Tremor before the Earthquake

By John Ogilvie

I recently spent a few weeks on safari in Namibia. One morning, while we were having breakfast in camp, we heard what sounded like a stampede outside. We rushed out, expecting to see animals thundering past, but there was nothing. Just the landscape glowing in the golden early morning light. Our guide explained it was a tremor. We hadn’t felt a thing, only heard a low, distant rumble.

It was quite surreal, and completely unexpected. For the rest of the trip, we kept glancing at the horizon, wondering if it was the warning before something much bigger. Thankfully, it wasn’t.

I had no idea I would return home to another tremor, this one far more significant, and entirely political.

According to two recent major polls , One Nation is now the most popular political party in Australia. Another poll has them tied for the top spot.

If someone had told you this 18 months ago, you would have questioned their sanity. Yet here we are: a party once dismissed as a fringe curiosity is leading the national conversation.

What exactly changed? Not One Nation. The Party’s platform has barely shifted since it began in the late 90s, and they haven’t come out with any bold or headline-grabbing policies. Their rise is almost entirely the result of factors outside their control.

Bondi

Up until recently, the Australian public had been largely sheltered from terrorism. It just wasn’t something that most people worried about.

That all changed in December last year. Bondi Beach, a normally tranquil and carefree tourist hotspot, became the site of a bloody massacre motivated by imported, extremist ideology.

Overnight, concerns Pauline Hanson had been raising for years about failed assimilation, rapid mass immigration, and national security stopped sounding fringe. They started sounding like what a growing number of Australians were quietly thinking.

Budget Blues

The 2026 Budget handed down by Jim Chalmers certainly hasn’t done much to help Labor’s popularity. I could list everything in the budget that has rubbed people the wrong way, but I think that deserves its own article.

For One Nation, this budget has been a tremendous gift. Another broken promise that reinforces the message that the major parties cannot be trusted with the nation’s money or future. For Labor, the worst aspect of this is that they have no real counter, other than arguing that it is for the “greater good.”

So far, that line doesn’t seem to have worked well with the public. The donation drive started by One Nation in the wake of the budget has managed to raise over $920,000 in 12 hours (as of 4:15 PM, AWST). The major parties could only dream of raising so much money so quickly with just a social media campaign.

It’s safe to say that whoever is in charge of marketing at One Nation will be getting a promotion soon.

Broken Trust

The data says that the bulk of One Nation’s new supporters are disillusioned Coalition voters. It’s not hard to see why.

Read the Liberal Party’s “We Believe” statement and you would expect a party that, when in government, defends free enterprise, limited government, and civil liberties. The record tells a different story:

Passed laws in 2015 mandating two-year retention of telecommunications metadata.

Passed laws in 2018 that gave law enforcement powers to compel tech companies to weaken or bypass encryption. A major threat to privacy.

During the COVID-19 Pandemic, the Morrison Government backed some of the harshest lockdown, border closure, and vaccine mandate regimes in the developed world, imposing sweeping restrictions on movement, association, and bodily autonomy.

Despite claiming to be the Party of fiscal responsibility, the Liberal Government had racked up a massive debt by the 2022 Election.

Supported a watered-down version of Labor’s “Hate Speech” laws in the wake of the Bondi Massacre. Still a serious threat to free expression.

These are just the things I can think of off the top of my head. It also doesn’t include blunders by the various state divisions of the Liberal Party.

These are not isolated missteps. They represent a pattern of saying one thing and doing another.

A Multipolar Parliament?

All of this raises an important question: What would Federal politics look like if One Nation’s recent polling data were to manifest in an election?

With a primary vote of 27-31%, One Nation would win anywhere from 46–59 seats in the House of Representatives.

The real shift would be in the Senate. With these polling numbers, combined with the Senate’s proportional representation system, it’s very likely that One Nation would hold the balance of power. Such a position would give them veto power over anything that the government of the day wants to do.

Do Nothing. Win.

What’s most striking about One Nation’s surge is how little they’ve had to do. The damage to both major parties has been almost entirely self-inflicted. From Labor’s embrace of mass immigration and economic mismanagement to the Liberals’ ongoing identity crisis and failure to match their stated values with their actions.

One Nation hasn’t changed a single policy. They’ve simply waited while trust in the old order collapsed around them.

This is not a blanket endorsement of One Nation or everything they stand for. But it is a clear lesson: in politics, consistency and sincerity still matter. When voters feel the major parties have abandoned their principles, they will eventually look elsewhere. Even to parties they once dismissed.

The tremor has already been felt. The question now is whether the earthquake is still coming.