Pauline Hanson’s party is ‘here to stay’ after stunning South Australian election showing

SYDNEY – Ms Pauline Hanson’s populist anti-migrant One Nation party demonstrated that it is no longer a fringe party but is now a major pillar of Australian politics, after coming second at a state election in South Australia on March 21.

Still, experts say it faces obstacles before becoming a potential party of government.

Despite the ruling Labor Party winning the South Australian election – as expected – in a landslide, Ms Hanson’s far-right party received the second-highest number of votes and showed for the first time that it is capable of spectacular results outside Ms Hanson’s home state of Queensland.

With 64 per cent of the vote counted on March 22, Labor was on track to win 33 of the 47 Lower House seats and form the state government. The Liberal Party was set to win six, and One Nation and independents were each due to win four.

In terms of vote share, Labor won 38 per cent, One Nation won 22 per cent – up from just 3 per cent at the last election in 2022 – the Liberal Party won 19 per cent, the Greens won 10 per cent, and 11 per cent went to others.

Aside from Labor and Liberal – the country’s largest parties – no party in South Australia has won four seats in more than a century.

Associate Professor Rob Manwaring, an expert on South Australia’s politics from Flinders University, told The Straits Times that the election result confirmed that Australian politics was experiencing a “fundamental realignment”.

Australia was beginning to resemble countries such as Sweden, Germany and the Netherlands, which feature significant populist right-wing parties.

“This is here to stay,” Prof Manwaring said. “This group of voters (favouring a populist party such as One Nation) is going to be an increasingly significant part of the Australian political landscape.”

Ms Hanson has been a mainstay of Australian politics since she entered federal Parliament in 1996 and infamously claimed Australia was being “swamped by Asians”.

More recently, she has focused attacks on Muslim migrants – including wearing a burqa to Parliament in November 2025 to call for a ban on the garment. She remains opposed to immigration as well as multiculturalism, foreign investment and efforts to curb carbon emissions.

Prof Manwaring said that One Nation’s success in South Australia reflected its current nationwide popularity, fuelled by concerns about the economy and support from voters who align with the party’s attacks on progressive values.

He noted that there has also been a broader long-term decline in support for the three traditional major parties: the Labor Party, which rules federally, and the Liberal and rural-based National parties, which operate as a coalition at a federal level.

“We are seeing a greater fluidity and a fracturing of Australian politics,” he said. “When things are acute economically, voters who are feeling uneasy tend to vote for populist parties. Fuel prices and the Iran crisis are part of that unease.”

The next test for One Nation will be a federal by-election in May and a state election in Victoria – Australia’s second-most populous state – in November.

In South Australia and nationally, One Nation has attracted mainly voters from the embattled centre-right Liberal and National parties, which suffered a severe defeat at the last federal election in May 2025. The federal Liberal and National parties have both endured recent internal feuds and leadership changes.

Emeritus professor of politics Clem Macintyre, from Adelaide University, told ST that One Nation may have benefited in South Australia from the public’s expectation that Labor would easily win, which may have prompted some Liberal voters to choose One Nation as a “protest vote”.

Such voters, he said, refused to back Labor but wanted to protest against their dissatisfaction with the “diabolical” condition of the Liberal Party.

“This is an election of enormous importance in terms of seeing this insurgent group break through,” he said.

“But it is a bit early to read the last rites over the two-party system. This South Australian election reminds me of a by-election, when voters often vote to send a message to the government because they already know what the government is going to look like,” he added.

Despite One Nation’s success in South Australia, the party faces several hurdles ahead of the next federal election, due to be held in 2028.

The party has mainly secured votes from the Liberal and National parties’ base and would also need to win over Labor voters. There are signs that this may be starting to happen.

Recent opinion polls have found that One Nation’s vote has increased by a bigger margin than the Liberal-National Coalition’s decline. Prof Manwaring also pointed to the Labor-held South Australian seat of Elizabeth, in the city of Adelaide, where a huge swing to One Nation saw it secure 23 percentage points more than in the previous election, while Labor’s vote fell 14 points.

But One Nation may struggle to translate its votes into Lower House seats owing to Australia’s preferential voting system, where voters rank candidates and preferences from eliminated candidates are redistributed until someone secures more than 50 per cent of the vote.

The party will require large numbers of voters of other parties to make it their second or third choice on ballots, but this may prove difficult for a party that many voters regard as extreme.

The party has also struggled to find quality candidates. On the eve of the South Australian election, for instance, a One Nation candidate was dumped by the party after it emerged he was wanted in the United Kingdom over allegations that he sexually touched a woman without her consent.

And even when candidates win, One Nation has famously struggled to keep them, with many of its elected MPs across the country leaving the party after disagreements with Ms Hanson or the party.

But a more fundamental challenge remains.

Though the party’s vocal protests against migration and political correctness are well known, One Nation is currently, as Prof Macintyre pointed out, “a party of disaffection”.

It remains to be seen whether voters will stick with One Nation if it emerges as a viable party of government and its policies – not just its slogans – face serious scrutiny.