political trust Archives - Clover Hill Diaries

Before we explain One Nation voters, perhaps we should listen to them

Yesterday I wrote about the extraordinary enthusiasm political parties have for studying unhappy voters rather than themselves. This morning the Sydney Morning Herald delivered me an article about researchers studying 1,000 One Nation voters. Sometimes the universe is unnecessarily helpful.

In my living history interviews with people in their late 80s and early 90s across my local government area, I often ask what has changed in their lifetime. I am hoping for the broad sweep, social change, physical change, how the place has changed around them.

The most common answer I get is: too many people.

They are talking about people moving into the area from somewhere else in Australia. Sydney gets mentioned a lot. Immigration does not.

So when I read Paul Sakkal’s article in the Sydney Morning Herald this morning on what 1,000 One Nation voters say is driving them, I smiled.

The headline finding is immigration. Of the One Nation supporters who believe Australia is heading in the wrong direction, 39 per cent name immigration as one of the reasons. Fifty-seven per cent fear Australia’s culture and identity are changing too quickly. Forty per cent point to pressure on housing and infrastructure.

Then you read what people actually say.

One supporter says the issue is arithmetic. You cannot bring in that many people without building the houses. Another says the issue is who comes and whether they want to become part of what is already here.

Suddenly “immigration” is being asked to explain quite a lot.

We do love a complicated explanation. Apparently understanding something counts for less if it doesn’t require a consultant.

The research into One Nation voters comes with focus groups, voter segments, demographic differences, loyal supporters, newer supporters and analysis of what might persuade people to change their vote. All useful.

But perhaps people are also saying exactly what they mean.

There are more people than there used to be, and they do not like some of the consequences.

People do not experience population growth as a percentage. They experience another housing development, another traffic jam, another doctor’s books closed to new patients, another paddock covered in houses and another place that takes longer to get to.

Ask someone in their late 80s in my LGA what has changed and I may hear “too many people”.

Ask a One Nation voter what is wrong with Australia and I may hear “too much immigration”.

Before deciding those are entirely different conversations, it might be useful to ask what each person is actually describing.

The Scanlon Foundation’s long-running social cohesion research adds an important clue. In 2024, 49 per cent of Australians thought immigration was too high. Yet 85 per cent said multiculturalism had been good for Australia, 82 per cent said migrants were good for the economy and 83 per cent rejected excluding immigrants on the basis of race, ethnicity or religion.

The 2025 research is equally interesting.

Among Australians who thought immigration was too high, 58 per cent nominated the economy or housing as the country’s biggest problem. Only 9 per cent nominated immigration itself.

That does not make concerns about race, culture or identity disappear. The One Nation research itself shows a difference between newer supporters worried about migration numbers and parts of Hanson’s traditional base who are more concerned about the background of migrants.

But it does suggest that “too much immigration” can sometimes be shorthand for something much broader.

Too many people for the houses.

Too many people for the roads.

Too many people for the services.

Too much change, too quickly.

In my interviews, the people causing all this pressure can be Australians who moved down the highway. Scale the same experience up from a town to a country and suddenly the new arrivals have passports.

This takes us straight back to the leadership question I wrote about yesterday.

Political parties confronted with dissatisfied voters have an extraordinary appetite for studying the voters. Who are they? What do they want? What are they angry about? What message will bring them back?

Now we have research into 1,000 One Nation voters.

To its credit, the research reaches an important conclusion: One Nation’s rise is as much a story of Liberal failure as One Nation success.

That is more interesting than another voter profile.

Because the real question may be what happens when population grows faster than people’s confidence that governments can manage the consequences.

Housing, roads, hospitals, schools and infrastructure are experienced locally. So is change. People notice the paddock disappearing long before they read the population statistics.

Then politics arrives with an answer. Immigration.

That is a powerful word because it can turn a collection of complicated experiences into one problem with one number attached to it.

Politics loves a number. Numbers can be cut. Systems are messier.

So before politicians hear “immigration” and start competing over who can promise the lower migration target, it might be worth listening a little longer.

What are people actually describing? Because sometimes when someone in their late 80s tells me the problem is “too many people”, the people causing all the trouble came from Wollongong.

Pauline Hanson did not invent that feeling.

She may simply have become very good at telling people what to call it.

Want to understand Pauline Hanson? Try Leadership 101

I am fascinated by the way political parties respond when voters start deserting them. One of the first principles of leadership is to look at yourself and your own role in what is happening. Political parties, apparently, prefer to investigate the voters.

An article in The Conversation examining how Donald Trump changed the United States made me wonder whether Australia is busy studying the symptom and ignoring the cause. Not because Pauline Hanson is Australia’s Donald Trump. She isn’t. Australia is not America. We have compulsory voting, preferential voting, an independent electoral commission and a parliamentary system that makes it considerably harder for one person to capture the machinery of government. All reassuring. Possibly a little too reassuring.

The more interesting question is whether some of the conditions that made Trump possible are already here. Trump and Hanson have something fundamental in common. Both tell people politics is a contest between ordinary citizens and an establishment that has stopped listening to them. It is an extraordinarily resilient political proposition. When the media attacks you, the media proves your point. When political opponents condemn you, the establishment proves your point. When experts explain why you are wrong, experts prove your point. It is almost magnificently self-sealing.

