The Liberals seem to be kaput, with the likes of their Victorian president saying that they have to go further left to get elected! Even the surge of a dinky di right wing party like One Nation has no impression on the sad sack Liberals.

Blind, deaf, and dumb.

Federally, the Liberal and National leaders are ganging up on One Nation and helping Labor to stay in power. They are idiots! Unfortunately, average voters suffer from the same complaint when it comes to politics, and despite what they say in polls, they are not to be trusted either.

Under Ley and Littleproud, the Coalition aligned with radical Albanese Labor and against voters' welfare. Under Taylor and Canavan, no perceptible change. Couldn't they at least pretend to be an opposition?

The Libs seem to be more aligned with Labor than conservative. Andrew Hastie gets touted as too far right then turns into "Hate bill Hastie". A total bunch of clowns thinking that they will solve their problems by going woke and attacking One Nation.

Its clear that a large minority of the nation have totally lost faith in the two party system and are searching for an alternative. I think Graham is right in pointing out that the mismanagement of the covid 'crisis' was the catalyst for the awakening.

There is little doubt that there has been a general loss of faith in the political class and indeed the whole expert class. Despite the 'experts' telling us that all was well with the supply of petrol, panic buying ensued because few believed the government or their experts.

As they search for alternatives to the ALP/Lib duopoly they land on OneNation. to their credit OneNation has had a run of right calls over the past year or two that has endeared them to their natural constituency. They understand that immigration is the root problem. Unlike like the majors they can call out the immigration problem because, unlike the majors, they don't have ethnic supporters who they don't want to offend. So they can say what a large minority thinks and wants to hear.

Ditto on power costs. The major parties can't admit they got renewables wrong for the past two decades. OneNation can.

Ditto on covid. Both majors bought into the crisis claims, the lockdown mania and the merry infringement of civil liberties and can't walk that back. One Nation can.

And so One Nation and Pauline pilfer large numbers of votes from a Liberal Party that doesn't really know what it does or should stand for and a smaller number from an ALP that has the interests of minorities as its central goal.

Still I don't think One Nation supporters, in the main, see Pauline as an alternate PM or One Nation as an alternate government. Pauline isn't Trump and One Nation isn't MAGA. These are protest votes, not a revolution.

But if the majors, particularly the Libs, don't come to their senses, all that could change.

Australia is in for a very rough decade as the world order that so favoured us unravels. And as that happens, protest votes could become desperation votes

You are on to it Graham. Very very few people don't know someone that at very little they suspect died or were maimed by mrna. I know numerous who either died, had strokes, heart attacks and more recently turbo cancer. In my eyes the tga/aphra are filth. They knew early on the shots were totally ineffective and took people's lives (including kids). How many were killed off in old people's homes is anyone's guess. Of course, most involved that were complete cowards want to forget the crimes. Other people were made to die alone, banned from funerals and the filthy Government/media divided society. God help them when they stand before God unless they repent. Other than murdering the unborn (which the shots also did) this is the biggest crime of my lifetime and many culprits (cho's) have been rewarded for pure evil

Rubbish. Its just the cooker vote finding its natural home.

With Fungus Taylor, Caravan, The Lovely Pauline and Barnyard Joy offering themselves as the alternative leadership for Australia, I don't think Labor has much to worry about. If Labor were to install Coco The Clown and The Mad Hatter as their leadership team, then I think the aforementioned could be in with an outside chance of taking over.
Who can ever forget the images of Barnyard Joy, drunk in the gutter, yelling abuse into his mobile phone! One Nation is where he belongs!

what's a cooker vote?

When it comes to the issue of the rise of One Nation, the Graham Young’s of this world are so blind they can’t see the forest for the trees.

The world-wide cause for the rise of grievance political parties is simple. The population at large has had a gut full of the behaviour of most politicians. They see their lives going backwards and are deeply concerned if the status-quo is maintained for much longer.

Successive governments in the UK since Maggie Thatcher have overseen the living standards of the majority decline while the rich get super rich. And who allowed this to happen? Politicians, that’s who. Politicians of both sides. For decades.

Donny Trump hijacked a political party in the USA and conned citizens into believing that he had the answers to their grievances. History has shown us how well that has worked out.

And now we have a party which has identified and exploited the problems and grievances facing a growing number of Australians. True to form though, Ms Hanson has absolutely no solutions for these problems.

