Liberal party leadership : Beware - voting One Nation often leads to Labor governments

smh.com.au · Feb 15, 2026 · Collected from GDELT

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OpinionGeorge BrandisFormer high commissioner to the UK and federal attorney-generalFebruary 15, 2026 — 1:30pmFebruary 15, 2026 — 1:30pmOn a sweltering summer’s day last month, the political tribes gathered at St Stephen’s, Brisbane’s Catholic cathedral, to commit Ron Boswell to eternal rest. Most of the important figures in non-Labor politics, past and present, were there. So too were Labor politicians, including Anthony Albanese, who had graciously approved a state funeral. John Howard delivered the eulogy.You’ll never out-Pauline Pauline, and it is a fool’s errand to try.Dominic LorrimerBozzie, as he was universally known, was an immensely popular figure. He was a National Party senator for over 31 years: only five other people since Federation served in the Senate for longer. Although defined by his deep social conservatism, he had friends across the political spectrum. While his disposition was generous and avuncular, he was also fearless to the point of ferocity in standing up for the things he believed in.That fearlessness was never more on display than in his attitude to One Nation. He absolutely loathed them – not just for the threat they posed to his beloved National Party, but for the cheap populism, the ersatz conservatism which he saw as an insult to genuine conservatives such as him. In Ron’s eyes, they were charlatans, hucksters, political snake oil salesmen.As was typical of so forthright a politician as Ron Boswell, he believed that the only way to deal with One Nation was head-on. No pulling of punches. No weasel words. No mealy-mouthed compromise. Ron would not have a bar of the race-baiting and prejudice-mongering that were – and still are – One Nation’s brand. He called them out for what they are – just as, in the 1980s, he had taken the fight to another racist right-wing movement, the League of Rights.Ron’s Senate campaign in 2001 has entered the folklore of Australian politics. One Nation had achieved great success at the Queensland state election of 1998, winning 11 seats and paving the way for years of Labor state governments. (Conservative apologists for Pauline Hanson, please note: if you vote One Nation, you usually end up with a Labor government.) Three years later, Hanson turned her eyes to the Senate. Ron was her target.Senator Ron Boswell arrives at a National Party meeting at Parliament House in Canberra in 2013. Andrew MearesRon campaigned on the slogan “He’s not pretty but he’s pretty effective”. (He did himself less than justice; he had a face full of character, although he always did look like an unmade bed.) He took to the highways and byways of Queensland – right into the heart of some of the most ultra-conservative parts of Australia – to evangelise his message that One Nation had no answers to the issues that troubled them. He won, and so stopped the early rise of One Nation in its tracks. It would be 15 years until Hanson found her way into the Senate.As Ron Boswell showed, the way to deal with One Nation is not to chase it in a race to the political bottom. You’ll never out-Pauline Pauline, and it is a fool’s errand to try. And, in the process, you lose middle Australia.It is particularly important for the new Liberal leadership to remember that. Angus Taylor has already identified immigration as one of his key issues. It is perfectly appropriate – indeed timely – for a debate about population policy. I have no doubt that the public is up for just such a debate.Inevitably, Labor and the Greens will misrepresent that legitimate national discussion as Hansonism lite, as dog-whistling. That makes it all the more essential for Taylor to demonstrate, as he addresses an issue of genuine concern to both Hanson supporters and many other Australians as well, that he has absolutely no time for One Nation and the type of politics it practises. To have a sensible national debate on immigration is not to be a pale echo of One Nation, but the surest way for Taylor to protect himself from that calumny is to take the same approach as Ron Boswell so successfully did.On 7.30 last Friday, Tony Abbott – who was in the late 1990s tasked by Howard to kill off One Nation in its infancy – claimed that it is a different party than it was 30 years ago. It isn’t. One of the very reasons for Hanson’s success has been her consistency. Ever since the day in 1996 when she used her maiden speech to claim that Australia was being “overrun by Asians”, One Nation has been an overtly racist party. It is core to its brand. There is no subtlety or ambiguity about it: Pauline doesn’t do dog-whistling.Her messaging has never changed. Even her gimmicks are the same: only three months ago, she reprised the burqa stunt, which she first tried in the Senate in 2017.As I said on that occasion, it is perfectly possible to be a good law-abiding Australian and a strict adherent Muslim. It is as unjust to taint half a million Australian Muslims with the criminality of the Islamist extremists who exist within their community as it was, in the sectarian Australian of a century ago, for Protestants to stigmatise Irish Catholics as disloyal, because of a few Fenian revolutionaries in their midst.Of course, Pauline Hanson has every right to prosecute her views. Her supporters have every right to vote for her. That’s the way free societies work. But Liberal leaders have to be prepared – as Boswell did – to call out One Nation for what it is. Keeping a fastidious distance, but otherwise remaining silent, won’t do.As his coffin, draped in the Australian flag he loved so much, was borne from the church, the congregation rose as one to sing that fine old hymn Be Not Afraid. Ron Boswell wasn’t afraid of anything – or anyone. He certainly wasn’t afraid of Pauline Hanson.George Brandis is a former high commissioner to the UK and a former Liberal senator and federal attorney-general.From our partners