Anthony Albanese has issued Labor with an extraordinary rallying cry to defeat One Nation, declaring Australians “owe it to history” to resist the rise of hard-right populism as Pauline Hanson’s party celebrates a historic electoral breakthrough in Western Australia.
The Prime Minister used his address to the Queensland Labor State Conference in Brisbane to launch one of his most direct attacks yet on One Nation, accusing populist political movements of exploiting grievances, spreading misinformation and dividing Australians in pursuit of votes.
His message to Labor members was unequivocal.
“Across the world hard right populists are on the march,” Albanese said.
They were, he argued, “peddling politics that is dangerous, divisive, and downright dishonest”.
Then came the declaration that defined the speech.
“We simply must defeat them. We owe it to history.”
“And we will defeat them.”
The language marks a significant escalation in Labor’s response to One Nation.
Rather than dismissing Hanson as a protest politician or treating her party primarily as a problem for the Coalition, the Prime Minister is now openly framing One Nation as an ideological and electoral opponent Labor must confront.
The timing could hardly have been more significant.
Just hours earlier, One Nation had celebrated taking the previously safe Labor state seat of Secret Harbour in Perth’s outer south — the party’s first lower-house victory in Western Australian history.
Albanese says populists will ‘say anything’ for votes
The Prime Minister began his attack by placing One Nation within a broader international political movement.
He warned Labor delegates that populist parties were prepared to exploit public anger rather than provide credible answers to the pressures facing households.
“They’ll say anything and do anything to win votes,” Albanese said.
He accused such movements of bending facts, peddling misinformation and disinformation and turning “Australian against Australian”.
Albanese then moved directly to Hanson.
“Parties like One Nation have no serious answers to our problems,” he said.
The Prime Minister argued that divisions and disagreements within the party were already becoming apparent as greater electoral support brought increased scrutiny.
That argument is likely to become central to Labor’s strategy.
Rather than telling Australians their concerns are illegitimate, the government wants voters to question whether One Nation possesses credible solutions to them.
Labor attacks One Nation’s workplace agenda
Albanese devoted part of the speech to portraying One Nation as being against the interests of working Australians.
“They think Australians are lazy and overpaid,” he said.
“That people working from home are bludging.”
The Prime Minister also challenged the party over penalty rates.
“How is their plan to cut penalty rates going to help the people of Logan, or Gladstone, or Strathpine, or Ipswich, or Mt Isa?” he asked.
The choice of locations was deliberate.
These are precisely the kinds of Queensland communities where Labor, the Coalition and One Nation increasingly compete for working-class and outer-suburban voters.
Labor’s message is that frustration over living costs should not lead voters towards policies it argues would weaken workplace protections.
One Nation disputes Labor’s broader characterisation of its agenda and argues the government is misrepresenting the party because it is concerned about losing voters.
Multiculturalism becomes a dividing line
Albanese also used the speech to draw a clear ideological distinction over multiculturalism.
He accused One Nation of wanting Australia to “somehow — become a monoculture”.
Hanson has previously argued Australia should remain multiracial but become monocultural, presenting that position as support for a common Australian culture.
Labor fundamentally rejects that approach.
“We unequivocally support multiculturalism because we know it’s part of Australia’s strength,” Albanese said.
He added that Labor believed every Australian was equal, whether “Australian by birth or Australian by choice”.
The exchange shows how the political battle surrounding One Nation is expanding beyond migration numbers.
It increasingly encompasses competing ideas about national identity, workplace protections and Australia’s social model.
Albanese reaches back to 1998
The Prime Minister also invoked One Nation’s political history in an attempt to undermine confidence in its ability to turn electoral success into stable representation.
At Queensland’s 1998 state election, One Nation won 11 seats in an extraordinary breakthrough.
Its parliamentary representation subsequently fractured.
“Every time they achieve any success, it leads to chaos and division,” Albanese said.
“Remember when they won 11 seats in Queensland in 1998? They lost all of them in record time.”
That historical comparison serves an obvious political purpose.
Labor wants the debate to move from whether Australians are dissatisfied with the major parties to whether One Nation can provide a stable alternative.
For Hanson, the challenge is to demonstrate that today’s organisation is substantially different from the party that struggled to manage its first major electoral breakthrough nearly three decades ago.
Secret Harbour gives Hanson an answer
The immediate difficulty for Labor is that One Nation now has a fresh electoral victory to place against the government’s warnings.
Luke Herdegen has secured Secret Harbour, an outer-suburban electorate between Rockingham and Mandurah in Perth’s south.
The seat in its current form was first contested at the 2025 state election and was created largely from the abolished Labor stronghold of Warnbro.
The broader area had been held by Labor under different electoral configurations since 1989.
Former Labor minister Paul Papalia represented the area and its predecessor electorates from 2007 until his retirement triggered the by-election.
Labor entered the contest defending an 11.5-point margin.
ABC’s published count has Herdegen on 57.0 per cent of the two-candidate-preferred vote against Labor’s Georgia Tree on 43.0 per cent.
That represents an approximately 18.6-point swing away from Labor.
The Liberals were also punished
The result was not simply a conventional government-versus-opposition swing.
One Nation secured 39.1 per cent of first preferences in the ABC’s published count.
Labor fell to 24.4 per cent.
The Liberal Party recorded just 17.3 per cent and finished third.
