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Is One Nation More Liberal than the Liberals?

By Vinay Kolhatkar

April 21, 2026

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Editorial Note: The two major political parties in Australia are the left-leaning Labor Party and the centrist coalition of the Liberal party and the National party. In Europe and Australia, ‘Liberal’ means classically liberal. It’s arguable that over the years, like the UK Conservative party, they have become more apologetic, while the Greens have stretched Labor further to the left. One Nation, until recently a minor party, has, like Reform in the UK, surged in the polls.

 

If you are a Liberal Party supporter, this will hurt to read. But truth hurts. The rise of One Nation (ON) in all statewide and nationwide polls has taken them arguably to a “major party” status. As of April 2026, they are the leading party in Queensland and Victoria in polls, ahead even of Labor. The recent South Australian election proved that the results are consistent with the polls.

And so, the critics are flashing their sabres and firing their cannons twice as hard.

The critics are flashing their sabres and firing their cannons twice as hard.

This week, the Sydney Morning Herald published a curated round of reader criticism which claims that ON says one thing and does another. One illustration offered was that ON has voted against penalty rates while saying they stand for the battlers. But penalty rates penalise small businesses and those who would rather work a few hours on weekends and evenings to make something extra. So ON is battling for small business and more employment.

Another critic claims, “It is surprising and disappointing to read that more than a million Australians are prepared to vote for a party with no clear policies at all.” This smear has been around for a long time – is it true?

No clear policies? As of today, ON has 29 policies on their website, most of them clear as a bell.

No major party has attacked the climate racket as consistently and as long as ON has.

No major party has attacked the climate racket as consistently and as long as ON has. Meanwhile, it was Liberal Prime Minister Scott Morrison who suddenly signed us up to Net Zero just a few years after making an impassioned plea in Parliament for coal when serving as Treasurer. Scott Morrison went to Glasgow as an observer but came back via Damascus as a Lord Gaia convert.

Do any of ON’s policies stand out as unique among major parties? Yes.

ON has a clever family tax policy.

ON has a clever family tax policy – “Joint income tax filing allows a couple with at least one dependent child to add their income together, then split the total between them” – this is not unique – the Libertarians have run this to the federal election, too. However, of the majors, it is unique. The Liberals claim to be ‘the party of low taxes’, but they are constrained by the neo-Marxist, anti-nuclear-family, anti-two-gender imposters in their rank and file – gee, the effect of such a policy may encourage stay-at-home mums. Oh, my.

Among the majors, ON alone is prepared to take a hard look at National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS), the disability support scheme started in March 2013, whose expenditure is spinning out of control. And eliminate scientific fraud and neo-Marxist oppression departments: “Abolish the Department of Climate Change and related agencies, programs, and regulations” and “Withdraw from international agreements and organizations such as the United Nations, the World Health Organization, and the Paris Agreement”. ON is prepared to enshrine free speech in the Constitution – whether the enshrining would be as strong and clear as that suggested in Savvy Street (see ‘A Bill of Natural Rights for Australia’, and ‘Why Allowing the Blockading of a Bridge Will Work Against Free Speech’), remains to be seen.

ON’s immigration policy has a ten-point blueprint, none of which calls for a ban on all immigration or a ‘White Australia’ policy – that sentiment is a smear from its opposition, both conservative and leftist. ON is clear on one thing – “Refuse entry to migrants from nations known to foster extremist ideologies” – that may sound racist to some, but it’s brave, and voters have been watching what’s happening inside the UK and France.

ON is also protective of rural property rights – “… banning renewable energy installations and transmission lines on Australian agricultural land, or where they constitute negative impacts on native forests or animal species, or an increased bushfire risk; and mandating the use of environmental rehabilitation bonds on all energy projects to address any impacts when equipment and infrastructure reaches the end of its useful life.”

Not all of ON’s policies are supportive of the free market (e.g., they advocate spending $6.8 billion to build one nuclear reactor) but at least they have not deserted real science, a bastion of the Age of Reason, the wellspring of Classical Liberalism. There is no greater risk to our economy than the unscientific Gaia-worship policies – subsidies for renewables that provide intermittent energy, subsidies for electric vehicles (EVs), including giving EVs free use of roads (petrol has an excise duty of 56 cents per litre to pay for roads; EVs pay nothing), subsidies for solar panels, grants only for those researchers that follow the establishment narrative, while penalising fossil fuels – coal power, oil and gas exploration – fossil fuels that could restore Australia to among the most prosperous nations in the world.

The Liberals are still hopelessly entangled with the climate lobby with one foot in the political grave.

The Liberals are still hopelessly entangled with the climate lobby with one foot in the political grave – they now recant on Net Zero, but they want to stay in the Paris Agreement. Under the Paris Agreement, Australia agrees to an absurdist 2035 emissions reduction target – to reduce emissions by 62-70% below 2005 levels by 2035. In effect, today the Liberals are critical of “Net Zero by 2050” but supportive of a 70% reduction in emissions by 2035. This makes their party look like it has a multiple personality disorder. But voters are not schizophrenic. Either they realise they have been fed a yarn, or they believe in legacy media. The former will vote for, or preference, ON above the other majors, the latter will never vote for, or preference, Liberals above the Greens and Labor.

