Australia

Date range: 1980-2020

Case notes

One Nation Party

One Nation Party (ONP), led and created by Queensland Senator Pauline Hanson, has been Australia’s most recognisable populist party in recent decades. Hanson was once a Liberal Party candidate in outer-suburban Brisbane in the 1996 election, before the party disendorsed her due to past comments about indigenous Australians (Mason 2010, 186). She went on to stand and win as an independent. As a Member of Parliament she provoked enormous media attention through controversial nativist and xenophobic rhetoric. She founded ONP after winning, which enjoyed some success in the next 1998 election (despite Hanson losing her own seat) before collapsing under the pressures of internal and legal fights that ended up sending her to prison (Rutherford 2001). Under the new name Pauline Hanson’s One Nation it made a surprising comeback in the 2016 elections, but did not pass the 5% threshold in the lower house (although it did better in the Senate, where Hanson won a seat).

Hanson became an immediate sensation when she declared in her maidan speech in Parliament that Australia was in danger of being “swamped by Asians” (Mughan and Paxton 2006, 344). This was indicative of a range of her other xenophobic attacks on Asians (Ahluwalia and McCarthy 1998, 83), whom she claimed were responsible for drugs and crime (Stokes 2000, 28). More generally she classed immigrants from the “Third World” as a threat to Australian culture due to their refusal to assimilate into it (Reynolds 2000, 28; Mughan and Paxton 2006, 344; Deutchman and Ellison 1999, 36). In doing so she appealed to anti-immigrant attitudes in the community that major parties were less willing (at the time) to stoke (Goot and Watson 2001). She also made numerous statements critical of Indigenous Australians (Melleuish 1997; Deutchman 2000, 51; DeAngelis 2003, 86), claiming that a “reverse racism” policy was unfairly advantaging them in them via more generous welfare policies at the expense of others (Johnson 1998). All of this established her solid OTH_ETHNIC and OTH_IMMIGRANT foundations (both = 3).

From its inception, the party sought to label as out of touch the political elite in the major parties (Labor and the Liberal/National coalition), and dissatisfaction with the functioning of the political system has always been a core part of ONP appeal (Reynolds 2000, 165; DeAngelis 2003, 86).

Hanson made general claims against “politicians” in a catch all way (Deutchman and Ellison 1999, 37), and cultivated an image as an “anti-politician, untarnished by not being a member of the generally despised political establishment” (Pasquarelli 1997, 6). Hanson claimed policies targeting and excluding white non-Indigenous Austrailans were bound with the fundamental elitism of the political system writ large. She claiming that the establishment had lost touch with the mainstream opinion and experience on race and immigration (Jackman 1998, 170), was forcing multi-culturalism on ordinary Australians against their will (Stokes 2000, 27), and pushed a repressive “political correctness” agenda to silence ordinary people (Ahluwalia and McCarthy 1998). This system, she claimed, resulted in a net benefit for the elites – which she termed the “New Class” (Melleuish 1997, 25) – at the expense of ordinary people. In one notable example of this narrative, Hanson claimed that:

In response to my call for equality for all Australians, the most noisy criticism came from the fat cats, bureaucrats and the do-gooders. They screamed the loudest because they stand to lose the most – their power, money and position, all funded by ordinary Australian taxpayers (Jackman 1998, 168).

In opposition to this elite, Hanson sold her credentials as someone in touch with “the people”, owing to her humble outer suburban origins and her time running a fish and chip shop (Moffit 2017, 124; Deutchman 2000, 36; Nile 1997, 1). Due to this rhetoric we’ve coded ONP as 3 on OTH_POLCLASS.

Banks and big businesses were among the New Class elite in her discourse (Stokes 2000, 30). Specifically, she accused Australian companies of selling out to foreign stockholders (Louw and Loo 1997, 6) at the expense of the national interest. Given that this was a relatively smaller “other” to the people, we’ve coded ONP as 2 on OTH_ECONOMIC. Despite being opposed to foreign immigrants, we’ve seen no evidence that Hanson accused foreign powers or entities of controlling Australian politics at the expense of the people (OTH_FOREIGN = 1).