That makes Secret Harbour a problem for both sides of Australia’s traditional political divide.
For Labor, it demonstrates One Nation’s ability to penetrate working-family territory that had previously been considered safe.
For the Liberals, it demonstrates that voters abandoning Labor will not necessarily move automatically to the Coalition.
ABC analysis has also highlighted evidence that One Nation took significant support directly from Labor, rather than its gains coming exclusively from conservative voters.
If that pattern can be replicated elsewhere, the electoral implications become considerably more significant.
Herdegen declares no Labor seat safe
Herdegen portrayed the victory as the beginning of a much broader political movement.
“There are no safe Labor seats in this state or in this country anymore,” he said after the result became clear.
He said Secret Harbour voters had delivered a message that would send “shock waves across the entire country”.
“None of these MPs are safe from the orange tsunami.”
Those claims go considerably further than the available evidence.
One by-election cannot establish that every Labor seat is vulnerable.
By-elections are also particularly conducive to protest voting because voters can punish a government without changing who governs the state.
But Secret Harbour cannot simply be dismissed either.
A party that had never held a Western Australian lower-house seat has taken one from Labor in territory where the party had enjoyed decades of political dominance.
The electorate helps explain why the result matters nationally
Secret Harbour contains many young working families and has high workforce participation, average incomes and relatively high levels of vocational rather than university qualifications.
It is also part of Perth’s rapidly expanding outer-suburban corridor.
Those characteristics make the result particularly interesting to political strategists outside Western Australia.
Outer-suburban households are often heavily exposed to mortgage costs, housing affordability, commuting times, infrastructure shortages and cost-of-living pressures.
They have historically provided crucial electoral battlegrounds between Labor and the Coalition.
One Nation is attempting to insert itself directly into that contest.
The question is whether Secret Harbour represents a uniquely favourable by-election or an early example of a broader political shift.
Labor’s answer is not supposed to be attack alone
An important section of Albanese’s speech received less attention than his declaration that One Nation must be defeated.
After attacking the party, the Prime Minister told delegates that the best response to populism was not simply stronger political rhetoric.
It was government performance.
“The best way to defeat this coalition of chaos is to give Australians real hope of a better future,” Albanese said.
He framed Labor as a movement of “progress and optimism and aspiration for everyone”.
Albanese then moved directly into housing and economic policy, arguing the government needed to demonstrate that mainstream politics could improve people’s material circumstances.
This may ultimately be the most important strategic calculation in the speech.
If One Nation’s support is being fuelled by dissatisfaction with housing, living costs, migration, infrastructure and the major parties themselves, attacking Hanson will have limited impact unless Labor can persuade voters that its own policies are delivering.
One Nation faces a different test as it grows
Success creates its own problems for Hanson’s party.
A minor party attracting modest support can focus heavily on protest and a relatively narrow group of signature issues.
A party seeking to become a major national force faces far greater scrutiny.
It must provide detailed and internally consistent policies across taxation, health, housing, defence, energy, workplace law and economic management.
It must recruit candidates capable of surviving intense public scrutiny.
And it must demonstrate that elected representatives can remain cohesive once they enter parliament.
That is precisely why Albanese invoked One Nation’s 1998 Queensland experience.
Labor wants voters to ask whether the party can manage success.
One Nation wants voters to conclude that its past is no longer a reliable guide to its future.
Herdegen’s performance as an MLA will now become one small but highly visible test of that proposition.
Australia’s political competition is becoming less predictable
Secret Harbour also challenges the assumption that Australian politics will inevitably return to a contest dominated almost entirely by Labor and the Coalition.
ABC analysis following the result described One Nation’s breakthrough as significant not only for Labor but for the political establishment more broadly.
Hanson argues her party is not splitting the conservative vote but attacking both sides of that establishment.
The Secret Harbour numbers give her some evidence for that argument.
Labor suffered heavily.
So did the Liberals.
One Nation won.
Whether that formula can be repeated at a general election remains unknown.
But it is now a possibility that neither major party can afford to ignore.
Albanese has made the contest explicit
The significance of the Prime Minister’s speech ultimately lies in what it reveals about Labor’s assessment of the political landscape.
Albanese could have dismissed One Nation’s victory as a one-off by-election protest.
He could have focused exclusively on the Liberals.
Instead, he told the Labor movement that defeating hard-right populism was a historical responsibility.
That represents recognition that One Nation has become a direct competitor for voters Labor needs to retain.
Hanson will attempt to use the attack to reinforce her own anti-establishment narrative, arguing that the major parties are turning on One Nation because Australians are increasingly prepared to vote for it.
Labor will argue the opposite: that greater One Nation support makes greater scrutiny of its policies, candidates and governing capacity essential.
Both strategies contain risks.
If Labor attacks too aggressively without addressing the economic grievances driving voter dissatisfaction, it may reinforce One Nation’s outsider appeal.
If One Nation expands too rapidly without developing the policy discipline and organisational stability expected of a major party, Albanese’s warnings about chaos may gain credibility.
The next elections will test which side has better understood the shift.
For now, however, the political change is unmistakable.
One Nation has broken into Labor heartland in Western Australia, the Liberals have been pushed into third place, and the Prime Minister of Australia is openly telling his party that Pauline Hanson’s movement must be defeated.
