One Nation must be fought relentlessly. That has to be the lesson the left and the working-class movement takes from the victory of Hanson’s far-right racist party in the Farrer by-election, where One Nation won close to 40 percent of the primary vote—and around 57 percent on two-party preferred terms.
We can’t bury our heads in the sand. One Nation can’t be wished away or ignored.
If there was any doubt about the threat posed by Hanson’s politics, you just had to listen to her reactionary victory rant on election night. Racism, of course, was central, with attacks on “mass immigration” and Muslims and the demand for “Australian values at the heart of our immigration”—to which her mob of supporters responded with chants of “Aussie, Aussie, Aussie. Oi, Oi, Oi!”
Alongside the racist bile, she denounced “net zero ideology”, demanded “energy abundance” (i.e. burning more coal to make the climate disaster worse) and called to “unlock the water” to unleash more environmental destruction on the Murray/Darling basin.
As for the idea that One Nation is an “economic populist” party standing up for the so-called battlers, Hanson demanded increased government austerity measures, attacking “big spending” and “big government”. Barnaby Joyce chimed in with attacks on out-of-control “socialism”.
All of this is occurring in a context where the world capitalist system is becoming meaner and nastier, with more and more attacks on basic rights and working-class living standards. The far right is entrenching itself in country after country.
Just days before One Nation’s success in Farrer, Nigel Farage’s Reform UK surged to victory in numerous council elections in Britain, and Narendra Modi’s ultra-reactionary Indian People’s Party won big in a string of regional elections in India.
One Nation’s thrashing of the Liberals will substantially add to the momentum it gained from its 23 percent vote in South Australia. Big money had already been flowing into One Nation’s coffers from the top end of town, and that is sure to increase as more of the rich and powerful follow Gina Reinhart’s lead.
So a line has to be drawn. One Nation is not going to be stopped by backing conservative independent candidates like Michelle Milthorpe, who Get Up! spent over half a million dollars campaigning for in Farrer. Nor will it be stopped by rallying behind the right-wing Labour governments of Albanese in Canberra, Minns in NSW and Allan in Victoria, as the lesser evil.
And One Nation is definitely not going to be stopped by accommodating its reactionary, racist and anti-working-class politics. Decades of racist attacks by the mainstream parties on refugees, Muslims and Aboriginal people, combined with their undermining of workers’ rights, living standards and union organisation, have prepared the ground for Hanson.
The far right is not unstoppable, but it will not be defeated by confining ourselves to the framework of parliamentary politics. We have to rebuild our unions as fighting forces that stand up for workers. We need mass mobilisations on the streets to break the momentum of the far right and to stand up to racism.
None of that is going to happen overnight. It will take determined effort by committed activists to begin to turn the tide. It is going to be a long fight.
A vital element of any successful resistance to the far right is building a militant socialist movement prepared to consistently mobilise to defend the interests of the working class and the oppressed. We need a party that will challenge not just One Nation but the whole capitalist system, whose interests the far right serves.
The reformist politics of the ALP and the union leaders, and the small-l liberal politics of the Greens, are incapable of offering the concerted resistance to the far right that is necessary. They are too tied to capitalism. They are not prepared for the scale of working-class mobilisation needed to crush Hanson because that would threaten the interests of the entire Australian ruling class, to which they are tied.
We are in dangerous times. Mainstream politics is being decisively shaken up. The Liberal Party, the dominant party of capitalist rule in Australia for nearly 80 years, is in disarray. The Liberals’ very survival is in question.
At the close of counting on Saturday night, they had been reduced to just 12.4 percent of the vote in Farrer, long a conservative stronghold. The Nationals were on 9.8 percent. A swathe of their regional seats is now under threat. It is difficult to see the Liberals being able to form government federally without a coalition arrangement with One Nation.
What was the response of Liberal leader Angus Taylor to their debacle? He defended preferencing One Nation and joined Hanson in calling for “reducing government spending” and “abundant energy”, and declared that “mass migration has not worked for this country”.
This increasing shift to the right by the Liberals simply inflames the reactionary political mood in society and is unlikely to break One Nation’s momentum.
Nonetheless, challenges remain for One Nation. It has yet to establish a solid party machine and has yet to be seriously tested in the major cities. Whether it can break through in the main urban areas will be decisive.
In Farrer, One Nation consistently polled over 50 percent in the more rural booths and in some 60 or 70 percent. But in most Albury booths, the party polled considerably less—a bit over 20 percent. That should, of course, be no grounds for complacency. But it does indicate that not everyone is going over to Hanson.
The task now is to galvanise those appalled and shaken up by the One Nation surge and cohere them into a fighting force. The myth of easy-going Australia is being shattered. We have to build a militant socialist movement that can stiffen the resistance to the far right and lay the basis for a genuine alternative to all the horrors of capitalist society.
