This article first appeared in Quadrant Online on 10 February 2026. Views expressed are the author’s own. ASF is politically independent and publishes diverse, critical commentary in support of free expression and diversity of thought.
Established by Pauline Hanson in 1997, One Nation has long been described as a fringe party with little, if any, political clout. Such is no longer the case.
According to the latest Newspoll commissioned by The Australian, One Nation is ahead of the Liberal Party with a vote of 27% compared to 15% for the Liberals and 18% for the Coalition. Compare the latest polling with the 6.4% One Nation achieved at the 2025 federal election and it’s undeniable Australian politics is undergoing significant and dramatic change.
Such is the surging popularity of One Nation Australia’s leading election analyst Antony Green concludes, “If come the next election One Nation polls 25%, it will be sweeping up seats all across rural and regional Australia. And most of those seats are held by the National and Liberal Parties.”
The surge in voter support for One Nation is not surprising or unexpected and it’s wrong, as argued by the Australian’s Paul Kelly (February 4, 2026), to disparage the party or imply its supporters are a threat to conservative politics.
Writing in the Age newspaper, Margot Saville (February 5, 2026) was also wrong, ludicrously so, in comparing One Nation and the Nationals to Trotsky and Stalin while characterising One Nation supporters as misguided, hypocritical and ignorant. Those lampooning One Nation supporters would do well to remember what happened to Hilary Clinton after she labelled Donald Trump supporters a “basket of deplorables”. Trump went on to win the 2016 Presidential election with many commentators describing Clinton’s comment as a significant reason the Democrats lost.
As to why millions of Australians are flocking to One Nation look no further than:
- the parlous state of the economy and increasing financial hardship,
- the destructive impact of unrestricted immigration,
- the lack of national stability and social cohesion caused by multiculturalism,
- the mindless adherence to climate change alarmism, and
- radical gender and sexuality ideology telling children boys can be girls and girls can be boys.
Australian voters are increasingly disillusioned and frustrated with the major parties and their inability and unwillingness to reflect mainstream values and beliefs and do what is best for the nation. Instead of reflecting their needs and aspirations, voters believe the major political parties are more concerned with woke ideology championed by cultural-left academics, the media and privileged inner-city elites.
Voters are especially fed up with the Liberal Party for no longer championing conservative values in its misguided attempt to appeal to inner-city electorates held by the Teals. On issues such as climate change, multiculturalism, Aboriginal reconciliation, and national cohesion and pride those currently controlling the Liberal Party have failed.
What is happening in Australia mirrors overseas events – President Trump’s 2024 victory, the rise of the British Reform Party led by Nigel Farage and the popularity of European centre-right parties. Across the West, voters have been saying ‘enough is enough’. Mainstream voters are disillusioned and fed up with cosmopolitan, self-serving political elites championing polices and issues calculated to undermine family, community, standard of living and national cohesion and pride.
While there are many reasons why voters are supporting politicians espousing rationality, reason, common sense and a commitment to family, community and nationhood there’s no doubt a significant reason is rejection of political correctness and woke ideology. Instead of cultural-left mind control and groupthink indoctrinating generations of young people about climate alarmism, gender fluidity, heteronormativity, white supremacism, and black armband history, voters, especially parents and grandparents, want rationality, reason and common sense.
I first warned about the dangers of political correctness over 30 years ago, when I defined it as, “the way in which the moral guardians of the left attack and censor those who dare to criticise any of the movements championed by progressives over the last 20 years. Women’s rights, the environment, the gay-lesbian movement and multiculturalism have all become sacrosanct”. At the same time the American academic Dinesh D’Souza in Illiberal Education argued political correctness was infiltrating universities and colleges promoting a range of cultural-left ideologies including “black consciousness and black power, feminism, homosexual rights, and, to a lesser degree, pacifism, environmentalism, and so on”.
Since the early to mid 1990s political correctness has morphed into a highly infectious and dangerous form of indoctrination and mind control permeating every aspect of Western societies, including Australia. Society is now one where cultural-left thought police monitor the language we use, control how people think and interact, what happens in schools and universities and how government’s determine economic, political and social policies.
