Why Howard’s battlers are turning to Hanson

I'm Daniel James and you're listening to seven AM. This week, Pauline Hanson declared there are no good Muslims.

You know.

You say, oh, well, there's good Muslims out there. Well, I'm sorry, how can you tell me.

There are good Muslims and renewed her corps for a band on people from Gaza and other so called terror hotspots. After a backlash from across the community, she has since walked back her comments on Muslim Australians, but a track record for stoking racial division remains intact. It's language that was once politically toxic. Now it's cutting through the whole generation of voters that feel they've been dudded by the

They're largely in the regions in the outer suburbs of our large cities, largely in their forties, fifties, and sixties, work with their hands or work by standing on their feet, so to speak. If we're talking about Gen X, that these are people who had their lives significantly disrupted during the recession of the nineties and entered the housing market at about the same time older millennials did, so, you know,

They've got parents.

Now who are very much in their late seventies and eighties, and above all else proportionally higher number of parents who are on the pension and are not wealthy. So they've got parents who are in great need, and they've got children who are in great need.

So what can they see in the fringes that they can't see in mainstream politics at the moment.

Yeah, this group, you know, in their thirties and forties were voting for John Howard. They thought that if I worked hard, this political party promises me an economic and narrative that hard work rewards aspiration.

How it's battlers.

They were very patient throughout the Abbott Morrison Turnbull error.

Again they are.

Patient leading up to the federal election with Dutton, and I think the election loss and coupled with a realization of the scale of Labour's win, was a straw that broke the camel's.

Back under the alb and Easy government. We've lost in housing, immigration, costs of living, this climate change bears the costs of the economy. You've got so many more public servants that being put on is straining the economy.

So the scale of the wind meant that they couldn't see themselves anywhere in mainstream politics, and so they've turned to one nation. I mean, does one nation actually solve any of their problems for these voters though, no.

They don't, but that's not why they're voting for one nation.

And they don't care if one nation has some dodgy candidates or policies that don't stand up to scrutiny.

This is about burning the place down.

This is about throwing the chessboard over and sending a very clear signal to the established political parties that they're done with tolerating this version of democracy. And we see this writ large in the UK and other western countries where these types of voters have given up on the system.

Won't work now.

And I've made this point with regards to their leadership change. That's a nineteen ninety six tool being applied to a new political error.

It just won't work.

And we know that what happened in Canberra with that leadership change has really no bearing on what's going on with this realignment in center right politics.

So if the coalition is bleeding votes to the right, what about labor? If this is a protest vote, why aren't they losing voters as well?

Yeah, here we get into the tribal nature of the Australian public now, and so when we psychologically test fhotus.

Now, and we do that for a number of ways.

The main tool we use is a battery test, where we will ask you ten questions and you won't know that the answers will give us a very strong indication as to what your values framework looks like, whether you're an economic populist or whether you're attracted to right wing populism. Most of Labour's base is economic populist, so they're unlikely

So what's the challenge that the coalition is up against here when it comes to fending off one motion in the regions without losing the cities where they are really struggling.

They're in a really wicked vice.

They're losing these votes on their I flanked to one nation on issues that look at the episode, as we've discussed, is the economy and a lack of economic purpose and yes, immigrations there it's a trigger, it's fuel on the fire, so to speak.

Flip side.

If I try to track this crew and we could see the Federal Coalition doing this or having discussions about this, they could further alienate their position in big urban Australia, which we have seen large now as a consequence of the two most recent federal elections them losing seats to the Tills and seats to the Labor Party. Of the last eight federal seats which the Liberal Party leaders have occupied, they only hold.

One, which is the federal seat of Cook.

Everything else, whether it was Malcolm Turnbull, Tony Abbott, John Howard, all these seats they used to hold, they're gone to other Labor, All the.

Tals coming up political poison. One way the Coalition seems to be trying to win these voters back is to tap into things like national identity and migration.

People are deeply concerned that they see politicians who no longer seem proud of this country, who want to talk down the incredible history.

Of this country.

We deserve to live in a country where everyone who comes here respects our democracy, respects our freedoms, respects our values.

And so will that work? What do we know about how that kind of rhetoric plays with voters.

It's poison amongst younger Australians who are economically populist so to speak in terms of their values framework, absolutely toxic amongst younger women in particular, and of course dynamite with regards to massive diasporus, which is Indian.

Chinese Australians.

And we saw the consequences of that poisoned relationship with them losing mensies been along read seats that historically they've been quite quite competitive in and they are now losing.

And these diaspords, particularly the Indian community, actually quite conservative in their politics, and yet Alberanzi seems to be holding onto those diaspors quite well. It's that because the liberal national brand is just so toxic.

Yeah, A really good way to describe this is that these are Australians who are aspirational wealth accumulators, socially conservative, believing in business. They should be Menzi's type photos right, But when we speak to them, we ask them, okay, you've just taken us through all these values that you hold. You should be voting liberal And they go, yeah, but

We also saw a coalition proposal leaked that was pretty hardline and would see a ban on migrants from thirteen countries so called terror hotspots, including Gaza and Somalia. Now coalition members are distincting themselves from that plan. What can we read.

Into that, because again, these two diaspers we've been talking about. If you're a Chinese Australian and you have expressed to researchers over many years concerns of a heightened level of political aggression coming out of the Coalition with regards to Chinese Australians and China in general, most challenges, Australians will think, well, when next, We'll be on that list eventually, So it's not about who they've identifying right now. Everyone else is going, well, am I going.

To be next?

So it's absolute political poison for them in the big cities, particularly Melbourne Sydney.

So we're seeing this shifting political landscape where the coalition is struggling to the point of almost demise and one Nation is soaring. What consequences will that have for our democracy and our stability in this country.

Yeah, we're aren't chartered territory. We don't know what this is going to look like at the ballot box. Our first preview will be at the end of March South Australian election. Again, some poles have been published over the last few days. It gives us pretty strong indication what that looks like in South Australia, where the Liberal Party will probly end up with zero seats. This pole has

And finally, because a lot of people assumed that the popularity of what we're formerly fringe elements of the political landscape would windole once Boomers started dying out. But it seems because of Generation X in particular, we've seen hands and support rise to unprecedentedly. What do you attribute that to? Given that Generation X we're born into multicultural Australia is the Australia that we've always known. Does their support for Hanson mean that Hansonism is here to stay?

I would say so.

I mean it's very important for us to defind these Gen x's who are reporting to us that they're going to intent to vote for Pauling Hanson as not conservative but anti establishment right and that's the difference here. They're not interested in established conservative politics. That's not what drives them. And of course there's thirty five percent of them in our research that of Gen X that want to do this. Of course there's thirty one percent who are planning to

So I get to say because that there's a fair degree of disestablishmentarianism going around.

Absolutely absolutely place down burn, the place down is the mindset, out the month case.

Thank you so much for your time.

Thank you.

Seven Am is a daily show from Solstice Media. It's made by Atticus Bastow, Ariel Richards, Chris Dangate, Crystal Color, Nicole Johnston, Travis Evans, Zoltanveecho and me Daniel James. Our theme music is by Ned Beckley and Josh Hogan of envelop Waria. Thanks for listening to seven Am. Have a great weekend.