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Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has taken aim at One Nation after a historic late-night byelection victory by the party in Labor’s stronghold of Western Australia, saying it was crucial to defeat hard-right populists.
On Sunday morning, Albanese addressed a crowd of Labor faithful at the party’s annual Queensland conference, hours after One Nation candidate Luke Herdegen claimed the outer suburban seat of Secret Harbour in Perth.
Albanese said One Nation leader Pauline Hanson sought to divide Australians, and that she talked Australians down.
“They can’t say what their immigration numbers are … they just have no idea when it comes to serious policy development,” he said.
“This is a crucial time for our movement because across the world, hard-right populists are on the march, peddling politics that is dangerous, divisive and downright dishonest.
“We simply must defeat them. We owe it to history. We owe it to the nation, and we will defeat them.
“They’ll say anything and do anything, bend any backs, peddle misinformation and disinformation, turn Australian against Australian.”
Albanese said One Nation had no serious answers to problems, and the party’s own division and disagreement was beginning to show.
He pointed to when One Nation won 11 seats in Queensland in 1998, they “lost them all in record time”. He questioned how they would work in a coalition with the LNP, saying it was a fact that they had to govern together.
Albanese spruiked several policies he said had improved the lives of Australians, and told the crowd the only mainstream political force that sought to govern in the interests of the Australian people was the Labor Party.
He said the best way to beat the “coalition of chaos” was to give Australians hope, to “stay positive”, and to be a party with ideas that would make people’s lives better.
This positivity is a sentiment that has crept into the prime minister’s speeches, in a pivot to respond to a growing sense of pessimism about the nation’s future.
Treasurer Jim Chalmers, who spoke moments before Albanese, told the crowd the government was aware of the One Nation threat.
“We took this threat seriously before yesterday’s byelection in the west, and we will take it seriously after it,” Chalmers said.
He said Australia, its cohesion, its people, and the economy were under threat by a dangerous and divisive coalition of chaos – “a three-ring circus of Liberals, Nationals and One Nation, with that karaoke clown from Melbourne [Liberal treasury spokesman Tim Wilson] as its chief economic spokesman”.
“Today, the biggest fault lines in our politics aren’t just between the centre left and the extreme right, but between those of us who want to address and alleviate the legitimate frustrations that people feel about the cost of living and other pressures, and those who just want to pick at them and prey on them,” he said.
On Saturday, Queensland Opposition Leader Steven Miles took aim at the Crisafulli LNP government, arguing it would need to form a coalition with One Nation to retain government at the next election.
“If you think they’re bad now, imagine what they would be like in coalition with One Nation, because the next election will be a fight between Labor and a far-right coalition of the LNP and One Nation swapping preferences and hoping to govern together,” he told the crowd.
Miles also confirmed that frontbencher and possible future leader Meaghan Scanlon would recontest the seat of Gaven, after speculation she may be moved to a safer district.
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Cloe Read is the crime and court reporter at Brisbane Times.Connect via X or email.From our partners
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