In Australian political history there have been minor parties that were setting up for a big swing but ended up with no ding. The Democratic Labor Party, the Australian Democrats, and the Australian Greens and now, potentially, One Nation.

I’ve been arguing for some time that One Nation must get serious about its policy platform. With the party seeming to plateau in the polls, its policy platform must be put to public scrutiny.

One Nation has struck a chord with Australians who are sick and tired of the same old Uniparty. There is some merit in the complaint that Labor, the Greens, and the Coalition are all globalists and elites who don’t know what it is like at the coalface.

Pardon the pun, but these parties have been doing everything imaginable to get rid of the coalface altogether. The ultimate irony, echoing the Hawke government, was Albanese’s decision to sell uranium to India while arguing that we don’t need nuclear energy here. The chutzpah is bewildering. Some might even say it’s gaslighting.

At the Sydney Institute recently, Angus Taylor said a few things about One Nation that were a small part of his speech but were subsequently amplified by a media hungry for blood against conservatives. Even the conservative media appears hell-bent on bringing down One Nation.

Taylor said he had a ‘heavy heart’ about criticising One Nation, claiming the party’s policies would hit the economy hard. He and Tony Abbott both acknowledged that many Liberals were attracted to One Nation because of the Coalition’s ‘failings’.

Pauline Hanson counterattacked. She claimed that many of the Coalition’s recent policies were One Nation policies. This much appears to be the case.

But it is far from simply the ‘failings’ of the Coalition that have helped One Nation’s rise. Two of Taylor’s critiques are worth rebutting.

First, Taylor said in a radio interview after his speech:

‘I understand why some Australians think the way out is to blow the place up. But to those who feel like lighting a match, believe me when I say that a moment of satisfaction isn’t worth the eternity of pain that will follow.’

I think the time is long past where we can put our trust in the major parties. The Woke agenda and the Coalition’s flirting with it through Scott Morrison, Sussan Ley, and the endless moderate minions have nailed that coffin shut.

Second, in his speech, Taylor said:

‘One Nation doesn’t have the team needed to meet the challenges Australia faces Australia is in the grip of an economic crisis fixing it is the single most important job of the next government it requires a team effort it is beyond a one person look at One Nation’s team in the end it is a one-person show.’

Now let’s look at the One Nation team for a moment. And I don’t mean just federally.

Pauline Hanson is like the Rocky Balboa doll: ‘You can kick it, you can beat it, it does everything. That’s right, takes a terrific beating.’

In my opinion she was Australia’s first political prisoner. Of course, Hanson was exonerated. But you can’t get much more underdog than that.

Hanson has also been consistent. She doesn’t need to say she is a conviction politician (like Albo used to tell us before gaslighting become the new normal). Nothing says conviction more than living by conviction.

Then we have Malcolm Roberts. The media has made a deliberate attempt to discredit him over the years. But he has an MBA from the University of Chicago. He is a consistent and loyal performer.

Tyron Whitten is a successful businessman. Sean Bell knows more about IT than the entire major parties put together.

Cory Bernardi is a former Liberal Senator and an elite sportsman who held a scholarship at the Australian Institute of Sport for rowing.

And if that wasn’t enough, Barnaby Joyce is a former Deputy Prime Minister and former Leader of the Nationals.

All of this talent is backed by a grassroots movement that is even taking hold in Canberra. That’s right, the centre of everything else that is ideologically wrong with Australia has a One Nation branch.

Now one of Taylor’s other comments deserves some attention:

‘Of course, it’s easy to make promises when you’re not a party of government.’

This cuts to the heart of the challenge. The Greens promise free lollipops for everyone precisely because they will never be in government. Especially now they have turned into a batty clique of anything other than the West supporters.

But the criticism is a real problem and the ability to produce sound policy is the glass ceiling. It takes real, backbreaking intellectual effort. Not the kind of effort that former Liberal opposition used to completely cock-up the Fightback! package. The package itself has now mostly been implemented so its blueprint is proof of the intellectual rigour required to develop sound policy.

What is also needed is a committed team of spokespeople who are consistently on message. The message may well be the tip of the iceberg, for example, Stop the boats! But there must be some sense of how the policy will work in a federal Westminster democracy.

I asked Senator Hanson how she would deal with a potentially politicised Australian Public Service if One Nation was in government. Her response was sound. She would make the ministers responsible for their portfolios.

Having worked in the Canberra bubble for more than 20 years, the stories of strong ministers versus Yes Ministers are legendary. The strong ministers called bullshit, and the senior public servants knew where they stood. The Yes Ministers got, well, Yes Ministered.

However, you cannot wait until you are in government to establish these relationships. The biggest challenge for One Nation is the public personas created by the media.

Anyone who has ever met Pauline or Barnaby or Malcolm will be shocked by the person in front of them versus the persona that has been created by the media.

You know there is even a story around here about how one day Pauline Hanson was driving back from Canberra and went out of her way to help an elderly couple who were having car trouble. Urban legend, perhaps, but that couple; are committed One Nation voters.

Unfortunately, policy is not like politics. You must do the grunt work. Already the criticism of One Nation’s housing policy approach is building steam.

Senator Roberts is spearheading the campaign for a ‘people’s bank’ to help fund 5 per cent mortgages. Academics have already called it a ‘very, very bad idea’ that will cost billions more than claimed.

At the same time, it was reported that Barnaby Joyce ‘would not guarantee that all the party’s policies would be submitted to the Parliamentary Budget Office for an official costing before the next federal election, citing One Nation’s comparatively limited internal resources’.

The internal resources issue is true. And the Prime Minister has made this worse by limiting One Nation’s staffing entitlements. But there is more to policy than full-time staff.

One only needs to look at the conga line of academics who come out in support of Labor or against the Coalition and One Nation. And usually for free. This is because large sectors of the economy have effectively been stitched up by Labor’s long march through the institutions.

Anyone who says this didn’t happen clearly has no idea. They don’t call it the Canberra bubble for nothing.

But if One Nation is to crash through that glass ceiling with its policies, it needs to focus on its core policies and have them properly costed by the Parliamentary Budget Office.

Further, One Nation needs to be courting the public service. There is nothing wrong with elected representatives engaging with the public service. Indeed, it would be good practice for when One Nation does form government.

The glass ceiling will not be cracked, however, by acting like a minor party that promises everything, right now, for free. And while I am not suggesting One Nation is doing that, its opponents are doing so already.

This is the reality that One Nation must now address. Electoral success in Victoria will help, but eventually it comes down to the time spent in the grunt work. It has to be a combination of popular policies mediated by practical political realities.

Otherwise, we can expect more of the same from the old guard. And nobody can afford another three years of that.

Dr Michael de Percy @FlaneurPolitiq is the Spectator Australia’s Canberra Press Gallery Correspondent. If you would like to support his writing, or read more of Michael, please visit his website.