The school curriculum has especially been targeted by the cultural-left to enforce its radical ideology on unsuspecting and innocent students. Instead of the curriculum being balanced and impartial, teachers are told to indoctrinate students on issues like climate change, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander history and culture, the benefits of multiculturalism and radical gender and sexuality ideology.
In resources associated with the neo-Marxist inspired Safe Schools gender fluidity program children are taught boys can be girls and girls can be boys and that Australian society is guilty of heteronormativity, transphobia and for enforcing a binary definition of gender and sexuality.
Universities, instead of being committed to a liberal view of education based on wisdom, beauty and truth teach students Western civilisation is exploitive and guilty of white supremacism, that knowledge is a social construct imposed by a capitalist society and their duty is to act as cultural warriors dedicated to overthrowing the status quo.
Climate alarmism is yet another example of how irrational and dangerous progressive ideology has become and how powerful it is in determining government policy. Even though Australia’s contribution to global emissions is negligible at approximately 1.1% governments have embarked on a quixotic course of action guaranteed to cost billions of dollars, raise the cost of living and vandalise coastal and farming areas. Ignored is the reality that Australia has vast reserves of coal and gas that can be used to drive electric generators and compared to costly and unreliable solar panels and wind turbines, can operate in all weather conditions, day and night. While nuclear power is increasingly popular overseas, Woke Labor governments continue to denounce what is a readily available, cost effective and safe source of generating power.
In kindergarten and primary schools children are taught they have the freedom to self-identify anywhere on the LGBTIQA+ gender and sexuality spectrum. Young boys are taught men are inherently violent as a result of toxic masculinity and Australian society is inherently misogynist.
Corporations, banks and businesses like Qantas contribute millions of dollars to politically correct causes like the Indigenous Voice even though their primary aim is to make a profit and ensure customers are properly served. Sporting clubs like the AFL demonstrate their progressive credentials by mandating gay pride and indigenous matches and holding Welcome to Country ceremonies on a regular basis.
The arts, drama and comedy industry, instead of holding a critical and insightful mirror to society and human nature, has also fallen victim to cultural-left mind control and group think. The Melbourne Comedy Festival no longer has the Barry Humphries Award as the comedian and satirist committed a heinous thought crime by questioning whether a man could even truly be a woman.
Such is the destructive impact of political correctness that Australia’s pre-eminent poet Les Murray condemns it on the basis it relies “on sneers and marginalising its opponents rather than engaging them in spirited argument”.
The American Andrew Breitbart made famous the expression culture is upstream of politics. What Breitbart means is that politics does not operate in a vacuum as it is influenced by wider cultural forces. One reason Robert Menzies survived so long as Australia’s longest serving prime Minister was because the culture at the time supported a conservative view regarding family, community, national pride and the need for citizens to be self-sufficient and wary of government control and overreach.
Gough Whitlam’s 1972 election, epitomised by the slogan ‘It’s Time’, heralded a significant cultural change involving a revolt against conservative beliefs and values. No fault divorce, the emergence of feminism and gay rights, the birth control pill, anti-Vietnam moratoriums and universities succumbing to neo-Marxist inspired critical theory prevailed.
While Prime Minister Albanese boasts his government’s policies promote national cohesion and stability, Australia’s culture is now characterised by uncertainty, disillusionment and the need to safeguard what has been, for so long, taken for granted.
Unrestricted immigration, as well as leading to a housing crisis, has resulted in Australia becoming a national of tribes where, like London and Paris, there are ethnic ghettos where English is no longer the common language. As a result of multiculturalism, society is characterised by diversity and difference instead of citizens enjoying a common bond of kinship and cultural affinity.
Beginning with the resounding No vote to the Indigenous Voice it’s clear the nation has reached a tipping point. The surge of support for One Nation is further evidence, if one was needed, that Australian society is undergoing significant cultural change as millions of Australians seek an alternative to self-seeking political parties that ignore the will of the people.
If ever there was a time for the Liberal Party to forsake being Labor-Lite, this is it. The only alternative is to continue to sink into political oblivion as conservative voters flock to One Nation.
The author’s book on the topic, Wake Up To Woke: Why Pauline Hanson’s One Nation Party Is So Popular, is available here.
