Unintended consequences: One nation and neoliberalism in contemporary Australia

Much like the Brexit referendum result and Donald Trump’s ascendency to the White House, the revival of Pauline Hanson and the One Nation Party’s (ONP) 2016 federal election success has rocked Australian politics. With more than fifty-nine thousand first preference votes cast for the ONP group ticket nationally, the party secured 4.29% of the Senate vote, resulting in the election of four ONP senators including Hanson (Australian Electoral Commission, 2016a). Since then, the ONP has become influential in federal politics as the third largest non-government voting bloc in the Senate. At the state level, the ONP may yet repeat its 1998 success in the coming Queensland elections. It had a poor showing in the recent Western Australian election, but this setback can probably be attributed more to State-level issues like the reaction to the ONP/Liberal preference deal in Western Australia, rather than a rejection of the party and its politics.