South Australia’s election on Saturday has confirmed the rapid growth in support for the racist One Nation party, while the Liberals are spiralling downwards. One Nation’s state leader, rabid former Liberal Cory Bernardi, has won a seat in the upper house, with up to four seats in the lower house possible.
At the time of writing One Nation was on 22.2 per cent of the vote, compared with only 19.1 per cent for the Liberal party. One Nation will still end up with fewer seats than the Liberals, due to the geographical spread of the vote and the fact that only half the upper house was up for re-election.
Meanwhile the incumbent Labor government of Peter Malinauskas has increased its majority. ABC analysis predicts Labor will win 33 lower house seats, up from 29 before the election. This is despite a swing of 2.4 per cent against the government.
Most of One Nation’s support came from former Liberal voters. But we should not see One Nation’s rise as simply a squabble between parties on the right of politics.
They also made gains in traditional Labor seats, particularly in outer suburban areas heavily affected by the skyrocketing cost of housing and other essentials. One Nation took around 6 per cent of the Labor vote in very safe Labor seats, according to ABC election analyst Antony Green. The result could be far worse in future elections such as the Victorian state election in November.
One Nation stands for punching down against minorities and other sections of the working class—migrants, Muslims and First Nations people—who already cop a rough deal. The division they foster undermines unions and movements of resistance, which depend on working class unity.
The Malinauskas government, along with Albanese, has created the environment where an openly racist party can grow. The cost of living is out of control, while they have actively resisted workers getting pay rises that keep up with inflation.
They have shifted the blame for housing shortages and poor infrastructure onto migrants to hide their capitulation to developers and housing investors and their own failures. Labor continues Australia’s sorry treatment of asylum seekers, with a new deal signed last year to deport refugees to Nauru. It has demonised women and children seeking to return from Syria.
Labor governments support the systems that see Aboriginal children jailed or separated from their communities, and their support for Israel’s genocide has led to them demonise Palestinians, Muslims and Arabs.
In his victory speech, Malinauskas stated “Cory Bernardi and One Nation deserve recognition”, and told them he was ready to work with them “as long as it is in the interests of South Australians”. This only legitimises them further, and does nothing to prepare Labor supporters to fight the growing racist threat.
His attempt to challenge One Nation’s xenophobia was to quote Henry Lawson’s poem The Duty of Australians, which calls on us to welcome “the new chum” from overseas, while we “forever praise [our] country, but … run no other down”. But Australian nationalism is part of the problem, feeding racism by fostering the idea that workers from overseas are our rivals.
Many workers have swallowed the lie that migration needs to slow so the building of homes and infrastructure can catch up. Others saw One Nation as a protest vote against the major parties and a system that is making life for workers harder and harder. There are clear parallels with the rise of racist far-right politicians overseas, particularly Donald Trump in the US.
Disillusionment
In this volatile environment, it was disappointing to see little change in The Greens’ vote, which rose only 1.1 points to 10.2 per cent. Beyond its core supporters, many see the party as part of the political establishment, rather than a vehicle for anger and discontent at the system.
The election result shows the increasing disillusionment with business-as-usual politics, and rising racism. It’s important we look more widely than the sphere of electoral politics to understand and combat it. This is not primarily a matter of constructing a better electoral alternative. We need to get to work to undermine the social and economic factors bringing people to the point where they’ll consider voting for One Nation.
One key task is to step up struggles for affordable housing and wages. We need to organise at work, back every union that fights, and demand union leaders organise additional serious struggles to improve pay and conditions.
In the run-up to the elections, SA Unions started an “Our SA, Our Future” campaign demanding investment in secure local jobs and to “build homes not landlord portfolios”. This campaign should continue to put demands on the Labor government through rallies and strikes.
The SA Unions campaign sent out an email with the excellent title “Don’t let One Nation divide South Aussie workers”. However the main graphic in the email showed Liberal and One Nation as two peas in a pod, with the text “Same policies. Same chaos. Different labels.”
But One Nation are not the same as the Liberals. We need to make it clear—even to workers who vote Liberal—that One Nation’s racism is beyond the pale.
We must also continue to build the campaigns for Palestine, First Nations rights and refugees, and against the militarism that Malinauskas, Albanese and Trump promote.
Organising street mobilisations to oppose the racists in SA has so far been mainly left to Aboriginal activists. We have to find ways to work cooperatively with them to build a much larger anti-racist movement, reaching way beyond the existing left, to outnumber the racists when they gather to march.
On their first electoral outing, SA Socialists achieved a decent 7.2 per cent in the Premier’s seat, Croydon—only slightly below the Liberals’ 7.6 per cent. But the cost was high, with their Facebook page boasting: “We had 100+ volunteers out on the booths on election day … we letterboxed every household in Enfield and Croydon—and knocked on over 7000 doors.” Imagine what that energy could achieve if it was put into workplace organising, or building the next Palestine or anti-racist rally.
Racist parties’ support is growing around the world because of the failure of capitalism—and its traditional parties—to provide people with stable and secure lives. We need to do more than tell people we have better ideas, or candidates. We need to expand the horizons of what seems feasible and realistic. This means building movements that working class people can join, where they can start to taste their own power to create a better world.
By Robert Stainsby
