Grattan on Friday: why a byelection in Western Australia has turned into a national test for One Nation

If you’re not from Western Australia, the byelection in the state seat of Secret Harbour is unlikely to have been on your radar. But Labor, Liberal and One Nation strategists will be intently watching the result on the night of August 29.

Early voting started on Monday in this Labor outer metropolitan seat, which lies mostly within federal Liberal frontbencher Andrew Hastie’s electorate of Canning.

In an exit poll of 120 voters reported by the West Australian, half indicated they’d given their first preference to One Nation.

Obviously many caveats apply, including that this was the first day of pre-polling. But WA Premier Roger Cook has been warning Labor faces the “fight of our life” in what has previously been a safe Labor seat.

For One Nation, the stakes are also high. It would see a victory in Secret Harbour as placing it very well for its assault on Hastie in 2028. Pauline Hanson and her close WA backer Gina Rinehart have Hastie in their sights, especially because he gave evidence against VC winner Ben Roberts-Smith in his failed defamation case. Roberts-Smith now has strong Hanson-Rinehart support as he fights war crime charges.

“People like [One Nation campaign director] James Ashby are coming for me,” Hastie told the ABC on Wednesday. And he’s right.

Hanson is all in for the interests of WA these days, as shown in her rejection of the Productivity Commission recommendation last week to undo the excessively generous GST deal that state receives. This year Hanson has reversed a view she had a few years ago on GST redistribution.

Beyond Secret Harbour will be a bigger electoral test for One Nation: the November Victorian poll. So far, the party’s campaign there appears still behind the eight-ball, but Ashby arrived on the ground this week reportedly “armed with an advertising budget and campaign strategy”.

Federally, it is hard to comprehend the omnipresence of One Nation. Think back a year. In Newspoll the party was on 9%. It would have been inconceivable then that Education Minister Jason Clare would tell a conference this week, in relation to his higher education legislation, “We do need to future-proof this legislation against a One Nation government that might want to use some of the powers in this bill for the wrong reasons”.

The government emerged from the just-ended parliamentary sitting with wins on legislation on gambling and the NDIS, but its current biggest policy dilemma – migration – remains publicly unresolved.

Earlier this month Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke set a date to announce policy changes. When he was forced to suddenly cancel that plan, with ministers still debating changes, the aim was to have the announcement during the sitting fortnight. But nothing appeared, and as of Thursday, Burke’s office could provide no new date.

Yet the government is under immense pressure to act if it is to come near to its budget forecast of reducing net overseas migration from about 300,000 to 245,000 for this financial year, let alone to the projected 225,000 for 2027–28.

Immigration expert and former departmental official Abul Rizvi says Labor’s immigration problems are of its own making. He argues that for too long the government refused to set a long-term net migration target, apparently wanting to avoid a debate about a “big Australia”. It insisted (wrongly, he maintains) that the level of net migration had nothing to do with the government. “Ignoring net migration has meant various problems have built up and the government is now panicking.”

Politically, One Nation continues to whip up public concern that is influencing both government and opposition.

This is despite One Nation’s own migration policy giving mixed impressions. Hanson wants a figure of 130,000 (net overseas migration, or NOM). David Farley, the new member for Farrer, told The Conversation this week there would be another about 40,000 backpackers and other temporary “rotating” workers on top of that.

Read more:
Politics with Michelle Grattan: One Nation’s David Farley on the migrants his party wants

The opposition seeks to exploit the migration issue, but hasn’t come up with a clear number or pathways to cut the intake, and finds itself outflanked by One Nation.

It’s not just on immigration that One Nation hijacks debate. In the past week or so Hanson seized the discussion on superannuation, following some off-script comments by Liberal frontbencher Andrew Bragg, and on the vexed question of tobacco excise.

On superannuation, One Nation has urged more flexibility. On excise, where escalating rates have fuelled an illegal trade run by criminals, One Nation this week called for a cut, getting ahead of the opposition, which is working on such a plan. New South Wales Premier Chris Minns, who’d been long pushing for an excise reduction (resisted by the Albanese government) conceded, “it would be pretty disingenuous for me to come on after One Nation agreed with that policy and say they were wrong”.

Once the major parties could respond to the growing presence of One Nation by saying the party was long on rhetoric but short on solutions. This is becoming more difficult as it puts out some policies – however one-dimensional or flawed they might seem – that give at least a thin veneer of governing capacity.

One Nation’s alacrity in grabbing issues as they come up (as happened with superannuation) reflects its broader agility. We saw this with its successful “Fire the Liar” fundraising campaign and, in the longer term, in Hanson’s innovative social media activity.

The political clout of One Nation is the more extraordinary when we consider the nature of this party, which has only six federal parliamentarians, four of them in the Senate.

Its current strength and appeal to a substantial slice of disgruntled voters is almost totally based on the personality of Hanson, who has the dual qualities of cut-through and a teflon skin. What other major leader could get away with telling a News24 documentary not only that she couldn’t name Indonesia’s leader, but that she didn’t feel the need to find out his name at this point?

If Hanson suddenly disappeared, the air would likely go out of the One Nation balloon quite quickly, despite Barnaby Joyce’s plan to succeed her, and regardless of what now appears a very substantial supporter base.

One Nation has become a formidable political force, but the fact that its strength appears to rest squarely on one woman’s shoulders gives it an inherently frail nature, and also elevates every election, or byelection, as a test of its durability.

Michelle Grattan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.