Something remarkable is happening here in Victoria. The party that the political class spent decades treating as a punchline is now being spoken of, in panicked tones inside Labor's own ranks, as a potential government-in-waiting. One Nation on 27 per cent. Up to 34 seats on a good day. The possibility that Pauline Hanson's party could become the largest force in the Victorian parliament, or even the senior partner in a governing arrangement. The Victorian Trades Hall secretary is calling it "f****ing urgent." He is right. Just not in the way he thinks.
For years Victoria has been the laboratory for every progressive experiment the Australian Left could dream up. High immigration, soft-on-crime sentencing, net-zero energy policy that has delivered some of the highest power prices in the developed world, a public service culture more interested in ideology than competence, and a political class that treated working-class outer suburbs as a captive vote rather than a constituency to be served. The result is visible: cost-of-living pressure, declining liveability, rising disorder in parts of Melbourne, and a growing sense among ordinary voters that the major parties are two heads of the same snake.
Into that vacuum has walked One Nation. Not because voters have suddenly become extreme, but because the alternatives have made extremism look like common sense. A One Nation-influenced government in Victoria would not need to be perfect to be transformative. It would only need to do the things the major parties have spent years refusing to do: take border and immigration settings seriously, prioritise the interests of the existing population over abstract global obligations, restore some basic order to the streets, and stop treating energy policy as a morality play. Even partial success on those fronts would represent a radical improvement on the status quo.
The deeper joy is political. A strong One Nation performance in Victoria would detonate the comfortable assumption that the populist right can be permanently quarantined as a protest vote. It would prove that the working-class base Labor still claims as its own is no longer reliable. And it would force Anthony Albanese's federal government to confront a reality it has spent years dodging: the revolt is not confined to safe Coalition seats or regional outliers. It is now competitive in the heart of what was once Labor's most progressive state.
Albo's government has operated on the belief that the culture war could be managed, the energy transition could be sold, and the immigration settings could remain largely untouched while the Coalition tore itself apart. A One Nation breakthrough in Victoria would puncture that complacency overnight. Suddenly the federal government would face a state that was no longer a reliable progressive ally, a national media forced to treat Hansonism as a governing force rather than a carnival act, and a Labor Party forced to explain why its traditional voters are walking away in droves.
None of this requires romanticising One Nation or pretending every policy it offers is wise. It only requires recognising the obvious: the current Victorian settlement has failed large parts of the population it claims to serve, and the major parties have proven incapable of correcting course. When the alternative finally becomes viable, the panic in Labor ranks is not a sign of danger to democracy. It is a sign that democracy is still capable of delivering consequences.
A One Nation government in Victoria would be messy, imperfect, and constantly under attack. It would also be the first serious disruption to the progressive monoculture that has dominated the state for a generation. That alone would be worth the price of admission. And if it forces Canberra to notice that the ground is shifting under its feet, so much the better.