OPINION
AN odd observation from last year’s federal election fight for the seat of Flinders was the effort that the Labor campaign put into discrediting indepdendent Ben Smith.
Perhaps it was well-founded as Smith, in the tightest of contests, managed to pip Labor’s Sarah Race and end up in the two-party-preferred spot against Liberal Zoe McKenzie.
Of course, McKenzie prevailed, but not by much. One wonders who would be representing Flinders in Canberra if Labor had targetted the Liberal Party instead.
In a way it created odd bedfellows. Labor were in effect saying “we are against the Liberals, but our ability to fight them could be taken by this ‘independent’, so we must fight him instead”. The decision to do so may have been the best thing to happen to the McKenzie campaign.
Fast forward to the Nepean by-election and all eyes are on the contest as a yardstick of the purported rise of One Nation.
The data may be questionable, but the press release was definitive: “One Nation has surged to become the most popular party in Victoria as its wave of support spreads across Australia” screamed the headline from, no surprises, One Nation with new polling by a Sky News Pulse poll putting the party on top in federal polling.
“One Nation would secure 26 per cent of the primary vote in Victoria if a federal election were held today”, it said and “The seismic shift could spell trouble for the major parties come Victoria’s state election later this year”.
Polls can be unreliable, but elections are not. And the first test of One Nation’s claim of an unprecedented surge of support in Victoria will come at the Nepean by-election on 2 May.
Sans a Labor candidate, where will those votes go? Will the majority go to Indepdendent for Mornington Peninsula endorsed Tracee Hutchison? Or will they fracture with the environment vote going one way and the worker’s vote going another?
We’ve seen the phenomenon before with our friends on the other side of the Pacific.
Trump won the “workers”. There is no doubt about it. They abandoned the Democrats in droves with promises of a better deal for the working class from a party that has never offered a better deal for the working class. But still they left.
There is the potential that any uplift in One Nation vote will not just come from disaffected Liberals, but also from disaffected Labor supporters who believe the party no longer cares for the working person. Those tradies and construction type; the factory workers; the teachers and nurses who have all seen rampant corruption on Big Build sites and have had enough.
Those voters don’t necessarily go to Tracee Hutchison. They may go somewhere else. Quite possibly to One Nation.
The potential uptick of One Nation support has huge repercussions for the November poll too. A strong showing by One Nation in that poll, assuming it wasn’t just from the Liberal base, could see a flow of preferences to the Liberal Party and get them across the line in November. That must be something the bean-counters in Liberal HQ are mindful of.
But too strong a showing just increases the existential threat the Victorian Liberal Party currently faces.
Don’t forget what happened last month in the South Australian state election. Only 13 of the seats ended up as a contest between Liberal and Labor. An astounding 25 were contested between One-Nation and Labor.
The Liberal Party’s primary vote nearly halved to 18.9%, while One Nation’ primary vote was 22.9%.
One Nation won four seats in the state’s lower house, leaving the Liberal Party with just five seats.
It is interesting the Liberal Party decided to put out a flyer attacking the Nepean One Nation candidate, Darren Hercus. Perhaps what we are seeing is a realisation from the Victorian Liberal Party that Labor may not be the only problem they need to overcome in November.
It must be a balancing act for the Liberals. For the party to take power in November they need One Nation to do well, but not too well.
Well enough that they benefit from preferences, but not so well that One Nation pick up seats in their own right.
Back to Nepean, the Liberals would be hoping to get One Nation preferences and One Nation be hoping to get Liberal preferences if the vote goes another way. Neither would want their votes going to Hutchison, who is on the other side of the political spectrum completely.
Castings an eye to the letters section in The News we are seeing avowed Labor supporters swinging their support behind Hutchison.
It should be noted that some of those letter writers currently supporting the community independent were the same ones who attacked the community independent in the federal election.
Likewise in this election, letter writers have attacked Marsh constantly; five letters last week alone.
How many attacking Darren Hercus or One Nation? None.
It could be that the letter writers, so focussed on Marsh, could be propelling One Nation’s Hercus into the first Victorian lower seat won by the party in their history.
The community independent and Labor letter writers, solely focussed on Marsh and the Liberal Party, may well contribute to a historic win for the previously marginal party, and create a new path for One Nation as they march towards the November election.
First published in the Mornington News – 14 April 2026
