In the final weeks of Parliament, both Labor and the Coalition imagined they had One Nation by the balls with party leader, Pauline Hanson, censured for her burqa stunt.
Even before the Islamic terror attack on Bondi Beach proved Hanson’s serious point about the danger of radical Islam, public opinion had tilted in her favour.
The open forum of social media was not as easily manipulated as the obedient mainstream media. Sure, there were a lot of serious (and let’s face it, outdated) journalists, commentators, and news anchors feigning outrage on our behalf but out in the real world, Australians were cheering Pauline.
By the end of 2025, Pauline fell somewhere between a patriotic mascot and moral rallying point.
Her politics are stable.
One Nation no longer commands the fringe, it is courting mainstream conservatives, fed-up Labor voters, environmentally frustrated Greens, broke Gen Z-ers, and even disillusioned Teals.
It’s a perfect political storm built on merit.
While Sussan Ley floats around, gently massaging the edges of the big cultural ideas while desperately trying to ignore her party’s voting record and avoid making any policy commitments, One Nation has nothing to apologise for, nothing to backflip on, and nothing to be ashamed of.
Trust is a rare commodity in modern politics, and on the topics of mass migration and Islam, One Nation holds all the cards.
It is into this crucible that the first poll for 2026 dropped.
? NEW: Federal voting intention [FIRST POLL FOR 2026]
? ALP: 29% (-4)
? ONP: 23% (+6)
? L/NP: 23% (-1)
? GRN: 12% (-1)
⬛️ OTH: 13% (-)Two-party-preferred
? ALP: 52% (-4)
? L/NP: 48% (+4)ALP vs ONP estimate*
? ALP: 50%
? ONP: 50%DemosAU | 5-6 Jan | n=1027 | +/- 5…
— AusPoll (@AusPoll6) January 9, 2026
One Nation and the Coalition are neck-and-neck at 23 per cent to Labor’s 29 per cent.
That should scare Albanese, because if Ley can swallow her pride and handshake an alliance with One Nation, their three-way coalition would easily hold power. Heck, make Pauline Hanson the Minister for Immigration. You could power the country on left-wing screeching for the next hundred years.
And here’s the interesting bit.
On a traditional two-party preferred tally, where many One Nation voters are assumed to preference the Coalition (after a bit of protesting), Labor pulls ahead at 52 per cent to the Coalition’s 48 per cent.
But…
In a straight-up Labor vs One Nation pitch, they sit on a 50 per cent dead heat.
We have to remember there are pesky Greens and unpredictable (but mostly left-leaning) independents in this mix, but the winds of fortune are changing and the Royal Commission is a lose-lose game for Labor.
If everything goes according to plan, and the Royal Commission exonerates the government, scapegoats social media, confiscates rural guns, cracks down on free speech, blames the far-right, and legislates a definition of Islamophobia – One Nation wins.
If, and this is highly unlikely, a Royal Commission targets the ministers, law enforcement, legal systems, and institutions who have allowed Islamic radicalisation to undermine our democracy – One Nation still wins, because it was right.
The problem of Islamic terror is that it is a problem self-created by government migration systems.
The government has no clue how to solve this and if it did solve it, key members of their party would lose their seats.
We are not going to sit here and pretend the Coalition have clean hands on this issue, they don’t. For a long time, mass migration and multiculturalism have formed huge parts of the Coalition agenda. Not because their voters asked for it, but because people within the party thought it necessary to secure support outside of the election cycle.
Even today, you can go to Victoria, look the Liberal Party room in the eye, and they will insist the housing crisis and machete epidemic have nothing to do with migration. They’d sooner blame chemtrails than a policy favoured by the wallet men.
One Nation is now in a similar position to Reform.
All they have to do is stay upright and avoid making ideological mistakes.
They are not responsible for policy and can, if they choose, refuse to support any and all dodgy, ill-thought out, rushed, or potentially dangerous policy.
One Nation’s safest route, surely, is to go for the throat. Side-step the Royal Commission and use their powers to demand answers about ASIO, migration, and why Islamic speech has avoided the same legal threshold as people who support biological reality.
In the same way that we have entire government departments which fail to identify a biological woman, we have a leadership that mistakes Islamic terror for antisemitism because that’s politically easier than facing the truth.
How hard can it be to win against that?