But Trump and Hanson did not invent all the grievances of the people who support them. They found people who already believed the political system wasn’t listening. That distinction deserves considerably more attention than it gets.

The response of established political parties to populism too often seems to be to study the populists. Who are these people? Why are people voting for them? What are they angry about? How do we win them back? All excellent questions.

There is one rather awkward question missing. What did we do?

Political parties appear endlessly fascinated by voter dissatisfaction and considerably less fascinated by their own contribution to it. There is a certain hubris in treating millions of voters turning away from you as an interesting sociological phenomenon. Perhaps the voters haven’t suddenly become inexplicable. Perhaps they have been explaining themselves for years.

Trump ultimately did something Hanson has never done. He captured one of America’s two major political parties, turning a populist insurgency into institutional power. Hanson doesn’t have to achieve anything remotely similar to change Australian politics.

A minor party doesn’t have to form government to change government. It only has to make a major party nervous enough. Australia has already run that experiment. Once a major party starts borrowing its language, priorities and policies, the influence is already there.

The insurgent doesn’t have to move into the house. Everyone else starts rearranging the furniture.

And Hanson has another advantage. She has been telling essentially the same political story for 30 years. So the resurgence of One Nation isn’t the arrival of some mysterious new force in Australian politics. It is an old message finding people newly prepared to hear it.

That should make the major parties curious about themselves. Instead, the temptation will be to explain Hanson. Perhaps commission some polling. Find the demographic. Identify the grievance. Develop the messaging. Workshop a phrase involving “everyday Australians”. Anything, apparently, except look in the mirror.

The lesson from America isn’t that Australia is destined to produce Donald Trump. Our institutions are different and they provide substantial protection. But institutions can only do so much when people stop trusting the people operating them.

Once enough voters conclude that the political system doesn’t work for people like them, attacking that system stops being a political liability. It becomes a qualification for office.

So I wouldn’t spend too much time asking whether Pauline Hanson could become Australia’s Donald Trump.

The bigger question is not whether Pauline Hanson can win enough seats to govern. It is whether she is already winning the argument. If the major parties are borrowing her language, chasing her voters and shifting the boundaries of what counts as mainstream politics, then the change is already happening.

And if they are doing all of that without asking what they did to make those voters leave in the first place, they are learning exactly the wrong lesson.

That would be quite an achievement. To learn the lesson of Donald Trump while carefully avoiding the bit about yourself.

Trust, Rhetoric, and the Power of Trump’s Appeal to America’s Working Class

Trust. In today’s world, it’s everything—or so we say. Yet, watching the recent US election, you’d be forgiven for wondering where that trust is coming from and why it’s placed the way it is. In this latest round, America’s working class has once again cast its lot with Donald Trump, a billionaire who’s never lived their life, who’s never struggled to cover the bills or faced a family medical crisis with no safety net. And yet, for millions, he’s their man, their fighter, the one they believe will deliver the promises that have slipped through their fingers for decades.

How did we get here? How is it that a convicted felon, a wealthy man, steeped in privilege, can inspire trust as a working-class champion? Well, it’s not simple. There’s the power of rhetoric, sure. Trump’s got that in spades. There’s the disillusionment with the establishment, the sense of betrayal by anyone “in charge.” And then there’s that extraordinary way Trump seems to draw people in—people whose lives look nothing like his own.

Trump’s skill with rhetoric is undeniable. He zeroes in on the frustration and disappointment working Americans feel every day: wages that don’t go up, futures that feel shaky. He tells them he’s going to “drain the swamp,” take down the elites, and shake up a system that so many believe has forgotten them. He talks about bringing back jobs, fighting China, and standing up to the faceless forces keeping them down. His lifestyle may scream luxury, but his words? They speak right to the heart of their struggle.

Then there’s another piece to all this: Trump’s way of connecting with those for whom religion is everything. He talks about defending religious freedom, protecting conservative values, and restoring the “traditional” family in a way that resonates deeply with people who feel their beliefs are under siege. They look past his opulent life because he presents himself as the one willing to safeguard their faith in a secular world.

But here’s the surprising part: his followers don’t seem to need him to walk in their shoes. They don’t demand shared experience. Instead, they want someone to stand up for their right to live their way, protect their jobs, and fight for values they feel slipping away. Trump, for them, is that person.

So, what’s going on here? Rhetoric? Distrust of the establishment? The appeal of a “strongman” who’ll protect their rights? All of that, maybe. But here’s the kicker about Trump’s appeal: it’s not policy, and it’s not empathy. It’s about something much bigger. When people feel overwhelmed, they look for a saviour. They look outward, hoping for someone to come in and take up the burden, someone who says, “Trust me. I’ve got this.” That’s where Trump comes in.

It’s a handover of responsibility. People put their faith in him, hoping he’ll do the heavy lifting. They’re not asking, “Does he understand us?” They’re asking, “Will he take on this battle for us?” And for those weighed down by a world that feels too much, Trump is the easy choice. He promises to shoulder their struggles, to protect their way of life. It’s not about whether he lives like them. It’s that he’s willing to play the role of protector—a modern answer to that old yearning for someone, something, to step in and make everything right.

So, there it is. For many, Trump embodies that saviour figure, letting them look outward for answers and promises of intervention, rather than inward for change. It’s a comfortable, almost timeless choice, and one that’s powerful enough to keep millions of Americans trusting him, election after election.