One Nation in NSW is starting to feel like a clearing house for bitter exes

October 15, 2026 — 5:00am

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When Stuart Bonds first burst onto the national stage as One Nation’s poster boy at the 2019 election, picking up 21 per cent of the primary vote and giving Joel Fitzgibbon the fright of his life in the previously safe federal Labor seat of Hunter, he did so by leveraging a straight-talking persona which felt authentic because it was.

A coal mine worker with an anarchy symbol tattooed on his chest, Bonds is the Hunter Valley incarnate.

Beyond the everyman aesthetic he had a finely honed bullshit radar and a seemingly preternatural mistrust of authority, which spoke to an electorate that felt neglected by Labor as it stared down the barrel of a global shift away from coal that posed – and still poses – an undeniable threat to its future.

The context of 2019, when Donald Trump’s first-term “drain the swamp” mantra was filtering into the Australian political ecosystem, is obviously relevant, and part of his appeal was a reaction against the political class, which someone like Fitzgibbon had come to personify. But Bonds’ Facebook profile at the time read: “Rule Number 1: F--- what they think”, and his anti-authority mantra extended well beyond just politicians.

Bonds was anti-union, not because he didn’t want miners to have good wages and........

© The Sydney Morning Herald