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TRANSCRIPT:
On Seven's Sunrise, it was a war of words between government Minister Tanya Plibersek and One Nation’s Barnaby Joyce.
PLIBERSEK: “As One Nation does better in the polls, I think it's actually really important that journalists, the Australian public, more broadly, start to ask. They need to. They need to get out there with some detailed policies if they really want to be tested in the way the major parties are."
JOYCE: "Tanya, you give us so much material. It's so easy to be a grievance party when you're the government."
PLIBERSEK: "Let's see yours Barnaby, I'll be waiting for your alternative budget. All you're doing is whinging.”
This sparring has followed recent Redbridge polling that shows an unprecedented surge in support for One Nation, which some have speculated could be spiking on the back of Pauline Hanson's anti-immigration stance.
The new data puts the party up 9 points to 26 per cent, with leader Pauline Hanson polling as the most popular leader on 38 per cent, ahead of Prime Minister Anthony Albanese.
The primary vote for the Liberals and Nationals, whose alliance ended dramatically in mid-January, has plunged seven points to 19 per cent.
That's heaped more pressure on the Coalition to end their in-fighting, which Liberals MP Alex Hawke says is the most important priority.
"I think Littleproud is on the verge of scoring the biggest own goal on the centre right politics of all time... This happened quickly. It can unhappen quickly if people are willing to put aside their personal egos."
Simon Welsh is an analyst for Redbridge.
He says there are clear patterns in who is turning to One Nation.
"For the record the really big gains have been in Gen X and younger boomers, and particularly Gen X men and and younger boomers. So there is also a gender disparity on across the across all age demographics."
Senior Monash University lecturer Dr Benjamin Moffitt argues that Pauline Hanson hasn’t actually changed her messaging or strategy.
He says that instead, the shift is driven by a change in voter appetite.
"I think it's a demand side explanation. I think there's stuff going on contextually, in terms of Bondi, in terms of the Coalition, in terms of this broader sense of dissatisfaction about the current state of Australian politics, but also economic life, disquiet about housing, disquiet about the economy, disquiet dissatisfaction about immigration and blaming immigrants for a lot of those housing issues that Hanson has been able to capitalise on. So I think this is really a demand side explanation, rather than a supply side, one that anti establishment vote is currently parking itself with One Nation. There's not really, I guess, a populist or anti establishment messaging coming from the coalition."
Liberal frontbencher Dan Tehan has blamed divisions within the now-former coalition for their poor showing.
Mr Welsh says that kind of shift could be a reaction against the current dysfunction in the Liberal party and the economic direction they are taking.
"So the Liberal Party Coalition have become more the party of sort of big business, rather than the party of individual aspiration. So it's a pretty fundamental thing. It's more than just some transient protest vote."
According to Mr Welsh, there is also a broad base perception on the left - and the right - that there is a lack of a strong left wing populist movement to address voter concerns.
While some commentators suggest that Victorian Socialist candidates such as Jordan van den Berg (known as 'Purplepingers') represent a burgeoning form of left populism, Dr. Moffitt maintains that a distinct institutional party remains absent.
“On the left at the moment, we're not seeing the same kind of shift to left populism that we're seeing on the right in the shift to populism. And there's a couple of things going on there that I think one is just that the populist left kind of movement in Australia basically doesn't have its game together in the same way that the right does. And I'm talking about sort of the communications machinery that is sitting below the surface, and that is a global machinery that is working to to to certainly, sort of on the right of politics is really working to to help that sort of right wing populist cause. There isn't the same thing on the left at the moment.”
Dr Moffit also says that One Nation has never performed as well in the ballot box as they have in the polls.
He says that the surge in One Nation’s primary vote from 17 per cent just before Christmas to 26 per cent now, represents more than four times the six per cent it actually received at the last election.
Labor remains statistically even at 34 per cent while the Greens fell 2 percentage points to 11 per cent.
Dr Moffitt says that suggests without a clear left-wing populist alternative, voters looking to vent their frustrations against the establishment are left with few places to turn.
"Right populism as we know, looking at the news across the world, is doing much better than left populism. Donald Trump in the US now you Farage and reform in UK, the AfD in Germany and so on. Left populism kind of had its heyday in Europe in the 2010s the parties I mentioned before, Syriza Podemos in Spain, la France, in Sumie de Linka in Germany, have all kind of gone and went except for the case of the French example. There's a lot of reasons for that. Bernie Sanders in the US, I should mention as well. There's a lot of reasons for that, I think that we could get into, but it's interesting that we haven't seen that a left populist party formation in the Australian context."
