The Path to Power: How One Nation Could Win Government

Australia’s political system has always run on the comfortable fiction that the two major parties are permanent fixtures. Governments come and go, but Labor and the Coalition remain the only serious vehicles of power. That assumption is beginning to look increasingly fragile.

The polling picture as of early 2026 tells a story that the political class would rather ignore. Labor’s primary vote sits in the low thirties. The Coalition, once the natural party of government, is now struggling to stay in the low twenties and, in some polling, the Liberals themselves are down in the teens. Meanwhile, One Nation is no longer hovering at the margins. Poll after poll has it in the mid to late twenties and very often ahead of the Coalition, sometimes by a margin that would have been unthinkable just a few years ago.

This is not simply a momentary surge of frustration. It reflects a deeper political realignment that has been building for years. Australians feel the country is changing too quickly and that their leaders are either unwilling or unable to address it.

Migration sits at the centre of that frustration.

After the extraordinary surge that followed the pandemic reopening, net overseas migration peaked at well over 400,000 in a single year. Rents have surged. Housing construction has failed to keep pace. Infrastructure is stretched. In outer suburbs and regional centres, the sense is that growth is something that happens to communities rather than something that benefits them.

It is in these places that political change begins.

The Coalition once dominated these electorates. The Nationals held the regions while the Liberals carried the mortgage belt suburbs. That segment of voters is now fragmenting. Some drift toward independents. Some toward minor parties. Increasingly, many are finding their way to One Nation.

The political establishment still treats this as a temporary protest. That assumption is dangerous. Protest votes eventually turn into political movements if the underlying grievances remain unaddressed.

Even so, the idea of One Nation forming government in 2028 remains improbable. Possible, but unlikely. Winning power requires more than frustration. It requires organisation, discipline and a team that looks capable of governing.

The more plausible scenario is that One Nation’s next milestone is not government but opposition.

That would require a dramatic shift in the House of Representatives. The Coalition would need to continue its current decline while One Nation successfully targets a cluster of outer suburban and regional seats. If a dozen or more seats were to fall their way, the arithmetic of parliament could begin to look very different.

At that point, Australian politics would enter unfamiliar territory.

A One Nation opposition would be subjected to scrutiny that minor parties rarely face. It would no longer be enough to voice voters' frustration. The party would need to demonstrate it could function as a credible alternative government.

This is the period that would either make or break the movement.

Minor parties often struggle when they move from protest to responsibility. Internal divisions emerge. Candidate quality becomes an issue. Every misstep is amplified. Voters who were willing to lodge a protest vote suddenly ask a different question. Can these people actually run the country?

For One Nation to survive that transition, it would need to evolve without losing the reason voters supported it in the first place.

That evolution would almost certainly require leadership from the House of Representatives rather than the Senate. Governments are formed in the lower house, and voters instinctively understand that.

This is where figures with parliamentary experience become important. Someone like Barnaby Joyce, who has already suggested he may seek to run again in his seat of New England, is the kind of figure who could fill that role. He understands the retail side of politics, speaks the language of regional Australia and has spent decades navigating the machinery of government.

Whether Joyce himself plays that role is less important than the principle. A party seeking government needs a leader who looks comfortable walking into the Prime Minister’s office on Monday morning.

If One Nation were to reach opposition status after the 2028 election, the next two years would become the decisive test.

Opposition is the apprenticeship of government. It provides visibility but also responsibility. Every policy must withstand scrutiny. Every statement is examined. The party must show it can prioritise practical outcomes over rhetorical flourishes.

This is where discipline becomes crucial.

A successful opposition would focus relentlessly on the issues that brought its voters together. Cost of living pressures. Housing availability. Infrastructure strain. Energy affordability. Migration levels linked to national capacity.

These are not abstract ideological debates. They are the practical concerns that dominate conversations around kitchen tables across the country.

The party that can speak to those concerns with clarity and persistence gains an enormous advantage.

Meanwhile, the political environment that made One Nation competitive in the first place would likely continue to evolve. If Labor entered a third term it would face the inevitable fatigue that comes with long incumbency. Governments accumulate grievances. Policy mistakes compound. Ministers become complacent.

The Coalition’s future is even more uncertain. A party that loses its identity struggles to regain it. If voters conclude that the Liberals and Nationals no longer represent a meaningful alternative, the political space on the centre right becomes permanently available to someone else.

That is the opportunity One Nation would seek to fill.

By 2030, the contest could begin to look less like a protest movement challenging the establishment and more like a genuine battle between an incumbent government and a new political force claiming to represent the forgotten parts of the country.

Victory in that scenario would not come from ideological purity. It would come from appearing competent, focused and determined to address the pressures Australians feel in their daily lives.

Political history is full of moments when dominant parties seemed untouchable until suddenly they were not. The old parties tend to believe that the system will always revert to its traditional shape. Voters are not obliged to cooperate with that belief.

If One Nation ever does form government, it will not happen overnight. It will happen because enough Australians decide that the established alternatives have failed them and that a once marginal movement now looks capable of doing the job.

That transformation begins long before the election that finally delivers power.

“There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen.”
– Vladimir Ilyich Lenin