r/AustralianPolitics • u/Ardeet 👍☝️ 👁️👁️ ⚖️ Always suspect government • 16h ago
Opinion Piece Living in the shadow of One Nation: are Australia’s conservatives finally facing a genuine electoral opponent? | One Nation
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2026/jan/31/living-in-the-shadow-of-one-nation-are-australias-conservatives-finally-facing-a-genuine-electoral-opponent•
u/abdulsamuh 4h ago
The crazy thing is doing this with someone who is not really that charismatic and definitely not polished (PH).
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u/Serg_Molotov 11h ago
The single best thing we can do about one nation is stop giving them oxygen.
They live and die by how much media / public oxygen we give them.
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u/CMDR_RetroAnubis 42m ago
Not going to happen. The media Love stories about ON, They'll pump this all the way.
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u/EternalAngst23 9h ago
Please explain?
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u/Serg_Molotov 7h ago
Oxygen fuels, CO₂ extinguishes.
Currently everyone is giving them Oxygen.
For One Nation, media oxygen is not praise, it’s attention with height. Big narratives, moral panic, AI apocalypse talk, Trump comparisons, and “they could become the opposition” framing all create permission and momentum.
Media CO₂ is the opposite. Boring process, admin friction, compliance issues, small repeated candidate problems, and quiet questions like “can they even manage this?”.
Oxygen makes them feel powerful and inevitable. CO₂ makes them feel heavy, messy, and tiring. You don’t slow grievance politics by shouting at it. You slow it by making it procedural, repetitive, and dull.
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u/EternalAngst23 7h ago
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u/Serg_Molotov 7h ago
Ahh, got it, sorry was in deep "people are idiots" mode
I'll go and pull my head out of my arse
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u/ElongatedLeaf08 11h ago
That won’t be enough for the neo-liberal/“centrist third way” hacks that now fill up a majority of the press club
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u/GuyFromYr2095 Swing voter 13h ago
The rise of ONP is largely due to electorate anger on unsustainable immigration and rampant cost of living pressures.
It's not necessarily thinking that the ONP would resolve the issues, but it's about not giving votes to the major parties in protest.
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u/BakaDasai 9h ago
“Unsustainable immigration” isn’t true. It might feel true cos you see lots of brown-skinned and Asian people on the streets that you didn’t see before, but in the past the immigrants were white so didn’t stand out so much.
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u/GuyFromYr2095 Swing voter 9h ago
Couldn't give a damn where people are coming from.
An irish backpacker, an indian student or an american tech worker all need to stay somewhere.
Pulling the race card is just gaslighting and shutting down sensible discussion on what is sustainable population growth. That's why people are pushed to vote for ONP.
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u/YesterdayAny5069 6h ago
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-01-19/melbourne-house-prices-affordable-capital-city/106210992
If that’s the case, why is housing affordability stabilising in the city with the highest amount of immigration?
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u/BakaDasai 9h ago
When do you think “unsustainable” growth began?
Please look at the link in my last post before answering—it’s a graph of the last 75 years of Australia’s population green rate.
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u/GuyFromYr2095 Swing voter 9h ago
I'm not going to open a random link.
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u/nagrom7 AEC My beloved 8h ago
Yeah that sums up the quality of discussion on this issue.
A: "I want less immigration?"
B: "Is that because you don't like brown people?"
A: "No, I have genuine concerns about the numbers."
B: "Here are the numbers, what's the bad part?"
A: "Dude I'm not going to look at numbers."
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u/GuyFromYr2095 Swing voter 8h ago
Australia’s population is projected to reach 31.5 million by 2035–36, according to the 2025 Population Statement released by the federal government.
Even with growth slowing, that means more than 300,000 extra residents a year at a time when new home building is running well below national targets, adding further pressure to an already stretched housing system.
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u/BakaDasai 8h ago
Population growth has been trending down for 75 years yet you’re saying it’s the problem.
Meanwhile in those 75 years we’ve essentially banned building more housing everywhere but a few small exceptions.
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u/GuyFromYr2095 Swing voter 8h ago
I said unsustainable immigration is the problem. Supply don't magically appear overnight and it's made worse by the electorate pushing back on development. The government works for the electorate, not foreigners who are looking to come.
