Australia’s One Nation Party is well known as a highly traditional, conservative and anti-immigration political force. But lately, their support has been surging (see cover image).
According to recent polls, Labor sits at 34% and One Nation at 26%.
What does that mean? At last year’s federal election, their preferred-party support was only 6% — a several-fold jump (see image 2).
As for the most favourably viewed leader, One Nation’s leader Pauline Hanson has now overtaken the current Prime Minister, reaching 38%. Of course, the infighting within the Coalition has a lot to do with this.
Looking at support across generations: One Nation has always skewed conservative, so historically the older the voter, the higher the support. Gen X (born 1965–1980) and Boomers (born 1946–1964) now back them at 35%. But the key point is that support among Millennials and Gen Z is also climbing sharply — in other words, approval among under-40s is visibly trending up.
Since the 1990s, One Nation’s core platform has essentially been white supremacy, arguing that Australia is being swamped by Asian or other immigrant backgrounds. It used to be a marginalised, xenophobic fringe party, but it has now entered the mainstream. Recently, quite a few former Liberal and National MPs have defected to One Nation, adding further momentum.
One Nation has effectively tapped into the current grassroots anti-immigration sentiment,
which centres on soaring housing prices and skyrocketing rents.
Successive governments have failed to solve this. Locals feel homes are increasingly out of reach; young people struggle just to rent, let alone buy.
In reality, both the Liberals and Labor have rolled out ambitious plans (such as building 1.2 million homes), but the results have been minimal, and the gap to the target remains enormous.
So some commentators argue that what matters isn’t what One Nation has proposed, but that their stance on immigration has always been crystal clear:
cut it back as much as possible (see image 3). That strikes a chord with many voters’ current mindset (see image 2). They advocate sharply reducing net migration, and imposing more restrictions on skilled migration and student visas. On top of that, they propose extending the welfare waiting period for new migrants from the current 4 years to 8 (see image 4).
In my view, the current polls don’t place direct pressure on the government just yet — the election was only recently, so there’s still time to respond. But polling pressure could well push them to adopt more cautious measures on immigration. Over the past few years, restrictions on temporary visas such as Student visas and 485 post-study work visas have already become very heavy.
On skilled migration reform, the Department of Home Affairs has just updated its draft points-test proposal. According to migration heavyweight Iscah, the official report could be released as early as the first half of the year — the current draft is essentially laying the groundwork. I’ll be analysing and sharing a breakdown of the updated draft over the next couple of days.
Neither Australia’s temporary visas nor its migration policy show any sign of meaningful easing in the short term. Everyone should still try to seize the current window and make their moves as early as possible. While One Nation’s rising support won’t translate into an immediate direct hit, the broader climate is genuinely becoming less friendly for prospective migrants.
