How One Nation gets what it wants

Written by: Ashlynne McGhee, Head of Editorial Innovation, The Conversation

One Nation has never held government, nor has it ever been in opposition. Yet it’s managed to influence public policy in Australia for three decades.

From borders to immigration, Indigenous affairs to multiculturalism, it’s moved the needle on each of these issues. How does a fringe party come to wield so much influence?

In episode 4 of our podcast, The Making of One Nation ^[1], public policy expert Josh Sunman says it’s because they’re able to shift the national conversation.

Once the major parties get a sense that One Nation’s really simplistic messaging is biting through they then feel a need to bring back those voters who they’re worried about losing to One Nation.

So they offer a kind of sanitised version of what One Nation’s policy position is, even though the substance is largely the same.

He says immigration is one of the best examples of One Nation’s influence.

John Howard in the 1980s spoke of Asian migration and cutting it down and was lambasted by both his party, the Labor Party and the press for it.

But by the end of the 1990s we have Howard’s famous line: ‘We will decide who comes to this country and the circumstances in which they come.’

We can really see him making a play for the One Nation vote there and One Nation’s influence has been seen throughout asylum seeker policy in particular ever since.

Political scientist Tim Bale from Queen Mary University of London says it’s a phenomenon replicated with far-right parties globally.

The UK is a very good example of a populist radical right political entrepreneur, Nigel Farage, being able to scare the Conservative Party but also the Labour Party into far more restrictive policies than would otherwise have been the case on both asylum and migration.

Without Nigel Farage, you’d have to say that although you might have seen some movement in that direction, you wouldn’t have seen quite the kind of hysterical rhetoric around the issue. And nor would you have seen policy move so fast.

Listen to Sunman and Bale talk about the mechanics of far-right parties influencing policy at The Making of One Nation podcast, available at Spotify, Apple or wherever you get your podcasts.

This episode was written by Ashlynne McGhee and produced and edited by Isabella Podwinski. Sound design by Michelle Macklem.