Deeming one more time

Recent opinion polls in Australia suggest that the meteoric rise in support for the far-right One Nation has come to an end, but it is very much in the nature of a plateau rather than the bursting of a bubble: One Nation is consistently polling at or just under the 30% mark. Even in what should be about its worst state, Victoria, a recent poll of state voting intentions puts it at 27%, effectively in a three-way tie with Labor and the Coalition, both on 26%.

And this is of more than academic interest because Victoria is the next state to vote: its state election will be held in less than five months, on 28 November. For both One Nation and the Liberal and National parties, it will be by far their biggest test to date.

No-one knows what a more or less even three-way split would produce in terms of seats. We know that in the South Australian election last March an impressive One Nation vote of 22.9% produced only a meagre return, four seats out of 47. But that was a very different situation to Victoria. South Australian Labor was in its first term and still travelling well; its primary vote mostly held up, down only 2.4% from four years earlier.

Labor in Victoria is in much deeper trouble. Its primary vote is down around ten points and it has about it, if not quite the smell of death than at least the smell of serious injury. Premier Jacinta Allan gives every appearance of being utterly out of her depth; she is plagued by stories of corruption and a dire budgetary position, and she seems unable to either match the appeal of her predecessor, Daniel Andrews, or differentiate herself from his policies.

In normal times you would say that the government was headed for a heavy defeat and that Liberal leader Jess Wilson was on her way to becoming premier. But these are far from normal times. If the Coalition and One Nation really are neck and neck, the election will raise issues that take attention away from Labor’s problems and instead focus it on issues that the Liberals would very much prefer not to have to deal with.

If Labor, Coalition and One Nation all win comparable numbers of seats – if, in other words, One Nation for the first time holds the balance of power – what will the Liberals do? Will they try to govern with the support of One Nation? Will they support a One Nation minority government? Will they try to negotiate a coalition with One Nation? Any attempt to answer those questions risks splitting the party.

But they cannot be avoided. Allan may be an ineffective premier, but surely she will realise that here is a lifeline she needs to grasp hold of. Every advertisement, every interview, every opportunity needs to feature a single theme: “A vote for Jess Wilson is a vote for a One Nation government.” Ted Baillieu had a taste of this back in 2006 when the media pilloried him for not having a coalition agreement in place with the National Party, but that’s nothing compared to the salience of the issue this year.

It would be difficult enough for Wilson if she was an experienced leader in command of a united party. Instead, she is a first-term MP leading a party perennially at war with itself. Its disunity has been in the spotlight again over the last fortnight with the return of Moira Deeming, who was briefly disendorsed back in March before being reinstated after her opponent was found to have skeletons in his closet.

The Liberal state executive was ready to again revoke Deeming’s endorsement last Friday, but it was put on hold after she sought a supreme court injunction. The matter will now go to a hearing next week, but there seems no doubt about the eventual outcome. In one sense, this is an opportunity for the party to show unity: nearly all of Deeming’s former supporters have abandoned her, so for once the Liberals seem to have an agreed position.

But that won’t make the underlying divisions go away. And among other things it will remind everyone of just how much time the party leadership has been spending in court: from the original lawsuit by Deeming against then-leader John Pesutto, through to continuing litigation between executive members over the party’s response to that judgement, not to mention the party unsuccessfully suing for control of its major donor back in 2018.

Meanwhile, One Nation can afford to just watch from the sidelines. As many have noted, it’s remarkable how much polling success it has had even in the absence of any policies, candidates or state leader in Victoria. But the last time that Deeming looked like parting company with the Liberal Party, it was widely thought that she would cross over to One Nation and would have been an obvious choice to lead it into the election.

This time Pauline Hanson says that she is not welcome, not being (believe it or not) the sort of “person with integrity and honesty” that she is looking for. But I wouldn’t be greatly surprised if Deeming’s high profile and cult following ultimately prove irresistible. Alternatively, as I said last time, “she may choose to retire content, leaving the party a smouldering ruin behind her.”