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July 23, 2026 — 5:00am
A party headquartered in a nondescript brick building in North Gosford, with no leader, no endorsed candidates and no policies, is already dictating terms in the build-up to the next NSW election.
One Nation is a bit of an enigma in NSW. While Pauline Hanson can’t scratch herself without a Spotlight special, the famously top-down control of the party from its Queensland mothership – and its focus on federal politics – means it has very little presence in the cut and thrust of Macquarie Street.
Although a few candidate Facebook pages have begun to pop up, they are yet to officially endorse anyone, and beyond the obvious – One Nation is unlikely to be a fan of NSW’s Renewable Energy Zones, for example – there is almost nothing voters can point to in terms of concrete policies. One Nation’s branch rules explicitly ban local office holders from making statements to the media. Even if they didn’t, senior figures such as Barnaby Joyce are not always sure what the party’s stance on any given issue will be.
Despite all that, there’s no question that Hanson’s party is wagging the dog.
A One Nation official in Sydney this week has been in back-to-back meetings with industry groups trying to get a read on what the far-right party’s position might be on the myriad state issues it needs to land before the election. And some of the big lobby shops have been approaching clued-in One Nation whisperers about coming on board.
Until now, Opposition Leader Kellie Sloane has faced most of the hard questions about the impact of One Nation’s surge, and for good reason. The most recent Resolve Political Monitor had the Coalition trailing Hanson’s party on primary vote. The Nationals are in such trouble that their Upper Hunter MP Dave Layzell is openly predicting he will lose next March, and during a podcast last month the former ABC election analyst Antony Green said he believed the junior Coalition partner would be lucky to hold any seats west of the Blue Mountains.
It’s a headache for Sloane, who repeatedly faces questions about how and whether she will deal with One Nation. Most pressingly, the optional preferential voting system means the Liberals, even in metropolitan Sydney seats, could end up losing what Green described as “surprise” seats to Labor if One Nation votes don’t flow back to them. For that reason, Sloane is under pressure to declare her hand on whether the Liberals will strike a preference deal.
But the clearest evidence the major parties are worried is coming from Chris Minns, who has been busy recently honing his lines on Hanson and the far-right party.
At a Business NSW event last week, Minns talked about One Nation. At Labor’s state conference two weeks before that, he talked about One Nation. During a press conference on Sunday, he brought up One Nation.
And on Wednesday, Minns made an appearance on the ABC’s Radio National to talk about, yep, One Nation. The media has a role to play here, too. Both Minns and Sloane are being asked about Hanson’s surge every time they stand up at press conferences. But it is obvious Labor is looking at some worrying numbers of its own, particularly in the Hunter and in outer Sydney electorates. Minns had barely visited the Hunter during his first term before a flurry of visits lately, and it’s not a coincidence that the major announcement ahead of Labor’s state conference was a promise to invest $12 billion to build the next generation of Tangara trains at a new manufacturing facility in the Hunter.
In Cessnock, in particular, Labor figures believe local MP Clayton Barr could be in significant trouble. There is an irony to that because Barr is the kind of local MP One Nation voters would usually warm to. Hard-working and modest, Barr doesn’t have a self-promotional bone in his body. That has helped him build a 23 per cent margin. But the region trended further to One Nation even before its recent surge, and the disaffection voters feel for both the major parties is such that Barr is now in the fight of his life against an empty chair.
All of this comes with the usual caveat that things could change rapidly for One Nation as we get closer to election day on Saturday, March 13.
People are telling pollsters they would vote for One Nation, but they aren’t actually voting. And there’s a reason One Nation doesn’t yet have any candidates, and puts such a tight leash on others within the party. For as long as the party remains a blank canvas onto which voters can project their grievances, it can be everything to everyone.
That will eventually change. But the lesson from South Australia – and, if polls are to be believed, Victoria – is that the major parties can’t assume it will all implode. Indeed, proof of that is evidenced by the fact that One Nation is still polling in the mid-20s despite a litany of Hanson comments – including but not limited to her lamenting the impact of the end of the White Australia policy, her desire for Australia to be a monoculture, and, as recently as Wednesday, her declaration that domestic violence is “a two-way street”.
Labor is better placed in NSW than places like Victoria. Whatever you think about the NSW premier, there is little doubt he is one of the Labor’s best communicators and, as I’ve written before, has a much greater ability to articulate voter grievances than most mainstream politicians in Australia.
Nevertheless, without even showing up, One Nation is dominating the conversation in NSW.
Michael McGowan is The Sydney Morning Herald’s NSW state political editor.
