One Nation may be slipping slightly in the opinion polls, but Pauline Hanson is still setting the direction of conservative politics in Australia. Instead of distinguishing the Liberal Party from the far right, opposition leader Angus Taylor appears determined to follow Hanson deeper into the culture wars – competing for the same voters, adopting the same grievances and offering increasingly theatrical solutions to problems most Australians do not consider urgent.
Taylor’s proposals to criminalise the burning of the Australian flag and legislate January 26 permanently as Australia Day reveal the familiar petty tactics of conservative populism: identify an offence, amplify the outrage and promise the punishment. It’s politics designed to provoke an emotional response rather than improve people’s lives. While Australians struggle with housing affordability, stagnant wages, healthcare pressures and widening inequality, the Liberal Party is offering flag laws, patriotic hand-on-heart symbolism and another argument about the date of Australia Day. Are you bored yet?
The Coalition has also reopened its campaign against Respectful Relationships education in schools. Nationals leader Matt Canavan has attacked programs teaching consent, equality, mutual respect and non-violent relationships as “woke” indoctrination that makes boys and men feel inferior. It is another calculated tactic where efforts to reduce domestic violence, sexual violence and harassment are repackaged as attacks on men. The people experiencing violence disappear from the discussion, while those being asked to examine harmful behaviour are presented as the real victims.
This is not simply a collection of disconnected conservative talking points – it’s a political strategy based on resentment, division and the constant manufacture of cultural enemies. But it also exposes the Coalition’s fundamental weakness: it no longer seems confident that it can develop a distinctive economic or social program capable of winning broad public support.
The latest Essential polling places Labor and the Coalition level on 26 per cent of the primary vote, with One Nation close behind on 23 per cent and Anthony Albanese recording his lowest approval rating as prime minister. Labor’s weakness should provide the Liberal Party with an opportunity to establish its own agenda. Instead, the Coalition keeps validating Pauline Hanson’s. History suggests that “me-too” politics rarely rewards the imitator and voters attracted to One Nation’s nationalism and grievance politics will always vote for the original, while moderate voters are pushed further away from the Coalition.
Nowhere is this race to the fringe more obvious – or more dangerous – than tobacco policy. One Nation proposed cutting tobacco excise by 75 per cent, only for the Liberal Party to go further and propose an 80 per cent reduction. Taylor claims cheaper legal cigarettes would undermine the illicit tobacco market, but organised crime can also cut prices, accept smaller margins and continue operating. What is certain is that dramatically cheaper cigarettes will benefit Big Tobacco, increase access to nicotine and risk creating a new generation of smokers – and a new generation of cancer patients.
