Pauline Hanson’s One Nation has surged to 30 per cent of the national primary vote in the latest Newspoll, moving narrowly ahead of Labor and leaving the Coalition a distant third as an increasingly bitter political confrontation erupts between Hanson and Anthony Albanese.
The One Nation leader has accused the Prime Minister of inciting political violence after Albanese used a Queensland Labor conference speech to describe hard-right populist politics as “dangerous, divisive and downright dishonest”.
Hanson says she has been receiving numerous death threats and argues the Prime Minister should understand the potential consequences of his language.
Labor has rejected her accusation and doubled down on its criticism of One Nation’s policies.
The extraordinary exchange comes at a moment when Australia’s political landscape is becoming increasingly difficult to fit into its traditional Labor-versus-Coalition structure.
One Nation is leading the latest Newspoll on primary votes.
It has just won a previously safe Labor state seat in Western Australia.
And the Coalition, historically Australia’s dominant centre-right political force, is polling below 20 per cent.
One Nation reaches 30 per cent in Newspoll
The latest national Newspoll, conducted between August 24 and 28 with a sample of 1,243 voters, places One Nation on 30 per cent of the primary vote.
Labor is one point behind on 29 per cent.
The Coalition is on 19 per cent, while the Greens are on 13 per cent and other parties and independents collectively account for 9 per cent.
One Nation gained one point from the previous Newspoll, while Labor was unchanged and the Coalition gained one.
The numbers represent an extraordinary reversal of Australia’s traditional political hierarchy.
A minor party that spent much of its existence outside the mainstream contest for government is currently polling 11 points higher than the Coalition.
That does not mean One Nation would necessarily form government if a federal election were held now.
Australia’s preferential electoral system requires parties to convert national support into victories across individual House of Representatives electorates.
Where those votes are concentrated, which candidates make the final two in individual seats and how preferences flow would all be crucial.
But 30 per cent represents a level of support that neither major political bloc can treat as peripheral.
The poll was conducted before One Nation’s WA breakthrough
The timing makes the Newspoll result particularly noteworthy.
Its fieldwork was completed on Friday, August 28.
Secret Harbour voters went to the polls the following day.
That means the survey did not capture any potential reaction to One Nation’s subsequent victory in Western Australia.
Hanson’s party had already reached 30 per cent in Newspoll before Australians knew it had taken the seat.
The Western Australian result therefore provides a separate measure of the party’s momentum — an actual electoral breakthrough rather than another opinion survey.
A second poll provides an important reality check
Newspoll is only one measure of public opinion, and another national survey conducted over a similar period produced somewhat different results.
The RedBridge/Accent poll put Labor on 29 per cent, One Nation on 28 per cent and the Coalition on 22 per cent.
After respondents’ preferences were allocated between Labor and One Nation, Labor led 52–48.
Newspoll also showed Albanese maintaining a substantial personal advantage.
In a three-way preferred prime minister measure, Albanese recorded 46 per cent, Hanson 31 per cent and Liberal leader Angus Taylor 23 per cent.
A hypothetical preference distribution between Labor and One Nation in Newspoll gave Labor a 56–44 advantage.
Those figures are important because they demonstrate why a national primary-vote lead should not be interpreted as evidence Hanson is on the verge of becoming prime minister.
But the broader trend across the polls is still politically significant.
One Nation is competing around the same primary-vote level as Labor while consistently challenging or exceeding the Coalition.
Albanese launches a direct attack
The Prime Minister responded to the changed political environment with one of his strongest attacks on One Nation to date.
Speaking to the Queensland Labor State Conference on Sunday, Albanese warned delegates about the international rise of hard-right populist movements.
“Across the world hard right populists are on the march,” he said.
He accused them of “peddling politics that is dangerous, divisive, and downright dishonest”.
Then came an explicit rallying cry.
“We simply must defeat them. We owe it to history.”
“And we will defeat them.”
Albanese accused populists of being prepared to say or do anything for votes, including bending facts, spreading misinformation and disinformation and turning “Australian against Australian”.