Voters are abandoning the centre – they realise the centre mass is just appeasement tactics – principles and consistency are the seats of the political see-saw.

Now let’s look at Liberal policies. All they have here (as of 8 April 2026) on https://www.liberal.org.au/our-plan are 25 sound bites – 25 one-liners and lots of blank space. ‘Australian values’ are mentioned repeatedly but never defined.

The soundbite “We will stand for an immigration policy that’s in the interests of Australians and that puts Australian values at the centre of that policy” is soon followed by another soundbite which says, “The Liberals will put Australian values at the centre of immigration policy”.

Seriously? No one edits even the soundbites? Only a mediocre student needs to pump out more fillers for an assignment; clever students have to edit their drafts down to get inside the word count. And then it’s followed by – “If someone doesn’t subscribe to our core beliefs – the door will be shut.” ‘Our’ core beliefs? Do they mean 27 million Australians have the same well-enunciated ‘core beliefs’? Perhaps ‘core beliefs’ is just another dog whistle – a display of a lack of courage relative to ON.

The sound bites also include: “the freedom of thought, worship, speech and association”. Except that the COVID-era compulsions to stay indoors and take mRNA shots, and to threaten medical professionals who did not go along with the establishment-curated view – all this occurred during the Morrison government. Indeed, their most recent voting record was to vote for hate-speech laws that restrict free speech, and even National party members who crossed the floor were thrown out of the shadow cabinet.

Put that soundbite ‘the encouragement and facilitation of wealth’ alongside the dumping of even Labor’s tax cuts by the Dutton opposition, which budgeted higher deficits than Labor – did no one teach them that budget deficits are future taxes (either inflation or higher direct taxes)?

Here’s another soundbite: “That, wherever possible, government should not compete with an efficient private sector; and that businesses and individuals – not government – are the true creators of wealth and employment.” Put that alongside Dutton’s vision of spending circa $330 billion of taxpayer money to build 7 nuclear reactors. Never mind the contention that it is less than Labor’s wastage on green energy – in a country rich with coal and gas, where the national electricity market already functioned superbly before the renewables wreaked havoc – why not just unban nuclear subject to safety standards, stop all green subsidies and fossil fuel penalties – and watch what happens as the free market in energy delivers cheap and plentiful supplies?

The Liberals’ final, 25th soundbite is: “We simply believe in individual freedom and free enterprise; and if you share this belief, then ours is the Party for you.” Genuine free enterprise would necessitate the elimination of competition regulation and disband all monetary policy – this may well be beyond the intellectual nous of our most intellectual major party. But their current leader, Angus Taylor, even called on the ACCC to punish profiteering – hello, extra per-unit profits during periods of shortages incentivise more supply. And discontinuities incentivise fuel retailers to think of paying option premiums to have their own reserve stock, independent of government. It also incentivises energy giants and retailers to collaborate to keep large reserves, as long as the ACCC can keep their nose out of such collaborations.

Below the soundbites is a set of policies – but each of those policies is caveated by “A Dutton government would…” – no mention of whether they still stand by it, no acknowledgment that a defeated Peter Dutton was bundled out of Parliament almost a year ago.

Voters are abandoning the centre – they realise the centre mass is just appeasement tactics – principles and consistency are the seats of the political see-saw.

Worse, it gives an impression that policies are elastic – for every new election, there will be a whole new set as against a few new applications of the same core beliefs. Meanwhile, the new plan for affordable energy is: “We will deliver affordable electricity for Australia as our number one priority, while reducing emissions in line with OECD countries.” Most of the OECD countries are committing climate suicide. So, the “number one” priority is to commit economic suicide – as though we can put a thermostat on planet Earth for a 1.5 degree Celsius reduction – and yet attempt the impossible of lowering energy prices in the vain attempt to do so. Vain, in both senses of the word.

To be fair, the Liberals do have a federal platform that is independent of who the Leader of the Opposition is at the time. It is here: https://cdn.liberal.org.au/pdf/FederalPlatform.pdf. The website says the platform was “adopted by Federal Council, April 2002. The Platform and policies of the Liberal Party are the mainsprings of its creative thinking” – it does say this is the statement of essential principles and that policies are derived from these core principles.

But then it mostly espouses Classical Liberalism in the act of contradicting itself – “Government needs to ensure that markets are, indeed, fair, open and competitive” – that sounds like a quest for all sorts of political interference in the market. At the very least, it is a recipe for confusion when a political party misunderstands, or worse, deliberately misquotes, the very principles for which it supposedly stands. No wonder voters and donors are jumping off the sinking ship and turning toward consistency of actions with stated policy.

In short, One Nation is not just polling more than the Coalition, it’s now arguably more classically liberal than the Liberals.

 
This essay was first published in Spectator Australia on April 10, 2026
 

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