Australian Politics and Policy - Senior, 2019a

The Australian party system
party senators. In this role, the party has sought to influence government policy,
especially on issues concerning asylum seekers, environmental conservation and
the provision of state services such as health care and education.
Non-‘green’ parties in the Senate
Pauline Hanson’s One Nation Party first won Senate representation in 1998. From
the outset, One Nation focused on race and immigration issues. 51 One Nation can
be regarded as a populist-right type party – it is led by a charismatic leader and
proposes to solve complex social and economic problems through simple policy
changes. 52 Atthenationallevel,thepartywononeSenateseatinQueenslandin
1998, attracting the support of disaffected Coalition voters in rural and regional
electorates. But it soon unravelled. One Nation’s organisational structures were
specifically designed so that its leader, Pauline Hanson, and not ordinary members,
had the power to decide the party’s policies. This led to much frustration and
caused many members to leave the party. Pauline Hanson was also sentenced to jail
for fraudulently registering One Nation. 53 Hanson soon left the party and contested
subsequent state and federal elections as an independent.
By the time of the 2016 federal election, however, Hanson had rejoined One
Nation. Campaigning on race and immigration matters once more, the party was
able to win a total of four Senate seats (two in Queensland and one each in
NSW and WA) thanks to the lower quota required to win seats in the double
dissolution election (the quota needed to win a seat was half that required at a
general half-Senate election). As in the past, however, One Nation experienced
structural volatility, with some Senators resigning from the party. While Hanson
continued to keep a high public profile in Australian politics, her party’s impact on
the national parliament has been hindered by organisational instability.
Other minor parties from the political right followed One Nation. Family First
was elected to the Senate in 2004 but was only able to win a Victorian Senate seat
because of a series of beneficial preference deals it had organised with other parties,
rather than broad support. Family First positioned itself as an anti-Greens party. It
focused on advancing socially conservative ideals, especially by opposing same-sex
marriage and drug liberalisation. The party originated in South Australia (SA) and
many members had links to Evangelical churches. While Family First could not win
parliamentary representation in 2007 or 2010, the party did return to the Senate
in 2013. The party merged with the Australian Conservatives, created by former
Liberal Senator Cory Bernardi, in 2017.
In 2010, the ‘new’ DLP won Senate representation. The party, however, was
qualitatively different to the version that was in the Senate throughout the 1950s
51 See Ghazarian 2015, 117–8.
52 Economou and Ghazarian 2018.
53 Hanson was released less than three months later. For further discussion, see CMC 2004.
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