Perhaps if the major parties acknowledged these problems and did something concrete to address them, we wouldn’t be having this discussion today

Most of you here qualify mhaze! LMAO

"Perhaps if the major parties acknowledged these problems and did something concrete to address them, we wouldn’t be having this discussion today"

But they don't and won't and can't for the reasons I mentioned above. That's rather the point.

"Most of you here qualify mhaze! LMAO"....mikk,

As I thought. You don't actually know. Just a made up pejorative.

Mhaze …
“…But they don't and won't and can't for the reasons I mentioned above. That's rather the point…” I happen to agree with you there.

However, have I got this right? In your humble opinion Ms Hanson is the only one who has the answers to society’s big problems – i.e. inter-generational wealth inequality, conserving our fragile planet to ensure life itself is sustainable, and treating others with respect and dignity etc.

So far as far as I can see, the only ‘solution’ Ms Hanson has offered is to halt immigration. After that everything else will just vanish into the ether. That’s as futile as praying to an all-seeing, all-knowing invisible man in the sky.

We're talking at cross purposes Aries.

The thread article and my posts were examining the reasons for the rise in One Nation's poll based popularity. We weren't talking about the existence of viability of One Nation's policies. That's a very different, although related, issue.

Don't misunderstand - I'm happy to examine why One Nation is so popular and talk about how it is able to articulate the concerns of a third of the country, while not myself being part of that third. As I said above, OneNation isn't, yet, an alternate government. It does have some policies covering the big issues, but no a comprehensive plan for government.

But that wasn't the issue being discussed. Why OneNation is so popular is one thing. What they do with the popularity is quite another.

Supporting Israel is like boarding the Titanic.

Trump, Netanyahu and how war in Iran is reshaping US politics
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-04-11/iran-war-reshaping-us-politics-trump-netanyahu/106552156

>>New research this week by the Pew Research Centre showed 60 per cent of US adults now have an unfavourable view of Israel, up from 53 per cent last year.

What is more, 59 per cent have little or no confidence in Netanyahu to do the right thing regarding world affairs — up from 52 per cent last year.

Particularly significant is the fact that the majority of Republicans under 50 now have an unfavourable opinion of Israel at 57 per cent, up from 50 per cent last year.<<

If we have a political class that is favourable to Israel, and a populace that does not at all favour Israel, perhaps this is at least a part of the reason for the voter detachment from the major parties.

If you want my vote, you'll have to call Israel out as the main cause of the immigration problems (and a murderous genocidal state at constant conflict), just as much as they are the main cause of the fuel crisis. You'll have to face the fact that clutching to the skirt of the U.S. won't save us in a war, but it might very well get us into one. That their weapons are overpriced useless crap. That both the majors suck, and we need a new path, unity in self sufficiency, not endless democratic argue-for-the-sake-of-it disagreement.
Plus a number of other issues that annoy me.

Otherwise I'm voting informal forever.
I'm not voting for genocide-supporting traitors or the lesser-evil anymore.
I'm voting 'none of the above' and that 'democracy has reached it's use-by date'
- That's my protest vote.

If they want my vote, they are going to have to start earning it.
They're not going to get to take it for granted anymore when I'm forced to choose between 'unelectable' and 'even-more-unelectable'.

Mhaze sorry for the delay in replying as I have been away. If we are at cross purposes it is because I have not made myself clear.

GY states "... but it does not explain the collapse of the state Liberal parties. Something else was missing..." He is explaining / suggesting that the avalanche of support for grievance politics started as a result of the COVID measures introduced by the Scum-mo from marketing, The Liar from the shire government. I contend that the collapse of trust in government commenced long, long before that. The COVID response was the icing on the cake so to speak. For the commentators and strategists to ignore this is akin to ignoring the elephant in the room.

Morrison won an election in May 2019. Covid hit a mere 7 months later.

"I contend that the collapse of trust in government commenced long, long before that. The COVID response was the icing on the cake so to speak. For the commentators and strategists to ignore this is akin to ignoring the elephant in the room."

7 months isn't all that long in my books. If that's the elephant in the room, its a pretty small elephant.

So you agree with me then Mhaze. The COVID crisis wasn't the only thing that led to the collapse of the Liberal party vote. Yep, there were plenty of issues during the Scum-mo from marketing, the liar from the shire's reign of terror, that to point to that alone as 'the elephant in the room' is a stretch too far. But of course, the trust in government began to erode long before Scum-mo's turn. That's my point. That's the elephant in the room everyone is refusing to acknowledge.