Labor, the Coalition, and the media are attempting to do something very clever to destroy One Nation, and it’s not clear how many people understand what’s happening.

Let’s call it a sneak attack.

And it happens in business all the time.

Large companies backed by stable revenue, disassociated from the target industry, can sustain aggressive market attacks against their competitors.

For example, webstores are extremely dangerous in Australia. Their costs, largely from shipping, are so high that margins are cut to the bone compared to brick-and-mortar stores. As soon as you return an item, as an entire generation of try-on podcasters promoted, the company may as well throw the product out onto the street. Charging customers for shipping isn’t mean, it’s critical.

However, some huge foreign companies, who enjoy much better margins, employment conditions, operating costs, and tax rates, were able to use their other business arms to fund an operational loss in Australia and offer free shipping. They did this on purpose, losing money hand-over-fist in the market as a strategy to starve out Australian competitors. Family business cannot do this. They rely on true domestic market economics and honest competition. Competing against these foreign entities was very similar, economically, to competing against government.

The process had been underway for several years before the pandemic killed off the rest. Being forced to shift operations out of the shopfront and into the digital world cut the margins to nothing and that was it.

This strategy of huge stable cashed-up infrastructure against small, grassroots free markets worked in the retail industry, and hundreds of domestic businesses have closed. They are still closing. It did not matter if they offered free shipping (and wore the margin loss) or tried to persist. Their profits vanished, and the big boys won. Customers danced on their graves, unaware that they’ll soon be stuck with cheap crap from China in a downward spiral to the bottom where quality exists as a distant memory.

As soon as Australian businesses closed, shipping fees were reinstated, the sales ended, and the price of goods lifted. With no competitors, those large foreign companies are now earning back their losses. We lost everything. Employment for our kids. Domestic productivity. Product choice. Quality. And new creative ventures.

I have explained this because the strategy is easier to understand in a familiar setting.

In politics, legacy parties and institutions – often backed by the infinite revenue stream of mandatory unions, over half a century of party-owned investments, rich friends scattered through domestic and global corporate megastructures, friends in high bureaucratic places that control international legal structures our Parliament is subservient to, and the collective power of nostalgia – have decided to operate at an intellectual loss.

They have recognised the threat of One Nation as a political market competitor supported by an increasing majority of customers, aka voters.

Labor, the Coalition, and legacy media can’t exactly offer free shipping and call it a day.

And it won’t go away on its own because the core product One Nation is selling is extremely popular. There’s nothing wrong with it.

After decades of chastising One Nation for occasionally stepping outside its Queensland bubble and trying to have international policies or a national agenda, they changed their position. They started asking where One Nation’s other policies are. Started insisting that they were not fit as a party because they didn’t mention Iran, China, or the global oil crisis. They wanted to know what One Nation’s policies are on industrial relations, women, workers’ rights, healthcare, defence, culture, Aboriginal affairs, digital currency, corporate tax rates, childcare, work from home, Victoria’s big build, the CFMEU … you name it, they are demanding One Nation fashion policies on the fly.

Then those policies … well, not policies, at best they are responses to leading questions … are chewed on in the headlines as evidence One Nation does not have the gravitas of a major party.

It is an excellent distraction from the material point: despite all the gravitas and money, major parties failed. They created the mess. They are the culprits in the West’s downfall and One Nation is one of the proposed solutions, still in its growth phase. It might be over 30 years old in theory, but the One Nation of today is a movement in its infancy with hands reaching into the cot, trying to kill it.

They tried to murder One Nation in full view of the public, and were genuinely shocked when the public smacked their hands away and shifted the polls.

Now, they are sneaky. They are trying to force the error from One Nation by rushing them on policy that major parties took decades to fashion and still got wrong. Remember, the parties throwing stones are the same ones who congratulate themselves for dismantling the definition of a woman in law.

My advice to One Nation would be to pull back.

To calm down.

Decide policies and positions on your own terms and not at the behest of the click-bait press.

But to still snooker them by having the guts to promote policies, when ready, well ahead of the election. People really do hate the habit of Labor and the Coalition holding their cards to their chest until the 11th hour over the fear someone might steal their ideas or tear them to shreds. I used to warn against this all the time as it represents the politics of cowards.

Too much chaos is fatal. It gives the impression of an unprepared mess, even if it is a fabrication of the press.

And be aware, these old parties can squander their political capital on an election cycle or two just as those companies ran at a loss. They can pretend to know nothing about Australian culture. They can ignore women’s rights. They can take all manner of positions, and then change them, and then change them again. Not forever, but for long enough to destroy the best chance this country has of reversing the nightmare of eternal progress toward socialism.

They tried this on Nigel Farage, but he refused to be drawn into the trap.

Not everyone on the right likes him, I get it, but Farage is one of the most experienced political campaigners in modern history. His behaviour is worth observing.

Farage has kept Reform’s message focused. It has a core. It has a narrative. And it is expanded incrementally and carefully, always with maximum retention in mind. When he made a pitch for the working-class Brits, once the stronghold of Labour, it was done with a clear policy set and without creating conflict in other parts of his supporter base.

The errors of Australia’s political class are legendary. They are a failure, in every way that matters, and this has created plenty of space for One Nation to walk into a victory.

So long as it is careful, and resists the lure to expand too fast.

Alexandra Marshall is an independent writer. If you would like to support her work, shout her a coffee over at donor-box.