The times suit Hanson. But for Albanese, it’s a minefield

March 28, 2026 — 4:00am

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Suddenly, the Albanese government’s mighty parliamentary majority starts to look vulnerable.

Two developments have come together to unsettle the entire foundation of Australian politics. First is One Nation’s performance in the South Australian election. Labor Premier Peter Malinauskas won handsomely, of course. But One Nation emerged as a winner, too. Its new popularity in opinion polls has punched through into reality.

“Topline, the wave of populism we have seen washing through” the rest of the democratic world “has now arrived on our shores”, says Malinauskas. He takes it seriously. “It needs to be thought through very carefully by all mainstream parties of government,” he tells me.

One Nation never had done well in South Australia, a moderate, middle-class, urbanised, state, liberal by inclination and Labor by choice. It was the first state to allow women to vote and stand for parliament, the first state to decriminalise homosexuality. It isn’t a place where you’d expect to find a heaving hotbed of right-wing populism. At the previous state election, One Nation scored a trivial 2.5 per cent of the primary vote.

But last weekend, Pauline Hanson’s party shouldered the Liberals aside to emerge as the party with the second-biggest vote share. It made a ninefold gain to take 22 per cent of the primary vote, with about two-thirds of the vote counted. The Liberals managed just 19 per cent. They have been all but drummed out of Adelaide; they hold just one electorate in the capital city.

On the count so far, the Liberals appear set to retain the title of official opposition, just. With Labor winning 33 seats in the 47-seat lower house, the Liberals seem likely to emerge with five or six. One Nation seems to be in line for four.

In a pretty sensible state, with a super-popular Labor premier and economic growth outpacing that of NSW and Victoria, one fifth of the electorate chose Pauline Hanson’s racist ratbag outfit. This is a shocking result.

‘One Nation threatened the Labor vote in the outer suburbs. They need to worry about that.’Psephologist Antony Green

“It’s not just a protest vote,” Hanson told Sky News on election night. “There is a movement and there is an undercurrent, and it is people saying we’ve had a gutful, we want our country........

© Brisbane Times