The story of the year so far in Australian politics has been the surge in support for the far-right One Nation. So far, it is mostly a phenomenon of the opinion polls; actual electoral tests have been limited, but what there have been – particularly the South Australian state election and the Farrer by-election – have tended to confirm the message.
Now another two important tests are coming up: a by-election in Western Australia tomorrow, and the Victorian state election in three months time, on 28 November. Between them they could decide whether One Nation recedes from its peak or goes on to greater things.
It hasn’t been a great month for One Nation. Its growth in support has brought increased media scrutiny, with which it doesn’t cope very well, and its different spokespeople regularly contradict one another. Perhaps as a result its polling numbers seem to have plateaued and in some cases declined. A poor performance tomorrow in Secret Harbour would encourage a narrative of “bursting the One Nation bubble.”
At the 2025 Western Australian state election, Labor won Secret Harbour with a primary vote of 46.5%. The Liberal candidate had 25.0%, the Greens 8.8% and One Nation 8.4%; three minor candidates shared the remaining 11.2%. The came out as a two-party-preferred result of 61.5% to 38.5%. Sitting on a double-digit margin and with no major disaster having overtaken it in government, Labor would expect to start as favorite in the by-election.
And indeed that’s what Sportsbet says this afternoon: Labor is at 6-4 on. But the punters think One Nation is its only serious opponent, at 8-5 against, with the Liberals way out at 33-1. There’s been quite a big last minute shift; on Wednesday you could still get 11-4 against One Nation, while the Liberals were at an almost respectable 12-1.
Even so, the key message is that One Nation doesn’t have to win the seat to meet expectations (although of course that would be icing on the cake), it just has to decisively beat the Liberals. And if it does, it will relish the achievement all the more because the seat mostly falls within the federal seat of Canning, held by Andrew Hastie – one of the few Liberals to urge the party to fight One Nation, albeit from a very right-wing perspective.
Last month when the by-election was first called I drew attention to the discrepancy between One Nation’s odds there (which at the time were even shorter) and in Victoria. I suggested that “perhaps people think that One Nation’s support is basically a protest vote, good for by-elections but not when real power is at stake. (South Australia could be used either for or against the latter suggestion, depending on how you look at it.)”
To expand on that last slightly cryptic comment: South Australia was not a by-election, but it shared with one the feature that there was no prospect of the government changing hands. Everyone knew that Labor was going to win a landslide, as it duly did, so voters may well have gone to the polls with the intent of making a statement rather than expressing a view about who should be in government.
But that clearly won’t be the case in Victoria. Its Labor government is twelve years old and looking tired; the advent of new premier Ben Carroll has provided some breathing space, but he will nonetheless start as the underdog. Not so much, though, that his defeat looks like a foregone conclusion – those who want to get rid of Labor will not feel they have the luxury of being able to indulge themselves with a protest vote.
In that atmosphere, how will One Nation fare? The punters so far seem unimpressed: the odds of anyone outside Labor and the Coalition providing the next premier are 15-2 against. The Coalition is a firm favorite at about 8-3 on, with Labor 8-3 against. But in early July you could get 10-1 against “any other”, so One Nation is being taken a bit more seriously despite its recent troubles.
Just as in Secret Harbour, One Nation’s primary adversary is the Coalition, not Labor. There is no major downside for it in Labor being re-elected, but a Coalition majority government – and especially one in which the Coalition outvoted it across most of the state – would be a huge setback. So its main aim will be to beat the Coalition in as many places as possible, without worrying too much about who it’s taking votes from or where they are going in preferences.
Labor won in 2022 with 56 of the 88 seats, plus another four to the Greens (one of which they subsequently lost to the Liberals in a by-election). A Coalition majority therefore requires a gain of 16 seats, which on a uniform basis would be a swing of 7.6%. And since One Nation’s starting point is zero (last time it only contested five seats, collecting 0.3% of the vote), the target for a Coalition + One Nation majority is the same.
The Coalition’s problem – one of them, anyway – is that many of those target seats are in what should be good One Nation territory. In places like Bass (0.2%), Hastings (1.4%), Ripon (3.0%), Bayswater (4.2%), Yan Yean (4.3%) and Melton (4.6%), plus more further up the table, staying ahead of One Nation will be a big task in itself. And because preference flow from the Coalition to One Nation and vice versa is not very strong, the more evenly matched the two are in a seat, the harder it will be, ceteris paribus, for either of them to win it.
The Coalition also has to worry about its own seats. Last time the National Party did particularly well, winning nine of the ten seats it contested. But in Farrer One Nation outvoted the Nationals by four to one, so none of those seats can now be considered safe. And every one of them that One Nation picks up makes it that much harder to find a path to a Coalition majority.
This in turn is Carroll’s opportunity: he has to do everything he can to paint the election as a binary choice between Labor and One Nation. And that’s a task in which One Nation will happily assist.
The World is Not Enough 