Despite generally maintaining a state interventionist and protectionist set of economic policies (DeAngelis 2003, 86), Hanson’s cultural and immigration policies are by far the more salient part of her politics, and for that she has been consistently labelled “radical right” in the secondary literature (Moffit 2017, 124; Deutchman and Ellison 1999, 34) (LRPOSITION = FR). ONP has always been a personalist operation (Moffit 2017, 125), totally dependent on Hanson's “charismatic” personality (DeAngelis 2003, 87; Mason 2010) and her capacity to attract media attention (Louw and Loo 1997; Deutchman and Ellison 1999, 35; Lewis 1997). Internally, Hanson and her close associates maintained total control of the party structure – one of the reasons why the party collapsed was its lack of internal democracy and Hanson’s autocratic leadership style (Rutherford 2001, 193). This has led ONP to be called the “One Person Party (Nile 1997) (CHARISMA = 3). Despite her attaches on social liberal norms, we’ve seen no evidence that Hanson or ONP threatened the liberal democratic system in Australia (LIBDEMNORMS = 1), and as she has never been part of any government, we’ve coded her 1 on INSIDER.

Palmer’s United Party, Clive Palmer

Clive Palmer is a billionaire mining magnate who split from the Liberal-National Party (LNP) (of which he was once a financier) in 2012, allegedly after being denied a government contract to build a railway line. He stood in the 2013 election with his own party, Palmer's United Party (PUP) (Kefford and McDonnell 2018, 384). With an enormous advertising budget, PUP won 5.49% of the national lower house vote and one seat (taken by him) in the Parliament. Following the departure of several PUP senators after the election and Palmer’s extra-parliamentary business scandals, the project was put on hiatus in the subsequent 2016 election, only to return as the United Australia Party in 2019. In its comeback it only managed 3.43% of the lower house vote, due to which we have only included it in the dataset in 2013.

The central message of the PUP was its distain for the Australia’s two major parties (Moffit 2017, 125; Kefford and McDonnell 2016, 192). It claimed that these major parties (the Labor party and the LNP) were not only out of touch, but actively hostile to the interests of ordinary people. For example, Palmer accused LNP leader Tony Abbott of trying to “sell off Australia to people only concerned with making money. Whatever they pay, they will only do it so they can charge you more” (Kefford and McDonnell 2016, 185). PUP did not differentiate between the two parties, considering them part of the single corrupt system. In opposition to this system, he styled himself as an “anti-politician” (Watson 2014, 27), in touch with the concerns of ordinary Australians (OTH_POLCLASS = 3).

Aside from the political class, Palmer’s populism didn’t target very many “others” to the ordinary people. Although there is a nationalist steak to his politics, his OTH_FOREIGN rhetoric only picked up in his 2019 reincarnation (= 1 in 2013). Unlike Hanson, Palmer’s populism did not (during the 2013 campaign at least) target ethnic others or immigrants (Moffit 2017, 125; Watson 2014, 2)(OTH_IMMIGRANT = 1, OTH_ETHNIC = 1). In fact the party actually favoured increasing support to refugees and was generally more progressive on immigration than the major parties (Kefford and McDonnell 2016, 185; Moffit 2017, 133). As a major industrialist and billionaire, he never engaged in any consistent rhetoric against major financial interests or businesses (OTH_ECONOMIC = 1), nor against the military (OTHMILITARY =1).

As its name suggests, it has been seen as little more than a vehicle for Palmer's personal brand and ambition (Kefford and McDonnell 2016, 187). As a candidate he commanded a flamboyant, unpredictable personal image (Moffit 2017, 125; Watson 2014, 27), and a used a highly combative interview style. Structurally, the party was almost entirely funded by Palmer, and totally controlled by him (Kefford and McDonnell 2018, 385–89). For this reason PUP has been considered a “personal party” built around Palmer that would not exist without him (Kefford and McDonnell 2018, 388) (CHARISMA = 3). Palmer’s policies in the 2013 election were an “eclectic” (Moffit 2017, 125) mix of crowd-pleasing contradictions (Kefford and McDonnell 2016, 184), including higher spending, lower taxes and the elimination of the national debt, and as a result Kefford and McDonnell claim that the party’s ideology “cannot be easily classified” (Kefford and McDonnell 2016, 183). There may be an argument that the vague nationalism of the party makes it right-leaning, but we’ve coded it C on LRPOSITION due to its ideological ambiguity and vagueness. While Palmer was a high-profile donor to the LNP party before leaving it (Kefford and McDonnell 2018, 384), it is not evident that he was any kind of “insider” to previous governments in the way that we are using term (INSIDER = 1), and while he consistently attacked critics in the media with great vitriol (Moffit 2017, 125), there is nothing in his campaigning conduct that challenges liberal democratic norms as we’ve defined them (LIBDEMNORMS = 1).