He then identified Hanson’s party directly.
“Parties like One Nation have no serious answers to our problems,” Albanese said.
Hanson says Labor has ‘crossed a line’
Hanson responded by accusing the Prime Minister and Treasurer Jim Chalmers of becoming increasingly desperate as One Nation’s support rises.
She argued that Labor had crossed a line by using the language of danger and threats when discussing democratically elected political opponents.
“Words have consequences,” Hanson said.
“That is how political violence is incited.”
She argued Australians should be able to support One Nation without being told their democratic choice represented a danger to Australia.
The dispute escalated further on Monday when Hanson spoke to reporters in Victoria.
She directly accused Albanese of inciting violence against her.
“I’ve been getting that many death threats,” Hanson said, arguing “a prime minister should know better than that”.
She portrayed Labor’s attacks as evidence that the government was frightened by One Nation’s electoral progress.
“They’re scared because now we’ve won a safe Labor seat, and this is worrying them,” she said.
The incitement allegation remains an allegation
Hanson’s claim requires careful distinction between political argument and established fact.
She says Albanese’s rhetoric risks encouraging political violence.
She also says she has been receiving death threats.
But the available evidence does not establish that Albanese’s Queensland conference speech caused those alleged threats or directed anyone to threaten Hanson.
Nor has Hanson publicly demonstrated a causal connection between the Prime Minister’s words and a particular act of political violence.
Her claim that Albanese is inciting violence should therefore be understood as an accusation made by the One Nation leader, not an established finding.
Labor strongly rejects it.
Assistant minister Patrick Gorman defended the government’s criticism on Monday.
He continued to describe One Nation as “dangerous, populist and dishonest” and said he could identify policies he believed would be dangerous for Australians.
The distinction is central to the dispute.
Labor argues it is entitled to tell voters that an opponent’s policies are dangerous.
Hanson argues that increasingly heated language can delegitimise political opponents and potentially contribute to a hostile environment around them.
Secret Harbour transformed the political argument
Behind the rhetorical battle lies an electoral result that neither Labor nor the Coalition can ignore.
One Nation’s Luke Herdegen has won the Western Australian state seat of Secret Harbour, delivering the party its first lower-house representation in the state.
Herdegen secured about 57 per cent of the two-candidate-preferred vote in the count reported after election night.
The seat had been considered safe Labor territory.
Its boundaries and name have changed over the years, but Labor had held the area in various electoral configurations since 1989.
Former Labor minister Paul Papalia represented the area and predecessor seats from 2007 before his retirement triggered the by-election.
Labor went into the contest defending an 11.5-point margin.
It was comprehensively defeated.
The Liberals didn’t inherit Labor’s lost voters
Perhaps the most significant element of Secret Harbour was what did not happen.
The Liberal Party did not become the main beneficiary of the anti-Labor swing.
It finished a distant third.
That is potentially more consequential than a conventional opposition victory would have been.
For decades, Australian politics operated on the assumption that substantial dissatisfaction with Labor would eventually strengthen the Coalition, while dissatisfaction with the Coalition would broadly strengthen Labor.
One Nation is challenging that assumption.
Barnaby Joyce, who has joined Hanson’s party, said the Western Australian result demonstrated that former Labor voters were finding it increasingly easy to move directly to One Nation.
That possibility makes the party a problem for both traditional sides of politics.
Why Labor is attacking now
Albanese’s rhetoric makes more sense when viewed against that backdrop.
Labor is not simply responding to a favourable opinion poll for Hanson.
It is confronting evidence that One Nation can take votes from Labor and turn them into seats.
The Prime Minister’s conference speech attempted to shift the political debate away from voter frustration and towards the consequences of One Nation’s policies.
He attacked the party over workplace issues, working from home, multiculturalism and comments relating to domestic violence.
He also invoked One Nation’s history.
At Queensland’s 1998 state election, the party won 11 seats before its parliamentary representation subsequently fractured.
Albanese wants voters to ask whether a stronger One Nation could provide stable government rather than simply register dissatisfaction with the major parties.
