‘Dangerous, divisive, dishonest’: Albanese, Chalmers take aim at One Nation

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has taken aim at One Nation after a historic late-night byelection victory by the party in Labor’s stronghold of Western Australia, saying it was crucial to defeat hard-right populists.

On Sunday morning, Albanese addressed a crowd of Labor faithful at the party’s annual Queensland conference, hours after One Nation candidate Luke Herdegen claimed the outer suburban seat of Secret Harbour in Perth.

Albanese said One Nation leader Pauline Hanson sought to divide Australians, and that she talked Australians down.

“They can’t say what their immigration numbers are … they just have no idea when it comes to serious policy development,” he said.

“This is a crucial time for our movement because across the world, hard-right populists are on the march, peddling politics that is dangerous, divisive and downright dishonest.

“We simply must defeat them. We owe it to history. We owe it to the nation, and we will defeat them.

“They’ll say anything and do anything, bend any backs, peddle misinformation and disinformation, turn Australian against Australian.”

Albanese said One Nation had no serious answers to problems, and the party’s own division and disagreement was beginning to show.

He pointed to when One Nation won 11 seats in Queensland in 1998, they “lost them all in record time”. He questioned how they would work in a coalition with the LNP, saying it was a fact that they had to govern together.

Albanese spruiked several policies he said had improved the lives of Australians, and told the crowd the only mainstream political force that sought to govern in the interests of the Australian people was the Labor Party.

He said the best way to beat the “coalition of chaos” was to give Australians hope, to “stay positive”, and to be a party with ideas that would make people’s lives better.

This positivity is a sentiment that has crept into the prime minister’s speeches, in a pivot to respond to a growing sense of pessimism about the nation’s future.

Treasurer Jim Chalmers, who spoke moments before Albanese, told the crowd the government was aware of the One Nation threat.

“We took this threat seriously before yesterday’s byelection in the west, and we will take it seriously after it,” Chalmers said.