Cluelessness is bringing an era to an end. We won’t call them the major parties much longer

April 9, 2026 — 3:00am

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A tune that has bobbed up from time to time going all the way back to the mid-’90s is now on high rotation, bigger, louder and impossible to avoid. With apologies to Rodgers and Hammerstein, How Do You Solve a Problem Like Pauline? began as a novelty ditty but in its new form is closer to a death metal banger. At least, that’s what it sounds like to anyone with any sense inside the Liberal and National parties. After all, the rampant Pauline Hanson, with her fellow political careerist Barnaby Joyce by her side, is attracting ever more numbers of Coalition supporters into her column. Labor Party listeners should be finding the song disturbing too.

In short, the surge by an ever-increasing number of voters in the direction of One Nation marks the collapse of the Labor-versus Coalition arrangement that has operated federally since the 1920s. In much of the discussion since the South Australian election, which proved the polls had been right to show One Nation doing better than the Liberals, there remains a sense that it is merely a situation to be managed. Surely the adoption of some Hansonist rhetoric, a few borrowed and slightly diluted policies, and maybe some preference swaps, can get things back to the way they used to be so that the old verities can be reinstated.

I don’t think so: those verities are gone and won’t be coming back any time soon – if ever. It took decades of intentional deafness,........

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