One Nation’s chances as a dominant conservative party are piñata-like

Posted on 11 Feb 2026

By Denis Moriarty, founder and group managing director, Our Community

Pinata cover — The One Nation party. Pic: Shutterstock

Opinions polls insist Pauline Hanson's fortunes are on the rise, but it is likely that enthusiasm will take a battering between now and the next election, writes Our Community's founder and leader, Denis Moriarty.

Australian voters have for decades been moving away from the major parties towards minor parties and independents. After a number of recent polls, there is now even talk that Pauline Hanson’s One Nation (PHON) may be about to replace the National Party, or even the Liberal Party, as a conservative force in the Australian electoral system.

“One Nation’s skyrocketing support could see the right-wing minor party pick up as many as 34 seats and officially become the main opposition party if an election were held today,” reported news.com.au. To some extent this is simply a media beat-up to fill the long dull spaces between election campaigns, but this is not a world or an era where anything can be dismissed as impossible, and it’s worth having a look at what such a change would mean if it happened.

Certain predictions can reliably be made. First of all, those 34 PHON members would be reduced by at least half in the next six months. Hanson has an unblemished record of quarrelling quite quickly with everybody she’s ever sponsored.

A rundown of the party’s successive state branch leaders on Wikipedia reads, “Sacked as leader after party intervention … Resigned as leader after party intervention… Sacked as leader after party intervention… Resigned as leader over administrative and funding issues… Resigned… Resigned from party … resigned from party, leader of breakaway party…. Resigned after scandal…” In the Queensland election of 1998, One Nation candidates won 11 seats. By the time of the following election, every single one of them had quit the party.

This churn isn’t entirely due to Hanson herself being a difficult person to get on with, though that’s obviously a factor (good luck with Barnaby Joyce, I say). All personalist parties have immense trouble keeping their members in line. Jacqui Lambie (whom I love) and Clive Palmer have had similar problems. There’s a continuous fission process.

“Hanson has an unblemished record of quarrelling quite quickly with everybody she’s ever sponsored.”

Denis Moriarty

The older parties have the advantage that their suburban members know each other and can filter out at least some of the unserious ones. Furthermore, anybody selected to stand as a Liberal or National has already had to exercise a fair bit of political manipulation on their own account – deals, promises, compromises, bartering, influence-peddling, selling out – just to get on the ticket, and thus isn’t totally naïve. When your preselection depends only on having made a favourable impression on the leader, these skills aren’t guaranteed.

Small parties have more things to argue about, too. The Liberals and Labor each share, to some extent, an overriding guiding philosophy, however loose and leaky. They have, moreover, lots and lots of policies, which means that prospective candidates know what they’re getting in to. Small parties have a few feature policies – less immigration, say, and more coal – and after that it’s largely vibes. Parliamentarians have to vote every day on everything under the sun, which provides maximum scope for disagreements and fosters splits.

What keeps the group together? Independents such as the Teals can’t split because they’re solo acts. Traditional parties can offer financial incentives, even career structures. Up till now, it’s been very rare indeed for a personalist party member (other than the leader) to last two elections, so there’s no real incentive to go along in order to get along.

A strong One Nation vote, then, is likely to be simply a transitional phase on the way to a parliament characterised by a large number of scrappy right-wing independents to add to the centrist Teal independents (bring on more, I hope) and a government that has to deal for its policies on an individual face-to-face basis without any shortcuts.

The government won’t be able to make deals with the opposition, because there won’t be enough of them to matter. The non-government forces won’t be able to throw the rascals out, though, because every attempt to unify for such a vote will end with chairlegs and broken bottles being employed to revisit old grievances.

Independents, all too often, are the best option for attaining particular policies, but nations also need mass parties, and the continuous leakage away from the majors is going to weaken our abilities to get along at every level of co-operation. Without party members turning up for boring meetings on cold evenings, government parties are less accountable, civic action is less attractive, community groups and societies and associations are less practised, political power drifts to professional politicians, and we become increasingly alien from our governance. And this is a downward spiral.

If you see Labor as a wishy-washy gaggle of cowards, or the Liberals as Rinehart big-business enablers, then you need to see that as your problem, to be reformed by joining up and agitating from within. Voting for meme-driven chancers is simply evading the issue.

Denis Moriarty is group managing director of OurCommunity.com.au, a social enterprise that helps the country's 600,000 not-for-profits.