You can always tell when Canberra is worried. The smirking stops.
For years, One Nation was treated as a nuisance. A place for angry voters to blow off steam before coming back to the Liberal-National fold, tail between their legs, because “where else are they going to go?”
Well, now we know.
Anthony Albanese has gone from waving One Nation away as some fringe irritation to attacking it directly. He says Pauline Hanson’s party only pretends to support workers while opposing Labor measures on wages, Medicare, childcare and free TAFE.
The reality is that Albanese is worried. He has seen the polling and, more importantly, felt the mood change. He knows he has to fight.
But what Labor wants that fight to be about is handouts and government-approved compassion. One Nation wants it to be about grocery bills, mortgages, fuel, power, migration pressure, cultural lectures and the daily grind of Australians who feel they are working harder and getting less.
And that is where Albanese has a problem.
Because plenty of working people are asking the obvious question over the kitchen table, at the servo, or standing in the supermarket aisle wondering how a small bag of basics now costs over a hundred bucks.
If Labor is so pro-worker, why are workers going backwards? That is the question all the spin in the world cannot quite smother.
The Liberals are in an even uglier spot. Barnaby Joyce stepping into a treasury role with One Nation is not just another Barnaby headline, although heaven knows he has produced enough of those. Barnaby was not only Deputy Prime Minister, twice, but, at one stage, was the Coalition’s finance spokesman. And while his tenure in the role was pooh-poohed by the economic rationalist brigade, his warnings over debt were prescient. Barnaby’s appointment as Pauline’s new finance spokesman is a signal that One Nation wants to look like more than a protest vehicle. It wants to look like a serious alternative.
That makes the Coalition nervous because its old business model is breaking down. For years, conservatives were told to stop complaining and vote Liberal because Labor would be worse. It was less a pitch than a threat. That threat only works while voters still believe the Liberal Party is at least vaguely on their side, and not acting like Labor lite.
Now the Liberal Party is squeezed. Attack One Nation too hard and it enrages the very people it needs to win back. Get too close and Labor screams “extreme” while half the press gallery reaches for the smelling salts. This is what happens when a party spends years taking its own voters for granted.
Then there is the activist class, which has once again performed its little dance of moral superiority. Pauline Hanson’s National Press Club appearance was met with protest and disruption, including a banner stunt that led to an apology from the club and a referral to the Australian Federal Police.
Naturally, these are the same people who lecture everyone else about democracy, tolerance and respectful debate. Their version of free speech is simple enough. You are free to speak, provided you say something they already approve of.
The National Press Club is supposed to be a place where public arguments are heard and tested. Not agreed with. Not applauded. Tested. That is rather the point. But the modern activist left does not want arguments tested. It wants them blocked, shamed, labelled, reported, regulated or shouted down. It does not defeat opponents in debate so much as try to make debate socially and professionally dangerous. All in the name of inclusion, of course.
You can see the same instinct behind the expanding online safety regime. The eSafety Commissioner’s regulatory timetable has search engine age-assurance requirements landing by 27 June 2026, with app distribution services facing similar requirements later this year.
The sales pitch is child safety. And yes, children should be protected online. Only a fool would argue otherwise. But Australians are entitled to be suspicious when governments start building identity checks, age gates and platform liability into the basic architecture of the internet. Once that machinery exists, it rarely stays limited to the original purpose. Canberra does not build gates because it enjoys leaving them open.
The same pattern appears with fuel. The government has extended fuel excise relief for July, cutting petrol and diesel by 16 cents a litre for another month. Motorists will take it. They have to. When filling the car feels like a financial colonoscopy, nobody is going to turn down a few dollars of relief.
But let us not pretend this is grand economic management. It is a tax bandage slapped over a policy wound. Canberra taxes fuel heavily, leaves the country exposed to imported fuel shocks, mismanages energy security, then expects applause when it briefly hands back a slice of what it took.
Thank you, great and generous state, for making it slightly less painful to get to work.
Labor’s tax agenda tells a similar story. Its capital gains tax changes has rightly attracted criticism from business, entrepreneurs and the Coalition. The government responds with carve-outs, concessions and explanations, as though complexity is somehow proof of fairness.
It is classic Canberra. Create a trap. Add exemptions. Call the exemptions generous.
The deeper story here is not really One Nation, or Hanson, or Barnaby, or even Albanese. It is that a growing number of Australians have stopped believing the people in charge know what they are doing. Worse, they suspect the people in charge do not much care about what ordinary people think.
That is a dangerous place for a country to be.
The old parties say voters are confused. The media says voters are angry. Activists say voters are dangerous. Bureaucrats say voters need guidance, rules, protections and “safety” frameworks. Maybe voters are just sick of being managed.
They can see the connection between cost of living, migration, energy, censorship, corporate activism and cultural radicalism. These are not neat little boxes sitting apart from each other. They are part of the same problem.
Too many decisions are being made by people who are insulated from the consequences.
The expert class create the invoices in air-conditioned comfort. The public pays the bills while toiling under the noonday sun.
That is why debates the establishment thought it had buried are coming back. Migration levels. National identity. Energy realism. Free speech. The reach of the eSafety state. The role of universities, corporations and activists in policing what Australians are allowed to say.
These questions were never settled. They were just pushed out of polite conversation. Now they are back, and the people who pushed them away are shocked to discover that voters still have opinions.
The task for any serious conservative movement is not complicated. It does not need a consulting firm, a values statement or another glossy policy review nobody reads. Take power back from the bureaucrats, activists, corporate moralists and media gatekeepers. Return it to the people who live with the consequences.
That used to be called democracy. That used to be called Australia.
Thought for the Day
“Where the people fear the government you have tyranny. Where the government fears the people you have liberty.” – John Basil Barnhill
I’m a journalist, former politician, Christian, and campaign director for CitizenGO Australia. My mission is to challenge the media lies, government overreach, and corporate censorship that threaten our freedoms.
