One Nation: The Signal and the Noise
It seems a new story emerges every day about the rapid rise in One Nation’s support. Our media naturally gravitate to the ‘sport’ of picking the winners and (numerous) losers, among which the Coalition rarely fails to be named. What is being missed (or at least lightly reported) is the difference between the signal and the noise.
The noise in the sentence above is obvious enough. For the first time in living memory, a non-major party is polling well above 20% and is doing so for an extended period. But what is the signal?
A number of pollsters have drilled down into the motivations of One Nation voters, and it turns out that immigration topics are not the leading factor. It turns out to be a desire to ‘burn down’ the two-party system and disrupt politics as usual is the #1 motivation. Kos Samaras (Redbridge Group) polling has been the clearest in identifying this.
We note with interest that the Coalition – clearly the party most affected by this change in One Nation’s popularity – has responded with immigration announcements, but has seemingly ignored the signal by not announcing anything related to how our democratic system works. Those living within the noise perhaps find it harder to hear the signal.
One Nation is calling for Citizens’ Initiated Referenda (CIR) to increase public participation in decision making. While the clear positive intention is to give everyday Australians a greater say, the chosen way to do this has significant flaws: it’s open to manipulation and has a poor record of working in practice. In our experience, those in politics often see the CIR mechanism as the best-in-field option simply because they are not yet aware of alternatives such as Citizens’ Juries. For the reasons mentioned, we don’t think the Citizens Initiated Referenda is the right approach but in this three-party-top-of-the-polls contest, One Nation have outrun the majors* in promoting a systemic change aimed at giving everyday Australians a greater say in their democracy. Two years away from a Federal Election – and four years since PM Albanese promised to “change the way that politics is conducted in this country” and “change the way we do politics” – there is no actual sign of that change.
The voters are perhaps noticing.
Giving everyday people a visible role in Canberra is now a variable that clearly drives voting intention. Over 15 years, we’ve often heard variants of the sentiment that what we do is interesting, but ultimately voters don’t actually want to engage outside of election days. Honestly, we somewhat accepted that truism in a world of hip-pocket electoral dynamics. The rise in the One Nation vote has seemingly proven that truism wrong.
But are the parties listening?
*In the broader context of party positions, it should be noted that The Greens offer two ideas we support as part of their ‘Increase Public Participation in decision making’ commitment.
The AUKUS Question: When Should Citizens Have a Say?
In recent weeks, we have also noted with interest the announcement and subsequent media coverage of an independent review of the AUKUS submarine contract.
Led by former Midnight Oil frontman and Labor Minister Peter Garrett amongst others, the inquiry itself raises an important question for Australian democracy.
The question is not whether the AUKUS commitment is ‘right or wrong’ – we at newDemocracy take no position – it’s how decisions of this scale should be made in a democracy that is front of mind.
The commitment to spend ~$370 billion on nuclear-powered submarines is one of the most consequential policy decisions Australia has made in decades. It will shape our strategic posture, public finances and international relationships for generations. Yet many Australians feel they have had little opportunity to understand, question or discuss the assumptions behind it.
As Verona Burgess recently observed in The Mandarin, the inquiry itself is a manifestation of public concern about secrecy and exclusion from decision making. She went further, suggesting that there may yet be a role for citizens’ assemblies when governments confront major policy questions.
National security presents genuine challenges for public participation. Governments cannot disclose every piece of intelligence, military assessment or diplomatic consideration. Nor should they.
But democratic legitimacy requires more than simply making decisions on behalf of the public – it requires bringing the public along. That challenge is becoming increasingly urgent. Trust in institutions continues to decline. Political incentives increasingly reward outrage, division and hyper-simplification. Complex questions are reduced to slogans. Public debate becomes a contest of tribes rather than a search for common ground.
As former Australian Electoral Commissioner Tom Rogers, who joined newDemocracy’s Research Committee in 2025, often reminds us: “one thing we really need to do is create a civic space where we can talk to each other without shouting”. Australia has not had that space on AUKUS.
To be fair, a citizens’ assembly on AUKUS today would be difficult. The major decisions have largely been made, the major parties have shown little appetite to revisit them and much of the information remains classified. But perhaps that is precisely the lesson. The time to engage citizens is before decisions become fixed.
Imagine if Australia had developed a stronger habit of using citizens’ assemblies over the past decade. Instead of asking Australians to react to a completed policy package, we might have asked a broader question at the outset:
How should Australia defend our country and protect our trade routes in an increasingly uncertain world?
A representative group of Australians would not have produced military blueprints or intelligence assessments. But they would have identified a type and level of spending that had broad community support based on reasoning and evidence, not politics and optics (or jobs in marginal electorates).
This challenge extends far beyond defence policy. We see it repeatedly in major infrastructure projects, the energy transition, housing policy, constitutional reform and even routine budget decisions. Governments announce decisions, communities react, trust erodes, and political energy is consumed defending choices that citizens feel they had little role in shaping. The result is a growing democratic trust deficit.
If that gap continues to widen, we only need to look overseas to see where it can lead: deeper polarisation, declining confidence in institutions and a public increasingly sceptical that democratic systems can respond to their concerns. You can loop back to our note on One Nation right about now.
We know that Citizens’ Assemblies are not a cure-all. They cannot resolve every disagreement or eliminate every political conflict. But they offer something our democracy desperately needs: a structured way for ordinary people to learn, deliberate and contribute to decisions before positions harden and divisions deepen.
The question raised by AUKUS is not whether a citizens’ assembly could decide defence policy. It is whether our democracy can continue making decisions of enormous consequence without creating meaningful opportunities for citizens to engage with the choices before them.
That is the conversation we believe Australia needs to have.
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A June newsletter is that time of year when every charity unsubtly reminds you that they run on donations. Why pretend we’re different! We are in the very fortunate position of having a philanthropic underwriter for our core funding – a commitment the Anita & Luca Belgiorno-Nettis Foundation has made for 20 years.
However, donations let us push the envelope into non-core areas, allowing us to educate and inform more Australians that there is a way to ‘do democracy’ and take public decisions in a more considered, more trusted way. Be part of it.
Over the coming months, newDemocracy will be exploring how Citizens’ Assemblies could become a regular part of national decision-making on issues of long-term significance.
If this is a future you would like to help build, we’d love to hear from you.
Iain Walker
Executive Director
newDemocracy Foundation
Thanks for continuing to take an interest in what we do in order to ‘do democracy better’ and have our governments make trusted long-term decisions.