Hanson gave clearer voice to what the Coalition has nudged and winked about for 25 years

July 3, 2026 — 5:10am

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When I envisaged a time in Australian politics when Labor government pushed negative gearing and capital gains tax reforms through the parliament, relying on help from the Greens, I didn’t imagine the Coalition being preoccupied about parsing the meanings of mono- and multiculturalism. I imagined instead a full-throated political fight: the Liberal leader neck-deep in conviction, fighting for civilisation as he saw it. But that’s because I imagined a normal political time in which the whole landscape hadn’t fractured.

It’s now a genuinely weird moment where the atmospherics and obsessions of politics have almost nothing to do with who’s in the parliament. All the energy, momentum and political focus concern a party whose votes don’t matter. All the actual business is getting done between Labor and the Greens, the latter of which barely has a speaking role in the current political drama. Never has there been such a disjuncture between parliamentary power and the public mood.

Right now, though, the Coalition has the benefit of neither. In the parliament, it is relevant only if Labor is pursuing something the Greens won’t accept – like its NDIS cuts – but otherwise not at all. That makes it impotent in the face of tax changes it once weaponised sufficiently against Labor to claim a miracle election victory. But it derives no power from the public mood either, so its rhetorical objections evaporate as soon as they’re uttered. Any polling benefit of Labor’s weeks of post-budget........

© Brisbane Times