I went looking for One Nation’s policies. Here’s what I didn’t find

Ever wondered what’s behind the surge in the One Nation vote?

Me too, so I decided to check it out.

Sure, I can get a million political analysts telling me voters are looking for an alternative, that they feel abandoned by the major parties. And even that voters are irritated by how ineffective our political parties are.

But I’m going to assume that in the end we are also looking for a political party which has policies in the areas we all desperately care about, when we aren’t responding to dog whistles about immigration. I went in search of those One Nation policies which might inspire my countrywomen and men to abandon their usual loyalties, to give up their allegiances to the red and the blue.

And what did I find? Nothing. I found nothing useful at all.

Sure, you can’t judge a party by its website – but it’s not a bad place to start. If I’m thinking about all the somethings which might make me vote a particular way, here are my top three; health, education, welfare. We don’t all have the same vibes though, nor are we all at my age and stage. What do researchers say we care about most when it comes to voting?

Number one at the 2025 election, according to the Australian Election Study (AES); cost of living. Then, in order, health and Medicare bound together; management of the economy, taxation, housing affordability and immigration trailing in sixth place. How do I know about those rankings? They are Ian McAllister’s speciality. He’s the co-director of the AES, which surveys political opinion after each election. Over 40 years, there has been one constant non-economic issue topping our election concerns – health. Management of the economy matters to all of us – and at the last election, Labor took over from the Coalition as having the preferred party policy on that crucial issue. Mind you, one-quarter of voters think it makes no difference who is in charge.

So what I found on One Nation’s site was shocking. Australian governments allocate nearly $200 billion on health expenditure. One Nation’s sum total health policy as outlined on its website, unless you count marijuana? Sixty-five words. That’s one word for every $3 billion of our money.

No mention of hospital funding. No mention of Medicare. A tiny nod to the challenges faced by our regional health workforce. Huuuge attention to medical cannabis but, um, no mention I could see of mental health nor of women’s health. Oops, I forgot the three videos on that health link. Oops, they have not much to do with health either. Oopsies all round.

I called two prolific One Nation researchers. They were politely surprised I was surprised. In my defence, I would have assumed that a party thinking it can be the party of government would do more work than dog whistling, gas taxes and anti-abortion campaigning.

Jordan McSwiney, a senior researcher at the University of Canberra’s Centre for Deliberative Democracy, has collected decades-worth of One Nation policies. And how does he sum it up, aside from immigration and gas? “It has always been a party of grievance rather than a party of policy substance … there really isn’t much more than a couple of dot points and talking points. There are no really substantive policy programs,” he says.

One Nation makes grand claims about what regulation or legislation needs to change. But there is no clear explanation of how any of that might be achieved. I had a little poke around the site’s history. In 2022, on the Issues page, water was allocated the number one spot. That lasted until the last election, when it was replaced by family tax policy, government waste and free speech, with water pushed down the page.

Macquarie University research fellow Kurt Sengul kindly describes the One Nation approach as “light on detail”. That’s one way of putting it. One Nation’s approach to education is pointless blither. Sengul directs me to this: “One Nation will restore critical thinking in the classroom and reinstate the cornerstone of education with reading, writing, arithmetic, and discipline. There should be no room for Western, white, gender, guilt shaming in any classroom, and instead children should be taught the benefits of a merit-based, free-thinking society [sic].”

Hahaha. Critical thinking. Is this the same organisation which routinely chooses utterly inappropriate candidates? The same organisation which can’t build cohesion or policy among its members? The same organisation which allows Barnaby Joyce to campaign against abortion access, despite acknowledging that he could “understand people are under incredible pressure and I can’t force my views on other people” when he knocked up his then-girlfriend, now wife, Vikki Campion.

Demonstrating critical thinking requires a coherent tax policy. I sent the relevant links to Bob Breunig, director of the Tax and Transfer Policy Institute at the Crawford School of Public Policy, ANU. He was hilarious but like many academics, very courteous. One Nation supports income splitting and claims it will promote home-schooling. Breunig doubts that so much. He says in the US, female labour supply has barely changed despite access to income splitting.

“I read their taxation policies and I struggle to see how they would pay for running Australia without drastically reducing the size of government or running up a bunch of debt,” he says.

He points out that right-wing parties across the world promise to reduce both taxes and the size of government.

But you can choose only one of those. He says most choose running up more debt to pay for running the country.

“It’s not a vote for a super-strong coherent plan to fix Australia.”

Told you he was polite.

One Nation. Two strategies. No plans for anything besides immigration and gas. Guess that works out to net zero policies. And Ian McAllister, the elder statesperson of Australian political science, still thinks One Nation is a protest party. As Northern Irelanders would say, when the bit comes to the bit, Australians won’t bite.

Jenna Price is a regular columnist.

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