One nation – not so bonobo
I’ve been focussing on global politics, sort of, when I’ve been focussing on politics of late, but what about Australia, my home, and where I’ll be stuck for the rest of my life? – not that I’m complaining. A few glances today, for the first time in a while I’m shamed to say, tells me that everyone, or everyone who posts online, seems to be obsessed with the rise of One Nation, at a time when all the Yank pundits are getting hopeful about MAGA’s decline. I’m hearing about it also at the English conversation class I’m helping to supervise, so …
Headlines include ‘Why is the populist right surging in Australia?’, ‘One Nation is back on top as the most popular political party in Australia’ [One Nation was never anywhere near that position], and ‘Shock poll upending Australian politics’. It all sounds very heady, but I don’t really trust the websites that seem to come up instanter when I start my web search. It always pays to check how old these pieces are – and in fact I’m struggling to find anything recent on youtube. In any case, no federal election is expected for at least another year.
However… as in the USA, wealth has come more and more to dominate politics here, and wealth is rarely on the side of the kind of humanism I’ve long espoused. It’s going to be on the side of the already-rich and exploitative, and of those who can be easily bought. It’s all very depressing.
But what, actually, are One Nation’s policies? No doubt they’re much like Fats Frump’s policies in the US – self-aggrandisement, racism, and various versions of exploitation. And the fact that the party is led by a woman isn’t going to lead to anything pro-bonobo. One Nation’s website tries to be sophisticated – for example it tries to present its ‘policy’ on climate as some kind of reasoned denialism:
We know that the majority of people believe in man-made global warming caused by carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. This belief is reinforced by media coverage of events like forest fires and droughts, but government policy needs to rest on the evidence and there is a growing concern about the evidence on which the claims of man-made global warming rests.
It is just too easy to allow our memories, often unreliable, to accept the often repeated claims that it has never been hotter. Given the economic costs, we believe we need to listen to the evidence.
There is of course no growing concern about the evidence. Greenhouse gas levels are increasing – CO2 levels are at more than 428ppm, higher than at any time in the past 2 million years, and it takes no time at all to get that information from reliable, scientific websites. But One Nation makes a policy of disregarding that evidence. It has other ‘interesting’ policies, on abortion (no mention of women there), on COVID-19 and no doubt other vaccinations, on oil and gas (more of course, and nothing about solar), and on firearms (oh dear). No mention of an immigration policy, which is doubtless a wise move. The devil is in what they won’t disclose.
The party achieved peak popularity in mid-2026, and has likely declined alongside Frumpism in the US, but it still has a substantial following, and is doubtless influencing our major right-wing party, the Liberals, to move further in that direction. We live in a much more connected world these days, so I’m guessing that the US mid-terms will affect One Nation’s standing here. The trouble is, I’ve come to be very sceptical of claims that Frump will be badly beaten in the mid-terms. I was listening to all the talk before the 2024 US election, and it led me to believe that the Democrats would win. I also found it ridiculous and shocking that Frump would be allowed to participate in that election, but that’s the USA for you. It’s all a bit depressing….
Finally, what does the term ‘One Nation’ actually mean? That we all should be ‘one’ somehow? All ‘united’? As what? Patriots, presumably? Nationalists? I’m not a nationalist myself, or an anti-nationalist. Australia, under that name, became a British colony because – well, because they stuck a British flag in the ground at Sydney Harbour and said it was British. And later, because it was all too hard to govern this massive land from the other side, they ‘made’ it a separate country. And virtually all countries have these peculiar, ad-hoc histories, most of them far more blood-stained than that of Australia. I’m not proud or ashamed of Australia’s history – I wasn’t there after all, I didn’t help to make it what it is. If circumstances had been a little different my family might have stayed in Scotland and I’d now be trying to work out whether Scotland is or should be a separate country. We’re thrown into this world, as one famous philosopher put it, and for me, the best way to deal with it is to get along as well as we can with those we’re thrown together with. We’re all just trying to make the best of our lives, and we all need help in that. It’s a human thing, not a national thing.
Bonobos, by the way, are quite good at all that stuff.
References
https://www.onenation.org.au/climate
https://wmo.int/news/media-centre/carbon-dioxide-levels-increase-record-amount-new-highs-2024
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