One Nation’s Moment to Make the Economy Work for Australians

For years, Australians were told One Nation was just a protest vote.

That was always a convenient lie. It allowed Labor, the Liberals and the Nationals to dismiss the voters instead of dealing with the reasons they were voting that way.

Now the numbers are harder to ignore. Newspoll has One Nation on 31 per cent, ahead of Labor on 30 and the Coalition on 18, reportedly the first time One Nation has led Labor in Newspoll history. Roy Morgan has One Nation first as well, on 29.5 per cent, ahead of Labor on 26 and the Coalition on 17.5. Then Resolve just added another headache for Canberra, with One Nation polling 29 per cent, outdoing Labor at 28, and the Coalition at 20 per cent. More importantly, Resolve had Pauline Hanson ahead of Anthony Albanese as preferred prime minister, 33 to 29, and light years ahead of Angus Taylor at 16 per cent.

All of this does not happen because voters are having a tantrum.

It happens when working and middle Australia look at the country around them and decide the old political bargain has broken.

A generation ago, people believed hard work would get them somewhere. You could raise a family, buy a modest home, run a small business, keep the bills paid and maybe pass something on to your children.

That belief is fading fast.

Not because Australians have become lazy. Not because they expect too much. Because the economy increasingly seems to reward those closest to government, finance and corporate power while punishing the people who actually keep the country running.

The people building houses, driving trucks, nursing patients, stacking shelves, fixing roads, running cafes, growing food and paying taxes are being squeezed from every direction. Government takes more. Banks charge more. Power companies bill more. Supermarkets collect more. Then some minister in a navy suit pops up to explain that the answer is another inquiry, another rebate, another carefully targeted scheme with twelve eligibility tests and a website that crashes.

No thanks.

One Nation now has a rare chance. It can remain the place where people park their anger, or it can turn that anger into a serious economic agenda for working and middle Australia.

The first place to start is tax.

No Australian should pay income tax below the poverty line. That should be one of those statements everyone agrees with before moving on to lunch. Instead, in Canberra, it would probably require a taskforce, a departmental review and a consultant charging $4,000 a day to discover that poor people are, in fact, poor.

The tax-free threshold should be lifted over five years: $22,500, then $26,000, then $29,000, then $32,000, and finally $35,000. After that, it should rise automatically with inflation.

That last part matters. Bracket creep is one of the great quiet cons of Australian politics. Wages rise just enough to push people into higher tax, inflation eats the increase anyway, and then politicians expect applause when they hand back a sliver of what they already took.

The usual crowd will immediately ask how it will be paid for. They always do, but only when the proposal involves Australians keeping more of their own money.

They never seem quite as troubled when Canberra announces another climate program, another overseas pledge, another activist grant, another consultancy binge or another department full of people whose main job is to explain why life must become more expensive for your own good.

The money is there. It is being wasted.

Australia should start by cutting the bloated climate bureaucracy, ending taxpayer funding for ideological activism, pulling back from international organisations that do not serve our interests, and abolishing foreign aid as a standing entitlement. Australia’s official development assistance budget is $5.209 billion in 2026-27. That is a lot of money leaving the country while pensioners count coins at the checkout and country hospitals beg for staff. 

Charity begins at home. It is an old saying because it is true.

Then there is energy.

Australia is sitting on gas and mineral wealth that most countries would crawl over broken glass to possess. Yet families here are frightened to turn on the heater. Manufacturers watch power costs like a death sentence. Farmers run pumps, sheds and cold rooms while being told by city-based climate priests that reliable energy is somehow a moral failing.

It is madness.

A One Nation economic agenda should create an Australian Energy Dividend. Super-profits royalties on exported gas and minerals should be used to permanently cut domestic electricity and gas prices.

Australians own the country. Australians should benefit from its wealth.

At the moment, exporters, foreign buyers, green lobbyists, energy companies and governments all get their slice while households and small businesses are left staring at bills that look like ransom notes. Cheap energy built the modern world. Expensive energy tears it down, quietly at first, then all at once.

