Antinuclear

How Did Australia Get Here?

19 January 2026 Michael Taylor AIM Extra, https://theaimn.net/how-did-australia-get-here/

For the first time in Australian political history, Pauline Hanson’s One Nation Party is polling higher than the Liberal–National Coalition.

Let that sink in.

A party that thrives on fear, resentment, and division – a party built on racism, dog-whistling, and grievance politics – is now outperforming the mainstream conservative alternative. This is not a curiosity. It is a warning.

And it forces a confronting question: how did Australia get here?

The uncomfortable answer is that this moment has been years in the making.

One Nation’s rise is not primarily a story about Pauline Hanson. It is a story about political failure – particularly the failure of the major parties to speak honestly to Australians about economic insecurity, social change, and the forces reshaping their lives.

When people feel unheard, they don’t always become thoughtful. Often, they become angry.

The LNP Opposition has offered little more than cultural skirmishes and imported American talking points. Instead of articulating a serious, coherent alternative vision for the country, it has drifted between silence and performative outrage. Leadership has been replaced by mimicry. Policy has been replaced by posture.

Into that vacuum steps One Nation – loud, simple, and shameless.

The party offers certainty in an uncertain world. It points fingers. It names enemies. It promises easy answers to complex problems. And for some voters, that is enough.

Australia has also absorbed something corrosive in recent years: the tone and tactics of Trump-style politics, without the institutional guardrails or civic culture to blunt their impact. Conspiracy thinking, contempt for expertise, hostility to minorities, and the fetishisation of “strength” over decency have all found a home here.

One Nation didn’t invent this climate – it exploits it.

Media ecosystems that reward outrage over accuracy have played their part. When anger is monetised, when fear drives clicks, and when minorities are framed as threats rather than neighbours, extremist parties don’t need to persuade – they simply wait.

What makes this moment especially troubling is that One Nation is not shy about what it stands for. Its history of racist rhetoric, its hostility to First Nations Australians, its flirtation with authoritarian leaders, and its open admiration for Donald Trump are not hidden. They are features, not bugs.

That a growing number of Australians are willing to look past – or even embrace – those traits should alarm anyone who cares about social cohesion.

This does not mean Australia has suddenly become a hateful country. But it does suggest that we have become more tolerant of cruelty, more cynical about politics, and more willing to excuse prejudice when it is wrapped in the language of “common sense” or “telling it like it is.”

The greatest danger is not that One Nation will ever form government. It won’t.

The danger is that its ideas seep into the mainstream – softened, laundered, and normalised by larger parties chasing votes instead of values. History shows that democracies don’t fail overnight. They erode gradually, as the unacceptable becomes familiar and the outrageous becomes routine.

If a party built on division can now outpoll a major party, then the real question is no longer about Pauline Hanson.

It’s about us.

What kind of country do we want to be – and what are we prepared to tolerate in the meantime?

January 20, 2026 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | politics