Albo Declares War on Voters

Working families in what was supposed to be a safe Labor seat have just handed the party one of its worst defeats in decades. Anthony Albanese's response was telling. He did not ask why so many former Labor voters had walked away. He denounced the party they chose as dangerous and dishonest, and said Australia "owed it to history" to defeat it.

The by-election was held on 29 August after veteran Labor minister Paul Papalia resigned from parliament. Papalia had represented the area and its predecessor since 2007, while Labor had effectively controlled the territory since 1989. He retained Secret Harbour last year with a margin of 11.5 percent. The seat sits on Perth's southern fringe between Rockingham and Mandurah, in mortgage-belt country full of young working families, tradies, and people employed in mining and defence. That is precisely why the result matters far beyond one WA electorate.

One Nation's Luke Herdegen did not sneak across the line. He thrashed Labor in territory the party had long regarded as its own. With almost three-quarters of the vote counted by Sunday evening, Herdegen had 39.1 percent of first preferences against Labor candidate Georgia Tree's miserable 24.4 percent. After preferences, One Nation led 57 to 43, an 18.6 percent swing against Labor.

Labor's primary vote fell by more than 22 points, while One Nation's jumped by more than 30. The Liberals were left in third place on 17.3 percent. This cannot be brushed aside as some fluke produced by preferences. One Nation beat Labor by almost 15 points before preferences were even distributed.

Newspoll has since wrecked the other excuse, that Secret Harbour was just a local revolt over local problems. A report on the poll in The Australian today puts One Nation on 30 percent nationally, ahead of Labor on 29 percent and 11 points clear of the Coalition on 19 percent. The Greens were on 13 percent and others on 9 percent. By primary support, One Nation is now the most popular party in Australia.

The 1,243 people surveyed were polled between Monday and Friday, before the Secret Harbour result. One Nation did not get a temporary Newspoll bounce from the publicity surrounding its win. The national poll and the actual ballot box picked up the same mood separately.

Pauline Hanson's own numbers have improved as well. Her satisfaction rating rose to 47 percent, with 48 percent dissatisfied, giving her a net rating of minus one. Albanese remains stuck on minus 21, with only 38 percent satisfied and 59 percent dissatisfied. Angus Taylor sits at minus 17.

Albanese still leads when voters are required to rank all three as their preferred prime minister. He received 46 percent, Hanson 31, and Taylor 23. That is hardly bad news for Hanson. She now outranks the federal Opposition Leader by eight points as the preferred alternative to Albanese, something that would have sounded fanciful not very long ago.

It is now One Nation's first lower-house seat in Western Australia, and Labor MPs in similar electorates will be looking at the result with a fair bit of dread.

The electorate is full of people Labor once spoke for, almost by instinct. Young families, tradies, defence workers, miners, and mortgage holders live there. They go to work, pay their taxes, and then watch the bank, the power company, the insurer and the supermarket take an ever larger bite from the weekly pay packet. Local voters spoke about the cost of living, housing, and the lack of community services.

Albanese addressed the Queensland Labor conference less than a day after the result. Nothing in his speech suggested that Labor might have driven away its own people, or that the government should take seriously what voters in places such as Secret Harbour are saying. He showed far more interest in condemning One Nation than understanding its supporters.

"Across the world, hard right populists are on the march," he told the conference, "peddling politics that is dangerous, divisive, and downright dishonest."

Then he went further.

"We simply must defeat them. We owe it to history. And we will defeat them."

Who does he imagine cast those votes on Saturday? They were ordinary Western Australians making a democratic choice after looking at their bills, their neighbourhoods and the way the country is heading. Albanese's response was to describe their chosen alternative as a danger that history requires Labor to defeat.

He accused One Nation of bending facts, spreading misinformation, and turning "Australian against Australian". Yet he was speaking to a room full of Labor loyalists and treating millions of Australians looking elsewhere as people who had been conned by a dishonest movement. Perhaps he should consider the possibility that they know exactly what they are doing.

One Nation, he said, has "no serious answers". That may go down well at an ALP conference, but Albanese offered no serious answer to what happened in Secret Harbour. Labor seems unable to accept that people might reject it for perfectly sensible reasons.

Australians can see immigration running well ahead of housing and infrastructure. They open their electricity bills and wonder what happened to all those promises about cheap renewable power. They hear Canberra boast about economic figures while the family budget gets tighter. When they complain, Labor reaches for familiar words such as extreme, divisive, and misinformed.

It is a convenient way of avoiding blame. If the voters leave, there must be something wrong with the voters.

Albanese even told the conference that Australia was "in good shape" and "on the right track". A family refinancing its mortgage might use different words. So would a renter opening an email from the real estate agent, or a young couple who have saved for years, only to see the price of a basic home skyrocket.

Albanese conceded that many young people were "in despair" and feared they would never have the standard of living their parents enjoyed. He then turned that admission into another advertisement for Labor. There was no real reckoning with population growth, government spending, taxes, or the other decisions that have helped put a modest home beyond reach.

Secret Harbour was a reply to all of this. Those voters were not asking for another lecture about Labor's virtue. They were telling Labor that it no longer understood them.

The result also kills off the comforting belief that One Nation support is confined to remote towns and lifelong conservative voters. Barnaby Joyce observed that many former Labor voters found it easy to make the jump. Herdegen's campaign showed that One Nation can find volunteers, choose a strong local candidate, and turn national anger into votes on the ground.

Labor insiders appear to be relying on One Nation to destroy itself. Senior Labor and Coalition strategists told The Australian that they expect the party to "implode" if history repeats itself. One Labor source said the more representation One Nation gains, "the more they become part of the system". That is a revealing attitude. Rather than work out how to regain the trust of estranged voters, they are waiting for those voters' alternative to fall apart.

Labor MPs are reportedly being told to "calm the farm and concentrate on governing", although party figures accept that seats will probably be lost. The areas causing the worry are outer-suburban and regional Queensland, the NSW Hunter, and traditional battlegrounds across Western Australia, Tasmania, Victoria, and the Northern Territory. In other words, places where people have felt ignored for years.

The Coalition has little reason to smile. One Nation leads it nationally by 11 points, while some senior Nationals seats reportedly face a "near-wipe-out". A Liberal source claimed about half of One Nation's support was soft and could be won back, but also admitted those voters do not trust the Coalition to remain consistent.

They have good reason to be suspicious. Voters have heard the Coalition promise lower immigration, affordable energy, and a more confident defence of Australia before. Too often, the promises fade once the election is over and the usual Canberra pressures take hold.

Albanese did not sound like a confident Prime Minister dealing with a fringe party. He sounded like a man who had seen the figures and did not much like what they were telling him. Labor and much of the media have spent years attaching ugly labels to anyone who challenges the approved direction of the country. That trick stops working when people cannot pay their bills and blame the people holding the label-maker.

The Prime Minister believes Labor owes it to history to defeat One Nation. What Labor actually owes Australians is an honest explanation for the fall in living standards, unaffordable housing, and public services that cannot keep up. Above all, it needs to listen without sneering at the answer.

So far, Albanese has chosen the sneer. If he keeps doing it, Secret Harbour will not remain an isolated embarrassment. Judging by Newspoll, the same argument is already being had around kitchen tables across the country.

“Would it not be simpler if the government dissolved the people and elected another?”
– Bertolt Brecht