CANBERRA, Australia — Pauline Hanson’s One Nation has surged to a record-high 14% in national polling and now finds itself at the forefront of an issue worldwide as mounting anger over high migration, housing costs and living expenses transforms the politics of down under, even though it will come without its leader in Parliament this week. Analysts say the poll breakthrough and parliamentary punishment underscore how Hanson’s tapping into popular unease over immigration both appeals to and antagonises in Canberra, Dec. 3, 2025.
Migration anger powers One Nation rebellion.
One Nation’s national vote has surged to 14% in a Roy Morgan poll reported by Reuters this week, the highest level since the late 1990s and nearly double its support the last time voters had their say at a federal election, with Labour in front overall but the conservative Coalition less than 30% on primary votes.
With net overseas migration recovering from pandemic lows and projected to rise to more than half a million people in 2023 and remain elevated through 2024-25, polls have found that most Australians now believe the intake is too high and link it to housing shortages and pressure on services. Comprehensive opinion poll aggregate reporting from The Poll Bludger has shown One Nation in double-idiocy figures in federal and Queensland state polls, including 14% in a recent Queensland poll, as well as a national Essential result at 15%, establishing that the surge goes beyond one ever more baffling snapshot.
As far back as November, party staff told The Nightly that they thought One Nation had been profiting from a hard line on cutting migration and opposing ambitious climate and energy targets, the kinds of themes that are winning over disillusioned Liberal and National voters in outer-suburban and regional seats. A new migration policy is being planned by the Liberals aimed at “slowing” intake, in an attempt not to rob more conservative ground from Hanson.
Hanson burqa stunt leads to Senate suspensions – video.
The poll rise comes as Hanson faces her most serious disciplinary action in years. On Nov. 25, she entered the chamber in a full-body burqa that covered her face to dramatise her push for legislation to ban face coverings nationwide. The Senate voted 55–5 to suspend her for 7 sitting days, according to Reuters’ detailed reporting.
An Associated Press report, brought by ABC News, states that Hanson will be banned from Parliament for the rest of the year and suspended when Parliament resumes in February, in one of the strongest sanctions imposed on a senator in decades. Hanson did not apologise, defending the stunt as a protest against what she described as extremism and Senate hypocrisy, which fellow Muslim senators and human rights activists denounced as racist and dangerous.
Years in the making: One Nation’s slow rise
This week’s headlines mark the end of a year-long rebuild for One Nation. An October feature from ABC News reported that the party was opening suburban shopfronts and holding town-hall-style meetings in regional Queensland and New South Wales as support there reached 10–14%, while recruiting volunteers for local campaigns.
Last month in the The Saturday Paper we had the chief of staff, James Ashby, outlining a proposal to expand One Nation’s Senate team and demand net overseas migration be slashed more than in half — cut to approximately 130,000 people a year — with stiffer English tests as well as “values” checks and an exponentially protracted wait for citizenship policies that zero directly into voters feeling locked out of the housing game.
As far back as May, a Capital brief newsletter had cautioned that One Nation’s preferences could hold the key to whether Prime Minister Anthony Albanese ruled with a majority or a minority in the next election, demonstrating how even a mid-teens primary vote could make the party king-maker in marginal seats under Australia’s preferential system of voting.
And in March, a report on a survey by the Australian Population Research Institute found that an overwhelming majority of voters wanted lower immigration and blamed high migration for making housing less affordable — a shot across the bow that researchers said political parties were slow to take seriously. It now seems that mood is directly feeding into One Nation’s surge.
Collectively, the record poll rating and Hanson’s seven-day suspension crystallise a quandary facing Australia’s political class: how to address increasing anxiety about migration and living standards without legitimising rhetoric many believe is odious or racist. For now, One Nation is making that perpetuate tension pay off in votes — and turning a parliamentary rebuke into new evidence for its supporters that the party is willing to defy the establishment.
