Treasurer Jim Chalmers told a progressive audience this week that hoping the far right “goes away or implodes again is not actually a strategy,” and he is correct: incumbents around the world are losing when they mistake populist anger for stupidity rather than treating it as a verdict on lived economic pain.
Contempt is not policy
Chalmers’s Australia Institute speech framed the next year as economically treacherous—four rate hikes in 2026, petrol prices elevated by the Middle East conflict, and consumer confidence crushed. In that environment, mocking Pauline Hanson’s supporters on social media is not just bad manners; it is a failure to compete for the same voters who will decide whether Labor holds office in 2028.
We do not need to endorse One Nation’s platform to acknowledge its polling strength. Resolve Strategic’s latest monitor still has Labor leading enough seats to win, but primary vote share near 29 percent is not comfortable for a first-term government seeking a second mandate.
What actually lowers grocery bills
Ridicule does not shave cents off milk. Competition policy, energy market redesign, tax settings that reward work, and housing supply reforms do—slowly, imperfectly, but measurably. The government’s case rests on showing those levers moving while inflation remains above target.
Opposition parties will exploit any gap between rhetoric and receipts. One Nation’s leader has already pointed to policy backdowns, including delays to Australian Taxation Office rules on credit-card tax payments, as evidence of chaos. Labor cannot answer that critique with memes.
A global pattern
From Europe to the Americas, centre-left governments that recovered from populist surges did so by delivering tangible improvements in wages, health access, or energy bills—not by winning Twitter. Australia’s compulsory voting and preferential system give Labor more structural cushion than many peers, but cushion is not immunity.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said he is not “spooked” by polling noise. Fair enough—but the ministry should be spooked by NAB business confidence at minus 13 and Reserve Bank minutes that openly contemplate higher unemployment to tame prices. Those are the numbers Hanson will campaign on.
Our view
Progressives should argue economics, not anthropology. Treat One Nation voters as citizens with legitimate grievances about cost of living, then prove—with data—that Labor’s mix of tax, housing, and industrial policy beats nostalgia. Anything less cedes the field to rage bait, and rage bait is a commodity in surplus right now.