Pauline Hanson is picking up support but won’t fix our one true problem

June 19, 2026 — 5:00am

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There’s a clear reason Pauline Hanson is picking up support among voters - but no evidence she knows how to fix things.

Some of the issues she raises reflect real concerns that Australians have – as suggested by polling which shows primary vote support for One Nation has overtaken that of Labor and the Coalition.

Polling, of course, is not always an accurate reflection of what people think or how they will vote. But even if it is, I’m not convinced most Australians are backing One Nation because they agree with the party’s more extreme ideas.

More likely, it’s a reflection of their dissatisfaction with stagnating living standards (largely misattributed to things such as immigration and government spending on things they can’t see an immediate, tangible benefit from).

Why are voters cranky enough to turn to Hanson? I have a theory

Ross GittinsEconomics Editor

There’s probably also an underappreciated “bandwagon” effect. As a growing group of Australians have flocked to express support for Pauline Hanson, at least some people have probably (not always consciously) found themselves drifting in the same direction.

Either way, it’s likely that the rising support for One Nation has a fair bit to do with our stagnating living standards: prices and interest rates have crept back up while wages have failed to fully keep up, and growth in productivity – our ability to do things better, faster or using fewer resources – has been painfully slow.

The Productivity Commission’s deputy chair Alex Robson, for example, said in the commission’s latest quarterly bulletin, for example, that Australia’s labour productivity growth is going “from bad to worse”. We’re working harder and longer, he said, but not working smarter.

Now don’t take that to heart: it’s not that we’re working “stupidly”. In fact, although many of us........

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