The Values of One Nation Voters

Abstract

This chapter considers the attitudes of One Nation voters, who are most clearly differentiated from major parties in their negative views of the political and legal system and their heightened sense of personal disempowerment. These voters indicate high levels of pessimism when asked if they expect their lives to be worse in coming years. They strongly differ with respect to immigration and cultural diversity. Their attitudes to immigration are consistent with a desire to turn back time to an imagined Australia of national unity (‘One Nation’), politicians acting for the common good, economic prosperity, and racial and cultural homogeneity. This attitudinal framework is shared by many who, while not supporters of Pauline Hanson, have abandoned the major political parties. Hanson’s Australian populism, like variants across the western world, appeals to those who fear—and others who experience—loss of status and livelihood to well-educated elites in the trans-national knowledge economies of the post-industrial age.