I'm Daniel James and you're listening to seven AM. Last weekend South Australian election wasn't just a wipeout for the Liberals and a triumph for Labor. It was a sign that political discontent is beginning to find a new home in an old brand one nation. Pauline Hanson's party show just how much room there is for anger on the right, even in a traditionally progressive state. But the rise in
One Nation's popularity isn't discontained to South Australia. Nationally and in States Love Victoria, discontent is growing and the far right is capitalizing, and with the war and I Run exacerbating the cost of living crisis, that frustration with the two major parties may only deepened today. Wali d Ali on what the South Australian result says about the mood of the electorate and where that mood could go next.
It's Saturday, March twenty eight. Well, the political landscape has been shifting for a while in this country, but what happened in South Australia last weekend really laid it out there for all to sea. I mean, do we even have a functional opposition there at this point.
No, we don't because the Liberal Party has been reduced to so few seats. We don't know exactly how many yet, but it'll be single digits and one nation if it does really, really well out of the parliamentary result, it's going to end up with maybe four seats.
So that's I mean.
Paul and Hanson referred to the MPs that will be left in South Australia's land mines.
I am leaving tomorrow to go to Canberra to continue my duties. But guess what, mate, I'm leaving use some landmines. They're called one Nation Nomber's apartment.
You don't refer to an opposition as land mines, but they are the second biggest party on primary vert even though that's not how it shook out in the parliamentary arithmetic once you do preferences. So I think what was really interesting is that Peter malinaskus when he starts talking his victory speech, he says there are no such thing as safe seats anymore.
He's right.
Once you start entering three cornered contests, it only takes the votes to fall a certain way and the whole thing changes. In a preferential system, so it's really unpredictable. Once he started quoting Henry Lawson and talking about patriotism and so on. We've seen a little bit of that from Anthony Alberinezi as well.
When a man or nation visits in the heyday of its pride, tias the duty of Australians to be kind but dignified.
That's very much directed at the votes that appealing off to one nation, some of which have started appealing off from labor. You do that if you see one nation as your major threat rather than the Coalition.
I think.
Are the Liberals the seats they have? Are they there partly because of labor and growing preferences?
Yes, so Labor preference the Liberal Party over one nation. So yes, the seats one nation has it only has because the Liberal Party preferenced one nation over the Labor Party, which is a radical departure from the John Howard days. Although John Howard I think has now said he would do the same, he would preference one nation over labor.
So yeah, the preferential voting system does favor the Coalition over one nation as it stands, but that could very easily flip if one nation can just can consistently get above the Liberal Party, and it's not doing that in the inner city. It's only doing that really in the rural areas and on the suburban fringe. But if you can start doing that consistently, then to the extent we have a two party system at all, it will be labor and one nation. That's the future that we're looking
at there. It's a long way from happening. A lot has to go right for one nation for that to happen, but that's a possibility.
The last time I saw a crowd like this was when we won eleven seats in Queensland and nineteen ninety eight, and that's how long ago it was.
You've written that interpreting this election is a little bit like a choose your own adventure.
What did you mean by that, Well, we're in the process of one of an old political order sort of slowly collapsing, and maybe a new one forming, although even that's not clear at this point. I think the metaphor I used briefly in that piece was the idea of a hall of mirrors. You look around in every image is a bit of a mirage. We don't know exactly what it means. There are weird shapes being thrown at you. There are phantoms everywhere. It's like you're jumping at these phantoms.
And so what that means is when you get a result like you get in South Australia, it could mean anything.
I mean.
It could mean the onset of a totally new politic order. It could be a blip that historians will find as a curious footnote. It could be the complete demise of the coalition happening in real time.
It could be thecent of one nation. Or it could mean that.
It just scorches the earth for some new we've not even heard of yet to emerge. And so at this point in time, really all you can do is look at the imponderables and ponder them.
If you look at the first path that you ruminate on in your piece, if you look at the result and think the electorate has shifted sharply to the right, what is the case for that.
Well, the case for that is that one nation. Obviously, the one nation surge is real. We've seen one nation surges before in the polls. They've not turned into votes before outside Queensland.
Now they have.
South Australia is one of the more progressive states in the country in the sense that it tends to vote Labor. So the fact that it's done that there is proof of a certain concept One Nation has now proven and its support is real, and that it can replicate that
at the ballot box. But the other element of it is, once you start looking at the numbers, the swing to One Nation was bigger than the swing away from the coalition, So it is picking up votes from what you might, in very crude terms, call the left, and Peter Malinosk has acknowledged this that we've started seeing votes bleed from Labor to One Nation. So the overall swing, if you look at all the election, the overall swing is probably a little bit to the right. There were some really
weird quirks. Family First, for example, had a two percent swing against it, and it only had three point seven percent of the vote to begin with, So there are little things like that. But if you look at it really broadly, the swing has been to the right. So you could argue that two things are happening. One that the center of gravity is moving slightly to the right, but also that within the right, the center gravity is moving harder and harder right, or at least to a more disillusioned right.
