Peter Malinauskus and South Australian Labor were re-elected in the March 21 state election, with 37.7% of the vote and 32 seats, despite a -2.3% swing.

In what Antony Green describes as a “political earthquake”, Pauline Hanson’s One Nation (PHON) gained 22.1%, winning two seats in the upper house and, at the time of writing, at least two seats in the lower house (Hammond and Ngadjuri). It beat the scandal-ridden South Australian Liberal Party, which had preferenced PHON, and challenged the two-party Liberal-Labor domination of electoral politics.

Despite its anti-worker policies, PHON pitched itself to disenfranchised, working-class voters looking for an alternative to the major parties. After four decades of neoliberalism and the cost-of-living crisis, many workers wanted to lodge a protest vote, even though PHON’s policies won’t help them. Pauline Hanson has never supported pro-worker policies.

Labor, the Liberals and PHON represent three different sides of the pro-AUKUS capitalist class, the latter being the overtly racist “mask-off” one. All support the war on Iran, the genocide in Gaza and US-Australia military ties.

But, unlike the two major parties, PHON is not interested in projecting a veneer of respectability, openly whipping up racism with its anti-immigration and jingoistic policies. For example, PHON campaigned on repealing the state’s Voice to Parliament.

Malinauskus took a conciliatory tone at his post-election media conference saying: “When you actually look at what all the parties say, including One Nation, it’s pretty much the same thing – that we need a controlled, well-calibrated migration program”. Instead of rejecting PHON’s racism and right-wing popularism, he doubled down saying: “Australians should be patriotic and can be proud of what........

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