One Nation is level with Labor on 30 per cent of the primary vote in the Newspoll published in The Australian on Sunday night, with the Coalition at 19, as Pauline Hanson returned from a European trip that drew condemnation from both major parties.
The survey of 1,238 voters, taken from Monday to Thursday last week, has Labor down three points to 30, One Nation up one to 30, the Coalition up two to 19 and the Greens on 12. It is the second time in two months the minor party has matched or passed Labor's primary vote: the June Newspoll had One Nation on 31, before Labor recovered ground last month. On these numbers the two parties that have governed Australia since the war hold less than half the primary vote between them.
The leadership figures are no kinder to the incumbents. Anthony Albanese's approval sits at 39 per cent against 57 disapproval, and while he leads Angus Taylor 44 to 36 as preferred prime minister, the three-way question puts Hanson on 32, ten points clear of the Opposition Leader on 22.
The poll landed at the end of a week Hanson spent in Europe. On Saturday she told the CPAC conservative conference in London, in a room that footage cited by SBS showed was less than a third full, "Do not apologise for being white. I'm sick of hearing about white privilege." The trip also took in a podcast with British activist Tommy Robinson, in which she pointed to the end of the White Australia policy as the root of migration problems, and a stay in Sicily with mining billionaire Gina Rinehart. After criticism at home, Hanson released a video denying she wanted the policy back: "Never, ever have I advocated that, and I don't believe in that."
The responses split on predictable lines. "When I have the opportunity to represent Australia overseas, I talk Australia up. I don't talk Australia down," the Prime Minister said at Wurrumiyanga on the Tiwi Islands on Sunday. Deputy Liberal leader Jane Hume called the comments "unnecessary", "divisive" and "totally un-Australian". Taylor, who this month costed One Nation's policies at $1 trillion over a decade and ruled out an alliance, has been challenged by Albanese to rule out any future deal; Hanson's reply to Taylor at the time was "I'm not your enemy."
Parliament does not sit again until 11 August, so the argument will run without a chamber to run in. Until then the number on the table is the primary vote: a government on 30, an opposition on 19, and One Nation level with one and clear of the other.