References

Ahluwalia, Pal, and Greg McCarthy. 1998. “‘Political Correctness’: Pauline Hanson and the Construction of Australian Identity.” Australian Journal of Public Administration 57 (3): 79–85.

DeAngelis, Richard A. 2003. “A Rising Tide for Jean–Marie, Jörg, & Pauline? Xenophobic Populism in Comparative Perspective.” Australian Journal of Politics & History 49 (1): 75–92.

Deutchman, Iva Ellen. 2000. “Pauline Hanson and the Rise and Fall of the Radical Right in Australia.” Patterns of Prejudice 34 (1): 49–62.

Deutchman, Iva Ellen, and Anne Ellison. 1999. “A Star Is Born: The Roller Coaster Ride of Pauline Hanson in the News.” Media, Culture & Society 21 (1): 33–50.

Goot, Murray, and Ian Watson. 2001. “One Nation’s Electoral Support: Where Does It Come from, What Makes It Different and How Does It Fit?” Australian Journal of Politics & History 47 (2): 159–91.

Jackman, Simon. 1998. “Pauline Hanson, the Mainstream, and Political Elites: The Place of Race in Australian Political Ideology.” Australian Journal of Political Science 33 (2): 167–86.

Johnson, Carol. 1998. “Pauline Hanson and One Nation.” In The New Politics of the Right: Neopopulist Parties and Movements in Established Democracies, edited by Hans-Georg Betz and Stefan Immerafll, 211–18. New York: St Martin’s Press.

Kefford, Glenn, and Duncan McDonnell. 2016. “Ballots and Billions: Clive Palmer’s Personal Party.” Australian Journal of Political Science 51 (2): 183–97.

———. 2018. “Inside the Personal Party: Leader-Owners, Light Organizations and Limited Lifespans.” The British Journal of Politics and International Relations 20 (2): 379–94.

Lewis, Glen. 1997. “The Media and the Pauline Hanson Debate: Cheap Talk or Free Speech?” Australian Journal of Communication 24 (1): 9–22.

Louw, P. Eric, and Eric Loo. 1997. “Constructing Hansonism: A Study of Pauline Hanson’s Persona in Australian Press.” Asia Pacific Media Educator 1 (3): 4–31.

Mason, Robert. 2010. “‘Pitbulls’ and Populist Politicians: Sarah Palin, Pauline Hanson and the Use of Gendered Nostalgia in Electoral Campaigns.” Comparative American Studies An International Journal 8 (3): 185–99.

Melleuish, Gregory. 1997. “Pauline Hanson and Australian Conservative Populism.” Quadrant 41 (9): 25–29.

Moffit, Benjamin. 2017. “Populism in Australia and New Zealand.” In The Oxford Handbook of Populism, edited by Cristóbal Rovira Kaltwasser, Paul A. Taggart, Paulina Ochoa Espejo, and Pierre Ostiguy, 121–39. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Mughan, Anthony, and Pamela Paxton. 2006. “Anti-Immigrant Sentiment, Policy Preferences and Populist Party Voting in Australia.” British Journal of Political Science 36 (2): 341–58.

Nile, Richard. 1997. “The Pauline Hanson One Person Party.” Taylor & Francis.

Pasquarelli, John. 1997. “The Pauline Hanson Phenomenon.” Australia and World Affairs, no. 33: 5–12.

Reynolds, Paul. 2000. “One Nation’s Electoral Support in Queensland: The 1998 State and Federal Elections Compared.” In The Rise and Fall of One Nation, edited by Michael Leach, Geoff Stokes, and Ian Ward, 153–69. St Lucia: Univ. of Queensland Press.

Rutherford, Jennifer. 2001. “One Love Too Many: The Undoing of Pauline Hanson.” Australian Journal of Politics & History 47 (2): 192–208.

Stokes, Geoff. 2000. “One Nation and Australian Populism.” In The Rise and Fall of One Nation, edited by Michael Leach, Geoff Stokes, and Ian Ward, 23–41. St Lucia: Univ. of Queensland Press.

Watson, Ian. 2014. “Are the PUPs Pauline’s Progeny? Populism and Political Alienation among Australian Voters.” In Murray Goot Festschrift, Macquarie University, Sydney.