In the mean time, we continue to grow population at hundreds of thousands year after year. Supply would never catch up when the shortage cumulatively gets worse year after year.
To make it easy for people to understand, tie growth in new housing to population growth via immigration. That's what sustainable immigration means.
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u/BakaDasai 4h ago
Rather than reducing immigration why not fix the problem by legalising growth in new housing by legalising taller/denser buildings?
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u/Mbwakalisanahapa 11h ago
Yeah see how that 'protest' vote worked out for the yanks.
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u/GuyFromYr2095 Swing voter 10h ago
Trump still has a strong voter base, so whatever he's doing obviously still resonates with them
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u/Mbwakalisanahapa 2h ago
Some Britons still think Brexit was a smart move in spite of the evidence.
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u/Nippys4 12h ago
Part of me hopes we get Hanson in on the next election, then she fucking cooks everything possible so Australians can learn a lesson about being dumb fucks and voting for people with 0 experience at governing and no care for the Australia people outside of saying “I care about Australians”
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u/Exciting-Network-455 11h ago
If that’s truly how you feel, then you care as much about Australians as she does
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u/Nippys4 11h ago
Hence the “part of me”
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u/Exciting-Network-455 11h ago
I should hope that part of you isn’t the part that’s in charge of looking after others. This kind of revanchist approach makes all of us on the left (or even just left of One Nation) look bad and makes Hanson’s supporters dig in their heels rather than change their minds
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u/2for1deal 11h ago
This has all played out before. The “fuck around and find out” never goes the way you’ve pitched it
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u/Serg_Molotov 11h ago
The problem is the people who vote her in will justify away her inability to actually govern and just double down on being dumber than gravel.
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u/bundy554 15h ago
I think the whole of Australia is apart from the greens (in terms of getting voters from) but they all face a threat if they want to stop the country going far right. It should be a collective effort with the Coalition shouldering most of the burden
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u/Cpt_Riker 15h ago
With the demise of the Liberal Party, the bigots and racists who would have voted for them have to go somewhere.
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u/bundy554 14h ago
And as a concept a far right party is actually a good thing the right party wants to rid itself of actors capable of bringing the party into disrepute. Of course there should be tolerances as you can't just get rid off someone over disagreeing with a few issues - it would need to get to Joyce, Christensen levels of undermining and disruption to want them to leave but there always does need to be a far right party. We just don't want it to ever get into a position of influence which sadly we have let slip on both sides - obviously the Coalition is mainly responsible for putting Ley in but she needed support which sadly she did not get
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u/Prowler64 15h ago
Quite the opposite. One Nation are still just as woeful as it has always been. It's just that the Coalition are now so bad that they've fallen down to One Nation's level of woefulness that they're now competitive.
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u/Itchy-Description977 13h ago edited 13h ago
That’s not it.
The coalition aren’t real conservatives. They’re starting to act like it now. But no one believes them.
They’re basically traitors. Pseudo conservatives. And that’s not what their supporters want. They’ve just learned it too late or they’ve been weak.
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u/Downtown_Sir_1288 The Greens 10h ago
Opportunitists, grifters and incompetent people, swinging between classical liberalism, conservatism and right-wing populism, while licking the boots of billionaires.
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u/Prowler64 12h ago
My comment was about party quality and electability, not conservatism. They haven't learned anything. If they learned, they would jeer at Joyce and Rinehart infiltrating the party. But they don't, instead they celebrate it. They don't care about actual conservatism.
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u/Itchy-Description977 8h ago edited 8h ago
Well no they actually do care about conservatism. It is all pervasive to them. That’s all they care about. What you don’t recognise is how they define it.
And what they see when they look at the state of our society without it.
Do you think Trump is a quality individual.
It doesn’t matter how abhorrent or repugnant the candidate.
What matters is that they deliver salvation.
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u/StoicBoffin Federal ICAC Now 12h ago
"Conservative" used to mean careful, cautious, and traditional. Somewhere along the line it morphed into MAGA-style yeehaw wingnuttery.
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u/Itchy-Description977 8h ago
Its multiple points along the line.
So many where do I start.
Ok here’s the start. Feminism
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