It has been almost 30 years since the founding of One Nation, and the Coalition parties still haven’t worked out how to deal with it.
When One Nation is on 6 per cent or thereabouts, that isn’t a major problem. However, since February 10 when YouGov put One Nation ahead of the Coalition by 28 per cent to 19 per cent, it has been a huge one.
The confusion is obvious in Angus Taylor’s twists and turns, and those of his lieutenants.
In early June, after Tony Abbott said parties of the right should preference one another, Taylor said he was prepared to ‘work with others to get rid of a rotten Labor government’, implicitly accepting the proposition.
A day later, Tony Pasin, the member for Barker, a seat potentially vulnerable to One Nation, suggested a non-aggression pact under which the two blocs would divide up the seats they contested.
‘No, there’s no plan to carve up seats. We won’t be doing that,’ was Taylor’s response. But he did not rule out exchanging preferences.
By late June, One Nation was ‘incapable of governing’, according to Taylor. He had turned his guns on his enemy’s enemy. Then, on July 9, in a speech to the Sydney Institute, came fiercer fire: One Nation would ‘send us broke’.
On July 14, Taylor ruled out a formal coalition. Then, on Monday this week, 13 days later, Andrew Bragg told ABC News: ‘We’ll work out preferences before the next election…’ And, ‘If there needs to be a coalition, we’ll work it out then…’
Okay. Who’s in charge?
Taylor tried to tidy this up, saying: ‘There will be no coalition with One Nation. Our coalition is with the National Party…’ Although he made no mention of preferences, much of the media bundled the two questions together and reported his position as no coalition and no preference deal.
Preferences and coalitions shouldn’t even be subjects of discussion with two years still to run before the next election.
They distract from the business of holding the government to account. From the Coalition’s point of view, they also give One Nation more prominence, validating it as a rival and lifting its vote, while poisoning the Coalition’s appeal in inner-urban seats.
For the 28 years since the 1998 Queensland election, when One Nation won almost 23 per cent of the vote and 11 seats, Labor has prospered by exploiting precisely these dynamics. It needn’t be so.
The Liberal Party created the problem in the first place by turning the allocation of preferences into a matter of principle rather than mere mathematical advantage.
In 1998, One Nation was much more toxic than today to middle and multicultural Australia. That toxicity complicated the election campaign, drowned out the Coalition’s key messages, and helped bring down a good government.
John Howard learned from that and realised One Nation’s second preferences were not going to secure government, so he wooed its first-preference voters. This consolidated the Howard battlers and was buttressed by his strong stance on borders. One Nation withered.
The One Nation of 1998 was perhaps 40 per cent working class and 60 per cent conservative. The One Nation of today may be 90 per cent former Coalition voters, so Howard’s tactics won’t necessarily work either.
So what should the Coalition line on One Nation be?
First, it should be a united one. No more freelancing by Tony Abbott, Tony Pasin, Andrew Bragg, James Paterson or anyone else. Develop an arsenal of standard one-line responses and leave it at that.
Second, don’t criticise One Nation. Distinguish Coalition policies from theirs where necessary, but don’t be drawn into attacking them as a party.
From the point of view of self-interest, criticism only builds One Nation’s base. It increases its relevance.
One Nation voters were your voters until six months ago, so you are also attacking your own former base.
Perhaps some misguidedly think this is how you get those voters back. It isn’t. It confirms their decision to defect.
Looking beyond the next election, when One Nation may hold a swag of seats, it will also damage the Coalition’s ability to work with it against Labor and the Greens.
And it buttresses Labor’s campaign to peel centrist voters away from the Liberals by portraying the only possible alternative government as a chaotic and dysfunctional arrangement propped up by One Nation.
If they believe that people will hold their noses and vote Labor because they almost always prefer stability to risk.
Third, accept that preferences are now perceived as a judgement on another party’s legitimacy, and embrace it. This cuts both ways.
Labor cannot fully implement its program without an alliance with the Greens. There might not be a hung House of Representatives, but there most certainly will be a hung Senate. This is a Labor weak point.
Malcolm Roberts may hold some unconventional views, but at least he knows what a woman is, and he has always been on the right side of Net Zero. The list of lunatic propositions embraced by Labor and the Greens dwarfs his eccentricities. And he is only one person.
Call them out, not him.
The choice at the next election isn’t between Labor and a Coalition-One Nation alliance. It is a choice between a Labor-Greens alliance and common sense.
So here’s the strategy.
Resist volunteering an opinion on relations with One Nation, or answering questions framed by opponents and journalists.
If that begins to look evasive in an interview situation, respond that the only people obsessed with the issue are in the Labor Party, because they don’t want Australians looking at the housing crisis they have created or the wealth and aspiration they have destroyed.
If pushed further, point out that Labor can govern effectively only through an alliance with the Greens in the Senate. Then point out that Greens policy at one election has a habit of becoming Labor policy at the next, as with capital gains tax and negative gearing.
Whatever question you are asked, steer it back to Labor.
If you must answer a question about how large One Nation or the Coalition will be after the election, defer to the electors.
Australia now resembles most other countries in having a multiparty rather than a two-party system. The Coalition is running to win as many seats as it can. Once the electors deliver their verdict, it will address the parliament they have chosen.
One last lesson comes from Queensland.
Until the merger of the Liberals and Nationals, Queensland had two large non-Labor parties competing against each other, generally, but not always, collegially. On at least two occasions, in 1989 and 2006, the Liberal leader’s decision to talk about post-election arrangements blew up the campaign for both parties.
Sort it out now. Internalise the position, make the mantras reflexive, and enforce discipline.
Labor and the Greens are the greatest threat to Australia, not One Nation.
The post Thirty years on, the Coalition have no idea what to do about One Nation appeared first on The Spectator Australia.