Resource royalties should slash power bills. Not vanish into consolidated revenue. Not pay for more green theatre. Not fund another glossy brochure about the transition.

Cut the bills.

The next target should be the supermarket and fuel giants.

Most Australians do not need a PhD in competition policy to know they are being had. They see farmers getting squeezed. They see supermarket profits. They see fuel prices jump before a long weekend, then drift down slowly when the cameras disappear.

Something stinks.

Where serious market abuse is proven, divestiture powers should be on the table. Break the giant retailers up. Not another stern letter. Not another inquiry where executives in expensive suits say they are committed to customers while carefully avoiding plain English.

Break them up.

Consumers should be able to see the gap between what the farmer gets and what the shopper pays. Put it out in the open. If the system is fair, the big players have nothing to fear. If it is not, Australians deserve to know who is pocketing the difference.

There should also be a fair farmgate code so farmers are paid prices that reflect real production costs. Geographic pricing discrimination should also be banned. Regional Australians should not be punished at the bowser or checkout simply because they live in a town with fewer options. Competition should mean something outside the suburbs of Sydney and Melbourne.

End the cost-of-living cartel. It is overdue.

Then come the banks.

Banks in Australia enjoy an extraordinary position. They operate inside a protected, government-backed financial system, make vast profits, shut regional branches, and increasingly behave as if access to your own money is some sort of privilege granted by head office.

Banking is an essential service. It should be treated as one.

Every Australian citizen and permanent resident should have access to a basic bank account with no monthly fees, no minimum balance, unlimited EFTPOS transactions, free online banking, fee-free withdrawals at bank-owned ATMs and no low-balance penalty fees.

There should also be a Banking Freedom Guarantee. No Australian should be debanked because of lawful political views, religious beliefs, occupation, speech or associations. Close accounts for fraud, crime, court orders, sanctions or serious regulatory breaches. Fine. But not because some risk committee decides a customer has unfashionable opinions.

Regional banking matters too. When a major bank pulls out of a country town, it is not just removing a branch. It is making life harder for older people, small businesses, local clubs, farmers and anyone who still deals in cash because the real world has not yet been redesigned by app developers.

If banks want the privileges, they can carry the responsibilities.

And then there’s the childcare industry.

The current system favours one model of family life. Both parents in paid work, children in formal care, subsidies flowing through approved providers, and the bureaucracy deciding what counts as support.

Plenty of families use childcare and value it. Good. They should have support. But what about the parent who stays home? What about grandparents who help raise the kids? What about regional families who cannot get a place in a centre even if they want one? What about families who simply make different choices?

A Family Childcare Dividend would redirect existing childcare subsidies into direct payments to families using the same budget. Parents could spend it on childcare centres, family daycare, grandparents, community care or helping one parent stay home.

That is real choice.

The state should not be nudging every household into the same arrangement because it suits Treasury spreadsheets or feminist theory from 1987. Families know their own children. They know their finances, their work hours, their grandparents, their town, their problems.

Pay the childcare money to parents, not providers.

This is only half the agenda I want to propose. The rest includes fairer tax treatment for single-income families, Australian workers first in government procurement, a guarantee for country hospitals, cutting taxpayer funding for activist outfits, and ending foreign aid as a sacred cow.

For now, the direction is clear enough. One Nation has a chance to move from complaint to policy. From being the place people park a protest vote to being the party that puts a serious economic plan on the table.

The establishment will hate it, naturally. Banks will squeal. Supermarkets will warn of unintended consequences. Bureaucrats will discover sudden concern for the budget. Activist outfits will call it dangerous, which usually means their grant money is in danger.

Good.

Australia should work for the people who work, raise families, build communities and keep the place running. Not for cartels, consultants, climate bureaucrats and international busybodies.

That is not radical.

It is just what the country used to understand before Canberra got clever.

“Too much capitalism does not mean too many capitalists, but too few capitalists.”
– G.K. Chesterton