Griffith academic says trust deficit is feeding One Nation's rise

Falling trust in the major parties is helping drive support for One Nation, according to Griffith University associate professor Paul Williams. He made the comments in an interview on 4BC Brisbane on Monday about the latest state and federal polling.

The 4BC host said regional communities were pushing back and that trust in state government was under strain. They also pointed to a fierce debate over coal royalties, which they said was giving fresh energy to One Nation.

Dr Williams said the polling remained relatively consistent. He said federal Labor was in trouble and One Nation was still on the rise. Premier David Crisafulli was still travelling well despite concerns about the cost of living. A recent poll had shown a dip for the Premier, he said, but Mr Crisafulli would still win a state election if one were held now.

Vision questioned

The host argued voters were willing to give the Premier a chance but wanted a clearer long-term vision. They said they had told the Premier before the last election that they cared less about election promises than about his ambition for the next generation.

Dr Williams said he had heard similar views from several people. He described the government as focused on day-to-day administration and the 24-hour news cycle. Apart from the Olympics, he said, many people struggled to see the big picture.

He acknowledged the government's efforts on lowering crime figures, shortening hospital waiting and ramping times, and building more homes. But he said many voters were disgruntled about the lack of concrete plans for their future, and that cost of living pressures meant few people could look much beyond the next fortnight.

Few places to park a vote

Dr Williams said some voters felt they had nowhere else to go but the LNP at state level. He said Labor had effectively gone to sleep as an opposition over the past 12 to 18 months. Many people, he suggested, would name One Nation rather than Labor as the opposition, at both state and federal level.

The host said friends who had always voted Liberal were now saying they would back Pauline Hanson's party. They said Labor-aligned friends were also looking to give the two major parties a kick.

Dr Williams said the shift was not unique to Australia. He pointed to populist parties, mainly but not only on the right, in the United States, Western Europe and Britain. He said similar sentiment had surfaced in Queensland in the late 1990s.

He described trust in Australian politics as a problem spanning about 50 years. In his account, more people trusted governments than not until around the time of the Whitlam dismissal. Trust then eroded, recovered, and fell sharply after Julia Gillard removed Kevin Rudd as prime minister in 2010. It had stayed low since, he said, leaving Australians with a trust deficit that suited One Nation.

The host argued that trust does not come from government, saying more regulations, fees, taxes and charges showed governments did not trust the public. Dr Williams added that political thinking was short term. He said governments focus on the news cycle, then question time, then the next budget and election, while voters want more than that and also want results quickly.

The interview was cut off mid-discussion in the material supplied.