Source : Perth Now news
One Nation’s ambitions at the upcoming South Australian election will be a “testbed for Australia” as the populist party seeks to capitalise on its best-ever polling, an expert has warned.
Pauline Hanson’s party is fielding candidates in all 47 lower house seats in the March 21 ballot, with former federal Liberal senator Cory Bernardi recruited to lead the upper house ticket.
It comes after One Nation surpassed the Coalition nationally in successive polling – a first-ever feat for a minor party.
However, with a mixed-but-improving track record of organisational ability in South Australia, the state election could prove to be a bellwether for One Nation’s ability to expand out of its traditional Queensland base and successfully organise real state and federal election challenges, Flinders University Associate Professor Rob Manwaring said.
“If they do have shrewder heads in the organisational wing of the party, then they will use South Australia as a testbed and say look, if we can get a campaign working effectively here, then they’ll be saying, well, in other states and territories where we’ve not had that same level of presence, they could use the South Australian model as a template,” Mr Manwaring told NewsWire.
Up until now, One Nation had not been a “significant presence” in South Australia, Mr Manwaring said, and had, as a party, been “quite disorganised”.
That began to change in 2022 when Sarah Game was elected on a One Nation ticket to the Legislative Council, South Australia’s upper house, but resigned from the party to instead sit as an independent in 2025, citing issues with the party’s brand.
Mr Manwaring said he expected One Nation would be seeking to expand its vote share in South Australia, perhaps snagging one or two upper house seats.
“They would also like to politically just bloody the nose of as many Liberals as they can,” he said.
“If they are lucky or fortunate, they might dare to dream of trying to pinch maybe one or two of the more regional or rural seats if their vote holds up.
“And, depending on what the overall fallout would be, then perhaps having much greater influence over vetoing government bills.”
South Australia is not unfamiliar with third-party challenges.
SA Best, led by former senator Nick Xenophon, polled well in the lead-up to the 2018 state election.
Nonetheless, the party failed to secure even a single lower house seat.
Mr Manwaring said the 2026 vote would decide if One Nation could succeed where SA Best had not.
“I do think it is really going to be a testbed for Australia,” he said.
“I think the question is how deep this One Nation tide is and whether it can do what Xenophon didn’t do, which is actually translate that into kind of meaningful gains in terms of seats.”
Liberals facing ‘existential question’
Faced with catastrophic polling, senior federal Liberal Party members have expressed fears about the future of the party should fortunes not turn around before the next federal election.
In South Australia, where leader Ashton Hurn only assumed the role in December, the party faced “existential questions”, Mr Manwaring said.
He warned the party faced the prospect of single-digit representation in the 47 member lower house.
“The Liberal Party still look like they are factionally divided,” Mr Manwaring said.
“I think many voters who might be inclined to support the central right side of politics are just turned off.”
That assertion was backed up by the latest Newspoll, released on Friday, which put the Liberal primary vote in South Australia at a dismal 14 per cent.
One Nation, meanwhile, clocked a whopping 24 per cent, while Labor has a strong 10-point lead.
While in other states the Liberals fear disenfranchised voters might turn to One Nation, in South Australia they might do the opposite, Mr Manwaring said, and vote for the incumbent Malinauskas government.
“On some issues, it’s socially conservative, relatively pro-mining, pro-development, which will tick the boxes for some of those who kind of see Malinauskas as a slightly different ilk to theirs.
“I think and then the question is how much can One Nation really pick up on that disaffected Liberal vote, and we don’t we’re not going to know the answer to that until like the morning after.”
Mr Manwaring said Labor would have “a relatively comfortable night”.
Asked about One Nation’s prospects, South Australian Premier Peter Malinauskas last month said it would be “interesting to see how it plays out”.
“We live in a proud, rich, liberal democracy that has diversity of opinions in it, and local parties are welcome to nominate, put their candidates up for election,” he said.
“What sets the South Australian parliamentary Labor Party apart versus our opponents is that we are a genuinely united team that actually believes in a common cause and then using the power of government to bring it to realisation, to make a difference to people’s lives – and we’re serious about it.
“We’ve got a team of people who are more interested in achieving outcomes than any particular personal ambitions, and I think that’s a great credit to the culture that we’ve been able to create over a sustained period, and it stands in stark contrast to the state Liberal Party, and who knows how it looks in terms of One Nation.”
Two parts of the party – and Cory Bernardi
One of the biggest challenges facing One Nation is its own candidates.
Mr Manwaring said minor parties like One Nation lacked the resources to vet a large number of candidates, such as trawling through their social media.
“So, it’s quite likely that candidates who’ve probably said possibly inflammatory or kind of controversial things on social media that might not get picked up in the vetting process,” he said.
The other issue may be Ms Hanson herself.
Mr Manwaring said he was not sure whether One Nation had moved past the single-person brand party despite the recruitment of Mr Bernardi and federal former Nationals MP Barnaby Joyce.
“I think One Nation still have that same problem, that Hanson in one sense wants to kind of direct and control, and it gets difficult that many egos because they don’t have, in one sense, the kind of factional agreements that other political parties and more established ones have,” he said.
While admitting Mr Bernardi’s last-minute addition on the One Nation ticket did elevate the party to its highest profile in the state to date, Mr Manwaring was unsure of his cache beyond “diehard centre, radical right supports”.
He said Mr Bernardi did not have the “breakthrough appeal” of a “clean-skinned candidate”.
“I think it might galvanise some of those who were already minded to vote One Nation, but I don’t think it has significant crossover appeal,” he said.
In announcing his candidacy, Mr Bernardi said One Nation would “reduce spending, reduce taxes and get our debt under control”.
In a February 19 media release, he accused Labor of “mass migration”, which he said was driving up housing demand.
“Peter Malinauskas is the emperor with no clothes. South Australians can’t live in submarines that won’t even be built for a decade at least,” he said, referring to AUKUS.
“One Nation has solutions. We’ll develop a homegrown SA workforce by redirecting compulsory Construction Industry Training Board levies to home construction businesses to fund apprentice wages, waiving prohibitive registration costs for first and second-year apprentices and exempting apprentice wages from payroll tax.”