And what's the other case. What was the other scenario that you ruminate on, which is all we can do at this point?
That's right.
Well, the other way of looking at it is, yeah, there was a bit of a swing right. Yes, there's a civil war going on within the right. That means that you're getting a certain protest vote there that manifests in hard right vote voting. But actually, when you look at it overall, the Greens had a swing, not a huge one, but it had a swing. Labor had a modest swing against it too, and a bit percent. It's a first term government, it's meant to have a swing against it at the next election.
If you add the Labor and Green vote.
Up, it's a bigger share, significantly bigger share than the Liberal one nation vote. So basically the left vote is still a bigger vote in South Australia than the right vote.
And so it's really then just a question of whether or not you think you're at the beginning of a process of seeing let the Labor vote lead to one nation, or you think the center of gravity in Australian politics, the place where you win is still the center slash maybe even slightly to the left at the moment, and I'll give you an answer a couple of years.
Oh thanks, We'll just keep your window open. Your broader point, as you've outlined, is that you can look at the same result and come up with a very very very different conclusions, which is so twenty twenty six. So I'm going to put you under the pump here. So, having explored all the options, what do you think this election is really telling us.
I think what it's telling us is that the one nation thing is real, and it's real across the country. I voted labor every state election leading up to it, but this time I voted for one nation.
The young ones can't buy houses now.
There's just they're flooding Australia with immigrants.
I'm not racist.
I don't have a problem with it, but I just have a problem with the numbers.
I think it's telling us that elections are still for the moment one in the center.
The thing that it is not.
Telling us, which we will get a better answer to, probably in Victoria in November and in New South Wales in March, is whether or not this is now at its ceiling.
And my main variable.
Here is the upheaval that the war in Iran is unleashing. I think everyone's aware that it's going to hurt, and we're seeing petrol prices go up, and anyone who thinks about that for a moment will see that that flows through to everything else, because anything that required transport, like food, then go up. But like fertilizer, I think it's something like eighty percent of austraight as fertilizer goes through the
straight upore moves. Think about what happens if we can't get fertilizer and the level of desperation that that unleashes, and then think about the political history of radicalization within populations when serious economic straits hit. If it plays out that way, then we're only at the beginning. Actually, But if things go seriously bad, I could easily I could see a scenario where one nation is outpolling the Labor Party and has the highest primary vote in the country.
I could see that scenario occurring. It'll depend a little bit on just how bad the economic situation.
Gets coming up. Is this the beginning of the end of the political order as we know it? Well, you mentioned Victoria, but what's the real next big test for one nation. How obstructive is Farah. The by election in Susan Lee's old seat going to be, for instance, later this month. Will it give us an indication as to whether the swing to the right when it comes to grievance is a national trend.
So I think Pharaoh.
Will give us an indication of the state of the civil war within conservative politics. It won't give us much of an indication of the extent to which the bleeding will now come from the Labor Party, which is really the next big question as far as the center of gravity of Australian politics as a whole.
I think the rest of Austroa is going to be watching what's happening here tonight, and I think it's a very important to see for Farah. And I also will set a strong team for Victoria. So if you're from Victoria, you're watching this, We're coming to support you down there, Sam Candos.
Victoria is a much more interesting case study, I think, because Victoria is the most urbanized state in the country, it's the most progressive state in the country. It's also the state that's the most bonkers because of its experience in COVID. Speaking yourself, well, yeah, indeed, but it's not a surprise that you know, when Neo Nazis are getting up on stage at rallies. It's happening in Victoria. There's a reason that that sort of thing's happening. So it's
a really interesting test case. And also the Labor government is deeply unpopular and the coalition is in disarray. So on the one hand, it's not favorable conditions for one nation. On the other hand, it's perfect conditions for one nation, and you see which one of those will prevail. And then New South Wales is fascinating because a little tiny quirk which doesn't get any attention really is New South Wales. You don't have to vote preferentially. You can just mark
one and leave it at that. So it's all to be discovered and they're the two big data points. And also, don't forget those elections will come when we're much further down the economic road of the consequences of what's happening in Iran. Maybe the war's still going, maybe it's over all these sorts of things. That's where things will be really instructive and will have a much clearer sense of the path.
That Australia's treading currently one nation polling around twenty three point five percent nationally. You mentioned that that could easily grow given circumstance, and things are ominous right now. What do you think the appeal is.