But attacking Hanson carries a political risk
There is a longstanding difficulty in confronting populist political movements.
Attacks from established political parties can sometimes strengthen the outsider narrative on which those movements depend.
Hanson is already using Labor’s criticism in precisely that way.
Her argument is that Albanese and Chalmers are escalating their attacks because the traditional political establishment is frightened of losing power.
The stronger the language used against One Nation becomes, the easier it may be for Hanson to tell supporters they are being targeted by the political establishment.
That does not mean Labor should avoid scrutinising One Nation’s policies.
It does mean the way that scrutiny is framed could matter.
Albanese himself appeared to recognise the limitation of attack politics in the same Queensland speech.
After criticising One Nation, he said the best way to defeat what he called a “coalition of chaos” was to give Australians “real hope of a better future”.
That may prove to be the more important line.
Economic dissatisfaction remains central
One Nation’s resurgence is occurring against a backdrop of continuing concern about housing affordability, living costs and Australia’s migration settings.
Reuters has identified frustration over housing shortages, high living costs and declining support for the major parties as important elements of One Nation’s recent growth.
That suggests Labor’s challenge cannot be solved purely by persuading voters that Hanson is too risky.
It must also persuade dissatisfied Australians that existing institutions can solve the problems causing their frustration.
The Coalition faces a similar challenge, with the additional problem that One Nation is competing aggressively for voters traditionally considered part of its natural constituency.
The Coalition’s 19 per cent may be the most alarming number
Much of the immediate attention has focused on One Nation moving one point ahead of Labor.
But the Coalition’s position may be the more structurally significant result.
At 19 per cent, it is 11 points behind One Nation.
Its leader is also third in the Newspoll preferred prime minister measure.
And at Secret Harbour, the Liberals were pushed into third place while One Nation captured the seat.
For a political force accustomed to being one of Australia’s two alternative governments, that represents an extraordinary challenge.
The Coalition must now determine how to recover voters attracted to Hanson without simply allowing One Nation to define the terms of the debate.
One Nation now has to turn popularity into political infrastructure
Hanson faces a different challenge.
Polling at 30 per cent is not the same as possessing the organisation required to govern.
A party operating at that level must recruit large numbers of credible candidates, maintain discipline across state and federal branches and develop detailed policies covering the full responsibilities of government.
It must also convert broadly distributed national support into individual electorate victories.
Secret Harbour demonstrates that conversion is possible.
But one state by-election does not prove it can be repeated across dozens of electorates during a general election.
Future state contests — particularly Victoria — will provide important tests of whether One Nation’s support has become structurally embedded.
Australia’s three-way political fight is intensifying
The latest developments point towards a political contest considerably less predictable than the familiar Labor-Coalition rivalry.
One Nation has a national Newspoll primary-vote lead.
Labor retains the advantage in preferred prime minister measures and hypothetical preference contests.
The Coalition remains a major parliamentary force but is polling far below both.
And One Nation has now demonstrated it can translate at least some of its rising support into an actual lower-house victory.
That explains the intensity of the political rhetoric.
Albanese wants Australians to view Hanson’s movement as dangerous populism offering grievance without credible solutions.
Hanson wants voters to see Labor’s attacks as evidence of an establishment threatened by a democratic challenger.
Neither proposition is settled by a single poll.
Nor is Hanson’s allegation that Albanese has incited political violence established merely because she says she has received death threats.
But the argument itself demonstrates how much the political environment has changed.
One Nation is no longer fighting simply for attention.
It is fighting for seats, leading a major national poll and forcing both Labor and the Coalition to decide how they intend to respond.
The next challenge for Hanson is converting that extraordinary momentum into a durable national political force.
For Albanese, the challenge is demonstrating that attacking One Nation can persuade voters to return to Labor rather than reinforcing the very anti-establishment sentiment helping drive Hanson’s rise.
And for the Coalition, the question may be more fundamental still: how does a traditional party of government respond when another party has moved 11 points ahead of it among primary voters?
Australia’s next elections will begin to provide the answer.
