The orange tide: how far can One Nation ride it?

Secret Harbour, last weekend: safe Labor turf, held by 31 points at the last election, gone on a two-party swing past 17 points. Turns out it’s not much of a secret anymore — One Nation is on a roll, and the whole country just found the harbour. “No seat is safe from the orange tsunami,” the new member said, and the numbers agreed with him.

Farrer, May: Sussan Ley’s old seat, Coalition-owned since 1949, fell to One Nation on a 33-point swing. The Liberal vote didn’t dip. It collapsed, from 43 per cent to 12 — the kind of number you usually only see in a leadership spill, not an election.

South Australia, March: One Nation beat the Liberals into second place on primary votes seat after seat, took three Legislative Council seats and four in the lower house. In Ngadjuri, its candidate swung 24 points to win outright — less a swing than a wrecking ball with preferences attached.

Why? Strip away the local colour and it’s the same story everywhere: anger, not ideology. One Nation is running as the anti-everything option — anti-immigration, anti-renewables, anti-cost-of-living, anti-Canberra — at the exact moment the Albanese Government’s so-called housing affordability measures are doing the opposite of what the name suggests. Prices aren’t stabilising, they’re cratering — bad news for the majority of Australians who hold a mortgage or bought recently. Nobody asked for that outcome, and Canberra’s still handing out the matches.

Which is why Victoria in late November matters more than any by-election. RedBridge had One Nation on 31 per cent in late July, ahead of everyone — then a Liberal leadership change knocked it back to 22 within days. That volatility is the real question. But the number to watch isn’t the upper house tally — it’s whether One Nation can turn primary votes into actual lower house seats. Enough of them, and neither Labor nor the Coalition governs alone, which means One Nation isn’t just banking influence, it’s holding the balance of power and deciding whether the Coalition gets to govern at all.

If that happens, this stops being a protest curiosity and becomes a structural feature of Australian politics. And if it does, the next arena is the New South Wales state election, the last big test before 2028.

This is exactly the moving target SAS Group’s new tie-up with Banksia was built for — a real-time read on the ground in Victoria and sharper advice for clients positioning for changing weather, whichever way it blows.