Fractured

Every few years, Pauline Hanson returns. Now the party ‘for Australia and Australian values’ is back yet again, this time flush with support from billionaires and featuring a host of former Coalition personalities. In this essay, journalist and author Royce Kurmelovs puts One Nation’s sudden increase in popularity into context and explores how the party’s latest surge is the symptom of a fundamental realignment within Australia’s political system. He explores how the declining influence of the federal Coalition and the broader fracturing of Australian politics has created an opening – but the party’s success is far from inevitable.