𝐏𝐚𝐮𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐞 𝐇𝐚𝐧𝐬𝐨𝐧: 𝐁𝐨𝐮𝐝𝐢𝐜𝐜𝐚 𝐨𝐫 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐏𝐢𝐞𝐝 𝐏𝐢𝐩𝐞𝐫?

Let me preface this by saying I don’t think Pauline Hanson is evil, as she is perhaps portrayed by Anthony Albanese.

But I do question her motives, her tactics and, most importantly, where the political movement now building around her could ultimately lead.

 

And to me, therein lies the danger.

 

And there is considerable irony in Albanese repeatedly portraying Hanson as dangerous and divisive because Labor played a major part in creating the political environment in which she is now prospering.

 

Labor helped create the opening

 

Under Albanese, Labor became extraordinarily effective at destroying the personal credibility of its Coalition opponents.

 

It began with Scott Morrison.

 

Many conservatives were already angry after the Covid years and blamed Morrison for restrictions and lockdowns, despite many of the most draconian restrictions being imposed by state governments.

Swinging voters were disillusioned too.

 

Then came the relentless political assault on Morrison’s character and credibility. Higgins became part of a much wider political narrative about Morrison, his government and ultimately the Coalition itself.

 

Whatever people now think about the events surrounding that period, politically it worked.

 

Morrison was destroyed.

 

And Labor won.

 

Then came Peter Dutton.

 

For a period, Dutton looked entirely capable of becoming Australia’s next Prime Minister. Personally, I think he would have made a particularly good PM.

 

So Labor went back to a strategy that had already proved spectacularly successful: don’t simply defeat the opponent’s policies — destroy the opponent.

 

Again, it worked.

 

Unfortunately for the Liberals, many conservative voters still smarting over Morrison joined the fray. They stopped listening to what Dutton was actually saying. They deserted the Liberals and swinging voters went with them.

 

And despite three years of Labor presiding over worsening cost-of-living pressures, housing shortages, rising debt, and interest costs, increasing taxes and growing community concern about immigration, energy and law and order, Australians returned Labor with a substantially increased majority.

 

That decision has consequences.

 

And I suspect there are more than a few voters who still don’t want to admit they got Dutton wrong. They bought into the hype or allowed single-issue grievances to cloud the much bigger question: who was best equipped to govern the country?

 

But this isn’t a piece about Peter Dutton.

 

It is about what happened next.

 

Because into that disillusionment rode Pauline Hanson.

 

Like Boudicca riding in to save the Iceni

 

A sizeable group of Australians felt politically homeless.

 

Some are former Liberal and National voters. Some are traditional Labor voters. Some have simply lost confidence in both major parties.

 

They are angry.

 

They are frustrated.

 

And many genuinely believe nobody has been listening to them.

 

Hanson talks to that anger.

 

She repeats their frustrations.

 

She tells them the political establishment has failed them.

 

And, critically, she gives them somewhere to direct the blame.

 

The Uniparty Is Born

 

It is a clever slogan. Paint Labor and the Coalition as essentially the same thing, tell disillusioned voters neither represents them, and present One Nation as the outsider coming to their rescue.

 

It’s wrong, but politically it works.

 

Hanson may not be highly educated, but anyone who underestimates her political instincts is making a serious mistake.

 

She is a cunning and battle-hardened political operator. A career politician selling an anti-establishment message despite having been part of the political establishment for decades.

 

She has spent 30 years being ridiculed, dismissed, and mocked by the political establishment.

 

Some of it deserved.

 

Some of it not.

 

Now she speaks to Australians who believe the political establishment is doing exactly the same thing to them.

 

Perhaps that is why she understands anger extraordinarily well. She has carried plenty of her own.

 

And that makes her extraordinarily effective at harvesting grievance.

 

She understands social media.

 

She knows which issues and headlines to seize upon, and she is extremely good at converting complicated problems into emotionally powerful, easily digestible answers.

 

Whether those answers form workable government policy is almost secondary.

 

They feel right to an angry electorate.

