A June RedBridge poll put One Nation on 27 per cent of the Victorian primary vote, with Labor and the Coalition both on 26 per cent. That alone would have sounded almost unbelievable only a few years ago. Even more significant is evidence that One Nation is penetrating communities that historically belonged to Labor. Analysis of the Nepean by-election, for example, found substantial One Nation support in working-class areas such as Rosebud, Dromana and Tootgarook. Political scientist Benjamin Moffitt estimated that perhaps 10 to 15 per cent of 2022 Labor voters in that contest moved to One Nation.
This is the development Labor should fear most. Losing an election is one thing. Losing part of your political base is something else entirely. The old Australian working class was never naturally progressive in the contemporary cultural sense. A suburban tradesman, factory worker, truck driver or small business operator might once have voted Labor because Labor represented wages, jobs, affordable housing and economic security. That did not necessarily mean he wanted radical social experimentation, enormous population growth, expensive climate policies or an expanding bureaucratic state telling him how he ought to think and live.
Labor's problem is that its institutional centre of gravity has changed. The modern party increasingly speaks the language of universities, government bureaucracies, professional activists and affluent metropolitan progressives. Meanwhile, many traditional working-class voters are worried about matters considerably closer to the ground: housing, energy bills, crime, immigration, employment and whether their children will ever be able to afford a home.
Victoria intensifies all these grievances. Melbourne endured some of the world's longest cumulative COVID lockdowns, and RedBridge pollster Kos Samaras argues that the political memory of those restrictions remains part of Labor's problem. The scandals and controversies surrounding the government matter, but underneath them sits a deeper reservoir of resentment.
Then there is energy. Another recent RedBridge poll found 68 per cent support for allowing gas connections in new Victorian homes, against only 14 per cent opposed. Remarkably, 56 per cent of Labor voters supported retaining that choice. When a government finds itself pursuing policies that substantial numbers of its own voters dislike, eventually electoral consequences follow.
The importance of One Nation is that it gives disgruntled voters somewhere to go without requiring them to embrace the Liberal Party. That distinction matters enormously. If Labor voters were merely switching to the Liberals, the old two-party pendulum would remain intact. Governments would become unpopular, voters would throw them out, and after a few terms the cycle would reverse.
One Nation potentially disrupts the machine itself. The party can tell a former Labor voter: you do not have to become a Liberal. You can remain sceptical of big corporations, worry about Australian jobs and living standards, support ordinary working families and nevertheless reject progressive cultural politics, high immigration and policies you believe are driving up energy and housing costs. That is politically potent.
It also explains why attempts to dismiss One Nation voters as ignorant, extreme or morally suspect may now be counterproductive. If a quarter or more of the electorate is considering voting for Hanson, denunciation ceases to be an explanation. Something has changed in the electorate, and calling voters names will not change it back.
Indeed, Australia has already received a warning from South Australia. At the March 2026 state election, One Nation achieved its strongest electoral performance in nearly three decades. Subsequent analysis found particularly strong swings towards the party in electorates containing more low-income and blue-collar voters.
This does not mean One Nation will sweep into government in Victoria. Translating a large statewide vote into lower-house seats is difficult, particularly for a party without the organisation, candidates and accumulated infrastructure of Labor and the Coalition. Nor should too much be inferred from any individual opinion poll. Another poll released this weekend, for example, put the Coalition ahead of Labor 55–45 on two-party preferred while showing some easing in minor-party support. The precise numbers will move considerably before November.
But the underlying political development is harder to dismiss. One Nation has escaped the electoral margins. And that creates a nightmare for Labor. The party can potentially fight the Liberals with the familiar weapons of Australian politics. It is much harder to fight an insurgent party taking votes from people Labor once regarded as its own.
The implications extend far beyond Victoria. Federal Labor cannot safely assume that traditional Labor voters will always return home at election time. Once voters break a lifelong political habit, the psychological barrier disappears. A person who votes One Nation once can vote One Nation again.
Perhaps that is the most important message emerging from Victoria. Australian politics is becoming less tribal. The old loyalties are weakening, and working-class voters increasingly appear willing to punish political parties that they believe no longer represent them. For Labor, that should be terrifying.
For One Nation, it represents an opportunity unlike anything the party has enjoyed since its emergence in the 1990s. Pauline Hanson spent decades being told that she and her voters existed outside respectable Australian politics. Now the political establishment has to contemplate something it once regarded as almost unthinkable: former Labor voters walking across the political battlefield and joining her.
God bless them! Australian democracy becomes healthier, not weaker, when politicians discover that no vote belongs to them permanently. It keeps the b******s honest (Don Chipp's famous phrase), or near enough honest.
