2026-07-01
One Nation's recent surge in the polls is a reflection of genuine voter discontent rather than a temporary fluke – a reality fuelled by a worsening economy and a strong belief, particularly among young people, that mainstream political parties are failing to address the crisis.
by Tommaso Sewell, a year 12 student from Mandurah who has recently joined the Green Issue Editorial Team
About Tommaso Sewell
When I was still in primary school, I was a very political person. Having been Head Boy of my school and the Junior Mayor of Mandurah, I was emboldened by the belief that young people could actively shape their communities. My first passion related to animal rights and ecological sustainability; having been a lifelong vegetarian, my perspectives were shaped early by an awareness of the ethical frameworks surrounding food production systems. However, at that age I was still very unaware of my surroundings and of the historical context, political structures, and socio-economic factors which shaped the world around me. 
When I reached High School, much of the political will that I had developed through my Primary School life slowly reduced as I became overwhelmed with the realities of high-school life in an academically demanding school. These circumstances soon overshadowed the political fundamentals of my personality. It would not be until reaching year 10 and then extending into year 11, where I studied Modern History ATAR and Politics and Law ATAR, that my political flame would re-ignite itself. I developed a deep passion for history and soon explored broader historical and political research in areas of global humanitarian challenges, regional dynamics in the Arabian Peninsula, and the structural socio-economic disparities affecting First Nations Australians.
The deep complexities of international relations and humanitarian crises, particularly in Palestine, became a core focus for me and has deeply shaped my political outlook. Observations of the challenges facing student activism in academic spaces, the international historical context and the current humanitarian situation facing this current conflict forced a personal reckoning. I realised that mainstream political consensus was failing to defend vital human rights.
This realisation drew me to the Greens. I highly value the party’s unwavering solidarity with vulnerable populations and its unique courage to speak truth to power. Furthermore, the Greens commitment to addressing extreme wealth inequality and advocating for rigorous environmental oversight on resource extraction operations resonates with my worldview and inspired my own activism in these areas.
Furthermore, I’d like to acknowledge my mother who has been influential in supporting my political standpoints and encouraging me to persist, even in light of all the resistance I have encountered along the way. As a doctor and an influential advocate for her patients, she has inspired me greatly.
Today, to the best of my ability, I defend what I hold to be true. From being part of rallies, writing articles, joining the Greens, and continuing to broaden my historical knowledge, I want to learn, grow and continue to help support my community. Finally, as a current representative in the Youth Parliament of Western Australia, I am using my platform to amplify the voices of young people seeking genuine structural change.
In a May 2026 poll by RedBridge Group and Accent Research, One Nation outpolled Labor on primary votes, securing 31% to Labor's 28%. This marked the first time since its founding in the 1990s that One Nation has polled higher than both the Labor Party and the Liberal-National Coalition. However, what is striking about these polls is where One Nation's bolstered support base is coming from. What started as a fringe, rural party has now forged an increasing appeal among young Australian Millennials. And if anything, this new poll is far from unusual as a closer inspection of the institutions, parties, and economic structures that were supposed to hold our generation's political loyalty – and didn't – offers insight into how we got here.
In many ways, the world feels uncertain and dangerous right now. Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022 has continued to have persistent impacts on Australia's oil and liquefied natural gas sector – a reality complicated by the war in Iran, which laid clearly Australia's exposure and economic proximity to global disruptions.
Moreover, inflation triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic established a higher baseline cost of living in Australia, squeezing more and more people into financial stress. Finally, the Bondi Attack in December 2025 and the subsequent hate speech laws passed through Parliament demonstrated to the people that Australia is not insulated from violence to the extent that it had previously believed.
Thus, when placed together, the volatility of the last half-decade or so suddenly makes the rise of the global far right seem not so abstract, and there are many textbook examples of this from the rise of Reform in the UK to Giorgia Meloni's far-right 'Fratelli d'Italia' party in Italy, and now, as we have been seeing in the polls, and in the Farrer by-election, One Nation joins this list.
Financial Stress and One Nation
In 2025, the Australian National University's 2025 Election Monitoring Survey released research that found that financial stress was directly correlated with reduced trust in Government institutions.
In fact, over one-third of Australians reported financial stress in early 2025, and more than half of young Australians (18–35) say they've considered leaving the country over unaffordable housing.
As Monash University researcher Lucas Walsh argued, housing affordability was one of the key concerns for young people in Australia and the Labor Party, recognising this, came out in the lead-up to the 2025 election with some grand proposals to ease the crisis, including the Home Guarantee Scheme, which would allow all first-home buyers to purchase homes with a 5% deposit.
However, many Australians are understandably feeling betrayed by the lack of improvement in the economic situation.
"Even with assistance, many people in Australia are being priced out of housing and pushed closer to homelessness. Across Australia, 3.2 million people are at risk of losing their home from just one life shock like a rent increase, job loss or eviction," says Mission Australia Deputy CEO Ben Carblis.
Labor's Response: The Budget
To address some of these issues, in May 2026, the Albanese Government released the Federal Budget which was positioned in Parliament as a response to weaknesses in the global economy and renewed economic stress here in Australia.
