A One Nation government could be a reality. But there are tough decisions Pauline Hanson’s party must make NOW if they want to avoid another ’90s trainwreck: PVO

There’s a reason the latest One Nation polling is making people sit up and take notice.

When a minor party is suddenly polling at levels that put it neck-and-neck with the majors, the status quo in Australian politics is suddenly under threat.

One Nation’s primary vote is now consistently in the mid-20s, according to some polls, which is ahead of the Liberal vote now that the Coalition has fractured.

If anything like that were replicated on election day, it would cause a structural shock to the two-party system.

But Australians have been here before.

One Nation’s first surge in the late 1990s was followed by a predictable self-inflicted collapse: internal brawls, organisational chaos, MPs resigning, legal and registration dramas, and the inevitable problem of a movement built around one dominant personality: Pauline Hanson.

If One Nation has learned from such mistakes and can embed the support it’s once again generating, it has the real potential to become a Coalition partner in government.

At issue is whether or not the majors would countenance such a move, and if so, what policy scripts might they flip to convince One Nation to side with them?

What, exactly, are voters buying when they tell a pollster they are backing One Nation? Are they endorsing the party’s policy agenda, or renting it as a protest vote against the majors?

Those two things can look identical in a headline and behave very differently once the campaign starts, the policies get stress-tested, and the party’s candidates are put under the spotlight.

In truth, it’s not a binary choice: voters can side with One Nation in protest against Labor and the Liberals at the same time as agreeing with many of its policy alternatives.

But how much of the finer details of One Nation’s policy aims are the public really across?

On immigration, the party is explicit: a cap of 130,000 visas per year and a pledge to deport 75,000 ‘illegal migrants’. The latter is easier said than done, while the former would cause all manner of economic convulsions, especially to the higher education sector. But a growing cohort of the community agrees with both – perhaps free from thinking about the unintended consequences that might follow.

On energy and climate, One Nation is equally blunt, arguing to abolish net zero policy settings and ‘back real Australian energy’, including coal, gas, hydro and nuclear.

The Coalition went down in flames campaigning for nuclear power at the last election, and opinion polls suggest support for it is limited. But there is certainly a growing cynicism about the politics of climate change, even if the overwhelming majority of voters believe it is happening.

On this policy script One Nation would be hard-pressed to support Labor’s agenda in the event of a coalition being formed.

On cost of living, it proposes halving fuel excise for three years, changing the rules to enable cheaper coal and gas-fired baseload power and aiming to cut power bills by 20 per cent, alongside tax measures such as income splitting for families and lifting the tax-free threshold for self-funded retirees.

As far as I could tell when scouring their released policy scripts, there aren’t any costings attached to these ideas.

On housing, One Nation is pushing for a five-year GST exemption on building materials for new homes priced up to $1million, and its policy takes a broader swipe at regulatory costs with little detail to suggest what it might do about that if given the chance.

It’s not a bad idea to help lower the cost of new builds, but, again, the cost of such exemptions on the budget aren’t forthcoming. And the GST is a tax that goes to the states, so they would need to agree to any such changes, which seems unlikely without compensation.

Some of the above will be popular in the broadest sense because it sits on top of real grievances in the community. The housing squeeze is obvious, power bills are a constant source of anger, and immigration levels have become politically radioactive because voters connect population growth to housing, congestion and pressure on government services.

The risk for One Nation is that clarity can become a liability once the details arrive.

Deporting 75,000 illegals sounds decisive until the questions begin: who, how, under what legal powers, at what cost and with what consequences?

A cap of 130,000 visas a year sounds like relief until industries that rely on skilled labour start campaigning against it, and voters are asked whether they really want fewer nurses, tradies and aged-care workers, or just fewer migrants in the abstract.

Likewise, abolishing net zero sounds attractive to those who see climate policy as a cost-of-living impost – but it collides with the reality of international trade relationships, investment decisions and the fact that major businesses and state governments are already locked into decarbonisation pathways.

Which brings us back to who is currently telling pollsters they’ll vote for One Nation.

Its current support likely includes a large cohort of soft protest voters: people who are angry at the Coalition for drifting, angry at Labor for governing so poorly, and angry at both major parties for sounding like Tweedledum and Tweedledee most of the time.

The long-run decline in major-party primary votes has created the conditions for exactly this kind of insurgency. But protest support is often shallow. It can evaporate when the protest vehicle looks too risky, too chaotic or too extreme under scrutiny.

And scrutiny is coming, because a party polling in the mid-20s gets treated differently by the media, its opponents, as well as donors and voters. Candidates who would have once been irrelevant in safe seats become news. The internal discipline that doesn’t matter when a party is small becomes existential when it grows larger.

The party’s message control is tested not by one leader’s grab for attention, but by whether or not dozens of candidates and parliamentarians can stay on script.

I’m not yet sure One Nation has life after Hanson. Her value to the brand is obvious and, to date, central to its success. She is recognisable, durable and has a knack for tapping into cultural frustration.

But a party that is too dependent on one person is a party that cannot mature. And Hanson often goes too far, such as her burka stunts in Parliament.

If One Nation wants to be a genuine major-party competitor, or even a stable coalition partner on the right, it needs to become a professional organisation. It must have credible candidates who can win and keep seats without immediately detonating in scandal or factional warfare.

The coalition-partner question is already floating around the conservative ecosystem.

Hanson herself has talked up the idea of working with the Liberals and Nationals, even as senior Liberals publicly swat it away.

The truth is that coalitions form when it’s the last pathway left to form government. If One Nation keeps eating into Coalition seats, especially in regional Australia where it has historically polled strongly, then the hard ‘no’ to forming a coalition might quickly turn into a yes if the arithmetic demands it.

But to be an acceptable partner, One Nation would need to demonstrate it can be negotiated with, that it can keep agreements, and that it can avoid the kind of internal chaos that makes governing impossible.

It also would need to compromise without doing so resulting in its support falling away. Often protest parties are backed by disillusioned voters sick of compromise, wedging the minor parties they support to the edges of politics. The Greens are a case in point on the left of the political spectrum.

One Nation has recruited some well-known names on the right in its bid to challenge for mainstream-party status. Barnaby Joyce and Cory Bernardi are two of them. But relying on yesterday’s rebels is not a growth strategy. If One Nation is serious about becoming more than an anger sponge, it needs a pipeline for new talent. Hanson herself is now in her 70s.

One Nation’s surge is perhaps best understood as a symptom as much as a cause.

It reflects a voter base that is less loyal, more volatile and increasingly willing to punish the major parties for blandness and distrust. Whether that punishment becomes a permanent realignment depends on how the public feels once they learn more about the alternative they are prepared to park their votes with.

One Nation’s challenge is simple to say, but brutally hard to execute: keep the protest energy, lose the protest chaos, and convince Australians that a vote for it is more than just a kick at the majors.