 

And there lies the problem.

 

Because we don’t have Boudicca riding in to save the Iceni.

 

We have the Pied Piper

 

I used the term Pied Piper in a discussion about Hanson on X today and afterwards realised it encapsulated what has been troubling me.

 

I used the same description for Bill Shorten in 2019.

 

Shorten tapped into the frustrations of younger Australians and helped create an intergenerational political divide. I called him the Pied Piper because I believed the economic policies he was selling could ultimately lead the country — and us — over an economic cliff. The electorate wisely woke up and rejected his divisive political agenda.

 

Ironically, many of those policies subsequently resurfaced under Albanese.

 

But the Hanson phenomenon is different in one important respect.

 

She has turned political dissatisfaction into something approaching a personality movement.

 

People who quite rightly condemn political tribalism elsewhere are increasingly reluctant to question Hanson at all.

 

Criticism of One Nation is interpreted as support for Labor.

 

Questions about policy are dismissed as establishment thinking.

 

Questions about candidates are brushed aside.

 

Questions about parliamentary experience, economic competence, policy costing, or the practicalities of governing are increasingly met with some variation of:

 

At least Pauline says what everyone is thinking.

 

But saying what people are thinking and governing a country are two vastly different things.

 

Identifying the problem isn’t the same as solving it

 

This is where I believe the real danger lies.

 

It isn’t that every concern Pauline Hanson raises is wrong.

 

Far from it.

 

Immigration, energy, housing, cost of living, government waste, debt, and the failures of the major parties are all perfectly legitimate political issues.

 

Indeed, many are the same issues Peter Dutton raised and that the Coalition under Angus Taylor and Matt Canavan is now prosecuting, along with a number of substantive policies.

 

The danger is the growing assumption that because someone correctly identifies a problem, they must therefore possess the policies, people, discipline, and competence required to solve it.

 

But where is the evidence that One Nation possesses those things?

 

Anger is not a substitute for competence.

 

One Nation may be able to tell voters what is wrong. That doesn’t automatically mean One Nation can govern.

 

But these are the questions that few of the faithful seem willing to ask.

 

Could Pauline Hanson actually run Australia?

 

• Not give a good interview.
• Not produce a viral social-media clip.
• Not deliver a memorable line or stunt in the Senate.
• Not tell an angry electorate what it wants to hear.

 

Could she govern?

 

• Could she manage Cabinet and the bureaucracy?
• Could she oversee a multi-trillion-dollar economy?
• Could she manage national security, defence, foreign affairs, Treasury, health, education, and relations with the states?

 

Could the parliamentary team around her fill the ministries and junior ministries required to run a federal government?

 

• Where is the depth of experienced personnel?
• Where is the detailed, costed policy architecture?
• Where is the demonstrated administrative competence?

 

Those aren’t insults.

 

They are questions we should ask of anyone presenting themselves as an alternative government.

 

Yet increasingly we are entering the politics of personality rather than the politics of practical competence. And any attempt to ask those questions is met with a wave of anger.

 

That, in itself, should concern everyone.

 

Anger is a powerful political drug

 

Pauline Hanson has survived Australian politics for three decades because she understands something many politicians don’t.

 

People want to feel heard. And right now millions of Australians feel they are not. But there is another side to that.

 

Many aren’t listening either.

 

They are listening to one voice — Hanson’s.

 

Labor helped create the anger.

 

The Coalition failed to contain it. And now, when it says we listened and we are addressing it, many of those voters are no longer listening.

 

Hanson has harnessed the anger.

 

And the media, inevitably attracted to the spectacle, amplifies it.

 

But Australians should remember something before following any political Pied Piper.

 

The person who most convincingly tells you why you are angry is not necessarily the person capable of fixing what made you angry.

 

We made a serious mistake at the last election by allowing personalities, grievances, and individual pet issues to overwhelm the larger question of who was best equipped to govern the country.

 

We should be incredibly careful about doing it again.

 

Because eventually the Pied Piper presents the bill.

 

And by then, it may be too late to ask where she was leading you.