In Parliament House, Labor Treasurer Jim Chalmers said that the budget "makes the tax system fairer and stronger for workers, businesses, first-home buyers and future generations."
In essence, the budget was emphasised and positioned, in part, to appeal to Millennials and young voters, who have increasingly turned toward One Nation in the past few months.
However, findings from the RedBridge survey were that the Federal Budget was not very well received by younger generations, even despite capital gains tax and negative gearing changes. Only 12% of Millennials said that the budget's impact on them would be "good," while 34% of Millennials said it would be “bad”. Essentially, Labor is losing one of its last chances in the eyes of many young Australians to present themselves as a pragmatic force in addressing the economic crisis.
For over a decade, the Greens party filled this gap of political discontent toward the mainstream parties – built heavily upon housing advocacy, capping rents, and taxing the one percent. The conventional trend was that the young, tertiary-educated, rent stressed Millennials and Gen Z voters belonged safely to the progressive left of the political spectrum. However, while the Greens continue to retain a significant segment of these voters, as seen through recent polling, One Nation is aggressively capturing a disillusioned, economically precarious segment of the same generation.
As the Financial Review puts it, Pauline Hanson "has become the agony aunt for aggrieved Australians. She tells people they have been ignored, that she sees them and is on their side, and gives them a permission structure to be pissed off."
One Nation is in fact very good at this in the sense that they harness legitimate concerns of young people and the broader public, positioning herself as an ordinary Australian fighting out-of-touch political elites, and links these grievances to hard-right stances, all the while promoting an anti-establishment sentiment.
One of One Nation's principal issues, which, because of prolonged economic strain, has received substantial traction, is its far-right stance on immigration, having in the past called for a “US-Style ban” on immigration and to cap visas at 130,000 per year, which Hanson argues would "ease pressure on housing, wages, and infrastructure."
"Undeniably, immigration or immigration policy has our country in a state of crisis…At the centre of this crisis is the utterly flawed policy of multiculturalism… we must be monocultural," said Hanson in June this year.
However, this perspective ignores major factors such as the one that Australia is facing a critical labour deficit in multiple industries, including construction. Master Builders Australia estimates that the sector needs 130,000 additional workers to reach the national target of 1.2 million homes by mid-2029. Consequently, this ongoing shortfall severely threatens to worsen already behind-schedule housing pipelines.
Despite this, her perspective is somewhat strengthened by the rise of the global right around the world, which has leveraged anti-immigration arguments, such as what we are seeing with the rapid electoral support of Reform in the UK, as well as similarly hardening anti-immigration attitudes in Australia, mirroring Pauline Hanson's current popularity.
Renewed Support for One Nation
Despite the heavy media focus on Hanson soaring in the polls in the past few months, this is not the first time One Nation has surged into the mainstream. One Nation's first taste of major electoral success came at the 1998 Queensland State Election, where the party, barely a year old, won 11 seats and 22.7% of the vote – largely campaigning on the similar issues of immigration, and feelings among rural Australian electorates of being left behind by politicians.
Even with this wave of support, it ultimately proved to be short-lived as the party spent much of the 2000s and early 2010s on the fringe of Australian politics, periodically having to rebuild from near-zero up to where we find ourselves today.
However, the current Australian political landscape today looks very different to 1998, which is partly why this resurgence is so notable. The Liberal Party lost many seats in the 2022 federal election to a wave of “Teal” independents, which capitalised upon widespread disillusionment toward the Party.
At the 2025 Federal Election this trend continued, as the Coalition went into the election with 58 seats and came out with just 43 – a collapse that was both the product of, and the accelerant for, the fragmentation of the centre-right into the Teals, and to an extent Labor on one flank and One Nation on the other.
And while Labor won a parliamentary majority at that same election, it did so on just 34% of the first-preference vote, thus making Labor’s 94-seat majority in Parliament somewhat of a misleading representation of the broader public support of the party.
By contrast, Hanson's soaring rise in the polls has coincided with her deepening relationship with mining billionaire and Australia's richest woman, Gina Rinehart. It is a connection that famously prompted Treasurer Jim Chalmers to label One Nation a “wholly owned subsidiary” of the mining magnate – a stark contradiction to Hanson's manufactured appeal to the ordinary Australian, but one that nonetheless provides the stable economic footing the party conspicuously lacked in 1998.
Final Thoughts
If anything, the political landscape in which we find ourselves in today is a reflection of the decline of the two-party system and a consequential shift toward fringe alternatives like One Nation. Whether the May Budget ends up having a visible effect on the population remains to be seen, but having lost the war of public opinion, especially among young Australians in the short term, Labor's bigger question may be whether it can win it back before 2028, when One Nation could plausibly hold the balance of power in the Senate or take further seats from Labor and the other parties in the House of Representatives. This would likely entail moving beyond budget measures and toward structural economic concessions, such as on housing, wages, and a fairer tax system in which roughly 28% of large corporations still pay no income tax – all of which the party has so far largely avoided making and is paying for in the polls.
Header photo: A New Colour in the Suburbs: One Nation's Rising Appeal among Youth Amid Economic Anxieties Credit: Jakub Zerdzicki via Pexels
[Opinions expressed are those of the author and not official policy of Greens WA]