Labor is Legislating the Bedrock for a Future One Nation Government

Multiple polls in early 2026 have Pauline Hanson’s One Nation Party coming in at second place behind the Labor government. Of course, unlike the Coalition opposition, One Nation only holds a few seats in parliament and has only ever run candidates in limited electorates. But Hanson has said that if the constituency desires it, her party will run members in all seats at the next election in 2028.

Hanson’s surging past the Coalition in the polls is an aberration. It hints at a break in the more than a century-old stranglehold major parties have had over Australian politics. Former Nationals deputy PM Barnaby Joyce defected to One Nation in December, providing two clear populist leaders. And speculation that Liberals Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price might follow has just been put on hold.

Hanson and Barnaby have both long been associated with Australian billionaire Gina Rinehart, who, with a fortune worth over $38 billion, is this country’s richest person. So, with this powerful backing, alongside the surge popular support the party is now seeing, One Nation now appears a legitimate threat to the majors, and while this might be slight, it’s also increasing in viability.

The other aspect of this rising threat to traditional Australian political power is that Pauline’s rich backer, Gina, is a keen supporter of US president Donald Trump’s MAGA campaign. Rinehart has celebrated Trump’s second coming to the presidency and she praises his fossil fuel forward, or “drill baby drill”, vision. And Gina flew Pauline to Florida last October, to meet Trump at Mar-a-Lago.

This surge in the vote for One Nation, which is a party that has, since 1990s-inception, platformed itself as a pushback against multiculturalism and a reassertion of white Australian identity, is also occurring alongside rising draconian lawmaking by Labor on the pretext of an antisemitism crisis, which, as the Trump White House has revealed, could later facilitate the policies of a new governance.

Rising MAGA down under

Since the Trump administration retook office in January 2025, the US president has initiated a new era of international order, as he’s threatened US security relations with European allies, and foreshadowed annexing Canada and Greenland. So, for a vassal state like Australia, the prospect would seem either casting us aside into China’s ‘sphere of influence’ or our very own annexation.

The major party political class has not come to terms with our nation’s greatest ally having shifted its foreign policy outlook and thrown out the rulebook pertaining to post-World War II rule of law and diplomacy. Both the Albanese government and the collapsed and defunct Liberal Nationals do not seem to understand that some vague western ties with the US will continue to matter.

Rinehart suggested in May last year that a MAGA-style leadership is what is needed in this country. The billionaire added that this should entail cuts to government and increases to defence and the energy sector. The mining magnate asserted that rather than “whine and whinge” about Trump’s political style, the Australian nation should embrace it.

Trump swept to power with his supporter base made up of disaffected white Christian Americans, and since the massive outpouring of civil society support for the 3 August 2025 Sydney Harbour Bridge march for Palestine, nationwide white nationalist marches have occurred every month since.

The white nationalists who’ve been “marching for Australia” of late, support MAGA and its current mass deportation drive of undocumented migrants in the States. They position themselves as prioritising antiimmigration and just like the growing force of One Nation, these white Australian nationalists have links to grassroots MAGA supporters in the US.

Laying a foundation for a new style government

Ausralian Labor governments, the Liberal Nationals in Queensland and the Country Liberals in the Northern Territory have been passing increasingly harsh laws that have appeared since Israel commenced mass murdering the Palestinians of Gaza. The genocide in Gaza and Trump’s January 2026 kidnapping of the Venezuelan president, have bookended the fall of the post-World War II era.

Take NSW, for instance, the former Coalition government kicked off the draconian lawmaking with its 2022 antiprotest regime that rules out unauthorised protests via threat of steep prison time. Then in the wake of a staged antisemitic crimewave, NSW Labor rolled out a swag of hate crime and antiprotest laws in February 2025, and last December saw an ability to blanket ban protests passed.

This new prohibition on protests over sections of NSW for up to 90 days was legislated following the 14 December 2025 ISIS inspired Bondi Beach massacre, as were the recent hate laws that the Albanese government passed at the federal level on 20 January. These include a new regime to list and prohibit hate groups, along with a new ability to deport people on grounds of racial hatred.

Civil liberties experts have long warned that the issue with democratic governments passing draconian laws is that if more conservative party came to power, it could wield them in more drastic ways. This process has been occurring in the United States for the last 12 months.

An example of how this could play out in Australia has just been delivered by federal Labor as its new listing hate groups regime appears to have the reach to allow for the targeting pro-Palestinian critics of Israel. The UK government has outlawed Palestine Action, and the local fear is that the government could deem pro-Palestinians antisemitic and prohibit their presence on the streets.

In response to this reasonable fear, Australian attorney general Michelle Rowland and home affairs minister Tony Burke have written to the Australian National Imams Council to assure it that the laws will not be used against criticism of a foreign nation and its policies. However, the law itself will allow this if Labor is voted out at the next election and another government applies them in this way.

NSW and federal Labor have both legislated hate laws with an exceptionally wide berth that none of the ministers involved can guarantee in the future will not be wielded in an authoritarian manner by a different set of politicians.

The stage is set

Much of the Australian constituency remains unaware that the US Trump administration has long been hinting at attempting to foil upcoming midterm elections to prevent the Democrats from taking the majority in the Congress, and US commentators have been discussing whether the 2024 presidential election might be the last national vote.

The rise in the populist vote that’s behind the One Nation surge in the polls is rising alongside a spike in the far-right across the west.

So, while the suggestion that One Nation could continue to surge ahead and one day in the future take power is no longer so fanciful, Labor and the Liberals have left scattered throughout the books extreme laws for future use.