Australia has long been immune to the populist, anti-immigration politics that have taken hold in much of the Western world. But that is now changing, with the populist right-wing One Nation party rising to 25 percent in the polls — an astonishing surge from the country’s election of nine months ago, when the party received around 6 percent of the vote. Still, the question remains: Can One Nation mature into a party ready for government?
One Nation is not the new kid on the block. After being founded on an anti-immigration platform in 1997 by first-term parliamentarian Pauline Hanson, One Nation performed surprisingly well in the elections the following year, scoring over 8 percent of the vote. After that, however, Australia’s right-wing Liberal-National Coalition government took decisive action to curb immigration. Policies included setting up offshore detention centers in Papua New Guinea, as well as on the isolated island nation of Nauru, where asylum seekers arriving by boat were housed while their cases were processed.
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