It's years and years ago, when Brexit happened and Trump happened and Bolsonaro was elected in Brazil. I heard someone weirdly on a sports podcast make the point that if you give people a big button that says f off right now, they will hit that button. And that people
are hitting that button. It's pretty clear when you look at the reasons people give for voting one nation at the moment, they're not detailed, so they don't go, well, you know, I'm concerned about this aspect of the economy, and they've got this policy that responds to this thing, so broad things maybe to do with migration, actually less to do with migration than you might assume when you're just reading the reporting. It's very clearly a protest vote
that is based on affectation. There is a sense of they're real, they care about the country, and we're desperate and we don't like the offering, and they're there and they've been there and consistent for thirty years.
Everyone knows who Paul Enhancing is now.
Yeah, the interesting thing is that what nation sort of surged into the twenties and it has kind of stayed there. So maybe that's the limit. And that's the argument that you could run that you know, we've hit the limit. It's just that if we're going to have another really bad economic turn, then we might see that limit raised.
Save the support does stay at twenty three to twenty four percent, what does that mean in terms of the parliament. What would the Parliament look like federally if their support was to stay at that level, and what kind of power on influence could that actually translate to, Well.
It translates to obvious power in the Senate, in the House, not necessarily One nation would then be really at the mercy of Liberal preferences.
If that's the case, then.
Really it comes down to will the Liberal Party hand one nation any seats? Not just Liberal Party by though the Nats as well. Now that's where things get interesting. I think there's a live debate within the Coalition at the moment as to what the correct course of action is. I happened to interview Dan teen, a shadow Ministry of the coalition earlier this week, and he surprised me with
the strateacy of his language. He basically said, well, the Greens and Labor gang up on the Conservatives in the way they do preferences, and he used the phrase that the Conservatives have to hunt in packs to get rid of labor governments. I don't know if he'll win that argument, but if he does, then you'll start seeing one Nation win seats.
I meaning in Victoria. Jeff Kennett, you know, the out of statesman of the Victorian Liberal Party, is very openly saying that Jess Wilson the Liberal Party should form a coalition with one Nation.
I'm not necessarily saying there has to be agreements between the parties and that includes one Nation, but I hope all of those other parties will say no to corruption and therefore will support each other.
Given what's happened in South Australia. Is that something that you think they'll be seriously considering.
So the question I would ask is, sure, I can understand you want to combine, but if you're actually fighting over the same turf anyway, how does that expand your parliamentary footprint? How does a liberal national one nation start winning back presence in the cities. I get where Jeff Kinnet's coming from in that his whole thing is, this is a terrible government in Victoria. It's corrupt, there's all sorts of horrible things. Frankly, most Victorians would probably agree
with that assessment. His next step is to say it therefore must go by any means, and if a coalition with one nation is the means to do that, we should do that. I'm just a little more skeptical as to whether or not that would actually achieve the results, or maybe what you get is what you got in South Australia, where it actually increases the Labor majority.
We're getting at this weird situation where.
Labor doesn't have a huge amount of support in terms of its primary vote at any level of government, but its parliamentary dominance is the stuff we've never seen before, and that's a weird paradox.
If they have a big but shallow electoral pool. Finally, while lead, what's your feeling about the permanency of this shift? Do you think it's something that we're going to be dealing with used down the track, or could you even go as far as to say that this could potentially be the end of the two party system.
I don't think it's the end of the two party system just because preferential voting makes a two party system really hard to dismantle. It might be a change in the two party system. You know, there is a possibility that one nation becomes the conservative alternative. That's possible, or some new conservative formation arises. It's really hard to imagine what a more than two party system in a preferential
voting system looks like, other than perpetual labor governments. And I don't think you're going to get perpetual labor governments just because that's just not the way politics. Eventually, people get fed up enough that something changes. That said, I can see us moving into a scenario where there are all sorts of minority governments, but it would still be I think two major or dominant parties in that scenario.
No doubt, events.
Will make a fool of me, because that's just the way that events are, and we are in a particularly chaotic period. I don't think the shift in people's sentiments, in the sentiment of the electorate that embraces what were once more fringe ideas and more fringe politics I don't think that will stop. I think that's here to stay, because there's no sign the upheavel's going away.
It's now global in nature.
Well, thank you so much for your time, and go.
Tykes go takes. Probably not the best year for that either.
Seven Am is a daily show from Solstice Media. Is made by Atticus Bastow, Ariel Richards, Chris Dangate, Crystal Color, Nicole Johnston, Travis Evans, Zotonfecho and me Daniel James. Our theme music is by Ned Beckley and Josh Hogan of Envelope Portio. Thanks for listening to seven Am this week. Please have yourself a great weekend