The Making of One Nation

It’s never held government, or even opposition, yet One Nation’s managed to exert an outsized influence on the public policy agenda.
From borders to migration, multiculturalism to Indigenous affairs, the far-right party has mastered mainstreaming and captured the masses fleeing the Coalition.
In the fourth instalment of The Making of One Nation, we speak to Josh Sunman, Associate Lecturer in Public Policy at Flinders University and Tim Bale, a Professor of Politics at Queen Mary University of London.
This episode was written and hosted by Ashlynne McGhee and produced and edited by Isabella Podwinski. Sound design by Michelle Macklem. Misha Ketchel is the editor of The Conversation Australia.
If you are enjoying the series, please consider donating to The Conversation, an independent, not-for-profit news organisation.
Or, you can subscribe to one of our free newsletters.

We’d all like deeply considered policy and informed debate to be at the heart of politics, but unfortunately controversies and scandals tend to steal the show.
For most parties, scandals are disastrous: they lose seats, ministers and elections — but not One Nation.
It's weathered defections and punch-ups (including a memorable smearing of blood on a Senate door), jail and chaos, and thirty years on it's surging.
This is a party that doesn’t just survive the chaos, but cultivates it and capitalises on it.
---
Subscribe to The Conversation's free newsletters.

You might remember this line in Pauline Hanson's maiden speech: "I'm afraid we're in danger of being swamped by Asians."
It wasn't the first racist comment she'd made in public and it certainly wasn't the last.
Over the years, her enemies have changed and she now targets Muslims and elites, but it's the same tactic and it's infiltrated Australian politics.
---
Subscribe to The Conversation's free newsletters.

Nearly thirty years on, Hanson's infamous maiden speech — warning that Australia was "being swamped by Asians" — still echoes through Australian political life.
But who was Pauline Hanson before she became a phenomenon, and what did she actually represent?
Was she a cause of a new kind of politics, or a symptom of one already forming?
Subscribe to The Conversation newsletter here.

From a fish and chip shop in regional Queensland to the heart of Australian politics: this is the unlikely story of the country’s most controversial minor party.
For thirty years, One Nation and Pauline Hanson have been ridiculed, dismissed and shut out. Now, no one is laughing. This is the story of how a party built on fear and grievance thrived, died and rose again to upend Australian politics.
We go beyond the headlines and stunts to document how One Nation works and what it means for our future.