One Nation’s aiming high in NSW, but Labor’s not the primary target

Singleton mining mechanic Stuart Bonds has a bold, some may say audacious, goal. The One Nation candidate, who has twice come close to securing a federal seat, reckons the party could steamroll the NSW Coalition out of the way to become the opposition after next year’s state election.

That’s the ambition, at least.

Bonds is no political novice and is a trusted ally of Pauline Hanson. In 2019, he came within a whisker of seizing a federal lower house seat for One Nation when he almost knocked off Labor stalwart Joel Fitzgibbon in the working-class seat of Hunter. Last year, Bonds finished second, after preferences, when he took on Fitzgibbon’s successor Dan Repacholi in the same seat.

Now Bonds is seriously considering a tilt at Macquarie Street. As One Nation soars in successive national polls, and the federal Coalition tears itself apart amid the most undignified public divorce, Hanson’s party is riding high. And it clearly has no intention of slowing down, whether it be through high-profile recruitment (the latest being South Australian Cory Bernardi) or aggressively targeting conservative seats.

In NSW, according to Bonds, One Nation will be “everywhere” when voters go to the ballot box on March 13 next year. “If you live in NSW, you’ll have a One Nation candidate to vote for in your electorate,” Bonds insisted this week. “We will be running in every seat and several candidates in the Legislative Council.”

“We aim at being the opposition in the lower house and having the balance of power in the upper house. At the moment, the Liberals in NSW are to the left of Labor, and we aim to take their seats and put the fight up to Labor.”

His warning is clear. Labor is not One Nation’s target. In the firing line is the NSW Coalition. The Nationals, who installed Coffs Harbour MP Gurmesh Singh as party leader late last year, have the most to fear from a One Nation onslaught. The Liberals, at the same time, face the real risk that in NSW’s optional preferential voting system, another right-wing party in the field will split the conservative vote.

It’s a significant conundrum for new Opposition Leader Kellie Sloane, the moderate MP from Vaucluse who needs to keep a teal wave at bay in NSW (Pittwater is already in teal hands), while also avoiding a federal-like split with her junior Coalition partners. Sloane will have to walk a fraught policy tightrope just to keep the family together, let alone save the furniture.

But how realistic is Bonds’ prediction? One Nation’s promises of slashing immigration, shunning net zero and protecting free speech at all costs are issues that play out strongly for the party in the federal context but less so at a state level. Nonetheless, the party’s seemingly unstoppable rise in the polls – a Redbridge Group survey this week put its primary vote at a stunning 26 per cent – means it is worth keeping a close eye on One Nation in NSW, even though the party has no current sitting member in Macquarie Street.

For the first time, the Herald’s Resolve Political Monitor will add One Nation as a specific voting option (rather than it being included in the broad “other” category) when it surveys NSW voters from now on. That will shed some light on Bonds’ bold predictions.

Based on the party’s past performances in NSW, Resolve director Jim Reed does not expect the state’s results to mirror his federal surveys. Looking back, One Nation only managed to attract 1.8 per cent of first-preference votes at the last state election, and 1.1 per cent in 2019. Even in 1999, in its heyday, when the party’s vote was 7.5 per cent, it failed to win a seat and disappeared from NSW for two decades.

Regardless, One Nation is on the up in NSW.

“Our polling is picking up a rise in One Nation’s state vote in NSW to around 8 per cent,” Reed says, “but that’s nowhere near the stellar rise we’ve seen in federal politics. Indeed, much of their national base is voting elsewhere at a state level.”

“The idea of voting One Nation in NSW is somewhat novel. They have only contested three elections in the lower house and, in many cases, voters will not have had them on their ballot paper before.”

It is not surprising then, Reed says, that the party isn’t doing as well at a state level. “The pull factors of Hanson, [Barnaby] Joyce, net zero and immigration are all federal, and the same push factors away from a split opposition don’t apply here,” Reed says.

Compared to its Canberra counterparts, the NSW Coalition’s marriage of convenience appears rosy. So, currently, they do not resemble the chaotic rabble that is the federal Liberals and Nationals. But momentum for change is building. If voters are looking for a conservative alternative at a federal level, there is good reason to assume they may want the same in NSW. No doubt Sloane and Singh will be desperately hoping Bonds’ grand ambitions for his party turn out to be nothing more than wild aspirations.

Alexandra Smith is the NSW state political editor.

Get a weekly wrap of views that will challenge, champion and inform your own. Sign up for our Opinion newsletter.