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Nation First wonders why the media focused on Angus Taylor’s budget reply when Pauline Hanson laid out a real alternative to the Labor-Liberal uniparty.

There was always going to be a focus on the reply to a federal budget as woeful as that delivered by Jim Chalmers on behalf of the Albanese Government.

And for that, the mainstream media applied its focus to Angus Taylor.

Of course they did. The mainstream media has a script, and it goes like this: there are two parties in Australian politics, and the job of journalism is to referee between them. Labor proposes. The Liberals oppose. Repeat until the country collapses.

But something has shifted, and the numbers prove it.

A Roy Morgan snap poll taken the night of the budget, May 13 to 14, found One Nation on 32 per cent of the primary vote. Labor was behind them at 28.5 per cent. The Liberal-National Coalition, the “only alternative” the commentariat insists you hear from, was at 16.5 per cent. Barely ahead of the Greens.

One Nation is now the single largest political force in this country by primary vote. Almost double the support of the party that calls itself the Opposition. On a two-party-preferred basis, One Nation versus Labor is a dead heat, 49 to 51. A coin flip from government.

• The mainstream media still treats the Liberal Party as the only real opposition despite polling showing One Nation has overtaken both Labor and the Coalition as the country’s largest political force by primary vote.
• Labor’s budget piles on more debt, inflation and mortgage stress while offering Australians a token tax cut that is largely cancelled out by bracket creep.
• One Nation has presented a genuine governing agenda focused on ending bracket creep, reducing housing costs, cutting migration, supporting families and abandoning net zero policies.
• The major parties have united for years against policies that would return more money and economic freedom to ordinary Australians, proving the political establishment serves itself before the public.
• Pauline Hanson’s budget reply showed One Nation is no longer simply a protest movement but a serious alternative to the political “uniparty” that has dominated Australia for the past decade.

When One Nation leader Senator Pauline Hanson stood up in the Senate chamber on Thursday night to deliver her budget reply, maybe someone should have been paying attention. Not out of courtesy. Out of necessity. Because what she laid out wasn’t a protest speech. It was a governing agenda. And it’s the only one on offer that looks nothing like what we’ve had for the past decade.

First of all, let me tell you what the budget actually means for ordinary Australians.

Revenue up. Expenses up. Gross interest payments at $27 billion, heading to $40 billion. Another $100 billion in deficits over the forward estimates. Interest-bearing debt climbing another $300 billion to $1.3 trillion.

Almost 50,000 business insolvencies since Labor took office. Productivity at six-decade lows. Eight out of every ten new jobs now created by government because the private sector has given up. A million households in extreme mortgage stress after 15 interest rate hikes. GDP per capita falling in ten of the last thirteen quarters.

And Labor’s answer to all of this? Less than five dollars a week in tax relief, starting next year, conveniently timed for the election cycle. Sixty-eight cents a day. They want gratitude for sixty-eight cents a day while bracket creep quietly swallows the rest. As Pauline Hanson pointed out in her budget reply, it’s not a tax cut but a trap dressed up as one, the same trick they ran in 2022.

This is a government that profits from inflation. That’s what bracket creep is. The economy gets worse, your wages nominally go up, and you slip into a higher tax bracket without anyone voting for it. Labor collects the difference and calls it responsible budgeting.

Now. What would One Nation actually do?

Hanson was specific, and the contrast with the uniparty is stark.

On tax. One Nation has been trying for years to index income tax thresholds to inflation, ending bracket creep permanently. Labor voted against it. So did the Liberals. So did the Nationals. So did the Greens. Every one of them, all four major parties, united against giving working Australians thousands of dollars a year back in their own pockets. That tells you everything you need to know about whose interests they serve.

On housing. One Nation would slash the GST to zero on building materials for homes up to a million dollars in value, for five years. More than 40 per cent of the cost of building a new home is government taxes and compliance costs. If you want to fix housing affordability, you start there, not with another bureaucratic program, not with a grant scheme, not with negative gearing tweaks that just shuffle money between investors. You cut the cost of building. Radical, I know.

On migration. The budget reveals the game: the government expects to rake in $7.1 billion in visa application fees by 2029-30, up from $4.7 billion today. Elevated migration isn’t policy. It’s a business model. Canada cut migration sharply from 2024 and has since seen 18 straight months of falling rents and easing house prices. Hanson has been saying this for years. She was mocked for it. Canada proved her right.

On families. Income splitting for every family with at least one dependent child. A single earner on $120,000 with a stay-at-home partner would be around $9,500 a year better off. That’s real money. That’s the kind of thing that changes whether a family can survive on one income or not. It’s a direct answer to the question of why young Australians feel they can’t afford to raise children, because the tax system punishes them for trying.

On energy. Ditch net zero. Exit the Paris Agreement. Axe the climate change department, saving $30 billion. Back coal and gas. Fast-track energy project approvals to a maximum of six months. And next week, Hanson has flagged a bold new gas policy that will give Australians real equity in their own sovereign resources, so that dividends from our gas wealth actually help pay down the debt successive governments have racked up.

On agriculture and sovereignty. Ban foreign ownership of water. Limit foreign purchases of leasehold farmland to twenty-five years. Return balance to the Murray-Darling Basin Plan. Build new dams. Re-establish a federal rural lending fund to protect farmers through drought and disaster. Australia sits on some of the richest agricultural land on earth, and we’re selling the water that feeds it to foreign interests. One Nation is the only party saying enough.

On accountability. Snowy Hydro 2.0 has blown out 21 times, to $42 billion. Nobody has paid a price for it. Nobody. One Nation would ensure those responsible for white elephant projects, past, present and emerging, are no longer able to walk away free of consequence. What a concept.

Then Hanson said something that cut to the core of what this budget fight is really about.

She called out the perversity of a government and an opposition that believe they can change the weather, and are prepared to waste hundreds of billions trying, while dismissing the Bradfield scheme that could open the rich, dry soils of the western districts to irrigation and transform Australia’s agricultural potential. Two parties. One delusion. Zero alternatives.

The media will keep talking about what Angus Taylor thinks of the budget and what a government that he leads would do differently. As if the Liberal Party, sitting at 16.5 per cent, is still the relevant opposition in this country.

It isn’t.

The poll numbers say so. The Farrer by-election said so. The decade-long collapse in Coalition support said so. The country has moved on. The debate has moved on. The only thing that hasn’t moved on is the press gallery’s rolodex.

One Nation is no longer a protest vote. Not anymore. It’s a governing movement with policies, candidates, and a platform that is the most coherent alternative to the uniparty Australia has seen in a generation.

Senator Pauline Hanson stood up on Thursday night and delivered a budget reply speech worth reading in full. Australia just might be ready to listen.

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Republished with thanks to Nation First.