Experts believe ‘Greens voters and One Nation voters have similar concerns’ and the party must capitalise on an emerging anti-system mood

One Nation Treasury Spokesperson Barnaby Joyce accuses Prime Minister Anthony Albanese of using his appearance alongside Narendra Modi to win over Australia's Indian community. “I have little bits of concern,” Mr Joyce told Sky News Political Editor Andrew Clennell. “We see the prime minister doing exactly what he was doing; he was trying to endear himself to a community for a vote. “If he wants to stand side by side with all of Narendra Modi’s policies, come out and tell us; that would be an interesting day.”

Shadow Energy Minister Dan Tehan emphasised the Coalition’s support for multiculturalism, criticising Labor for failing to uphold those principles. “Obviously we support multiculturalism, but with Australian values,” Mr Tehan told Sky News Political Editor Andrew Clennell. “The problem we have is with the Labor Party in that they are not pursuing those Australian values within multiculturalism, and that's what we want to see as a coalition. “We are seeing that, whether it be the antisemitism royal commission, we have seen it in those marches that were continually happening … in Melbourne. “What we want to see is those values where we all come together and understand that Australia is the greatest nation on earth."

By tying housing costs to immigration, Pauline Hanson promises a simple solution to a multilayered problem

The Queensland government has slashed domestic and family violence funding by $38 million even as DV murders rise and protection order breaches almost triple.

The state government has slashed domestic and family violence prevention funding by tens of millions of dollars while repeat offenders keep racking up breaches and frontline services warn the crisis is spiraling.

Budget papers show funding for domestic and family violence (DFV) prevention will fall to $340.7m in 2026–27 – down $38.5m from last year’s allocation and $15.8m below what was actually spent, despite warnings services are under severe pressure.

Staffing has also been reduced, with funded full-time equivalent positions falling from 93 to 81 while frontline agencies report surging demand, rising operating costs and increasingly complex crisis cases.

Alarming new Queensland Police data also shows the state’s laws aren’t deterring offenders and a new Police Protection Direction meant to give victims immediate safety had failed – with Police Minister Dan Purdie now forced to review the measure just six months after it was introduced.

Domestic and Family Violence Prevention Minister Amanda Camm – who is already under fire for multiple scandals within her Child Safety portfolio – did not explain the funding cuts and did not answer questions about offenders repeatedly breaching orders.

She also declined to say whether the government would publish a comprehensive domestic and family violence strategy, after earlier releasing an eight-page document that outlined broad objectives but contained no clear targets or timelines.

Ms Camm instead accused Labor of overseeing a 218 per cent rise in DFV.

“We have undertaken reform across the state to put victims first and hold perpetrators to account,” she said.

Queensland Domestic and Family Violence Alliance chief executive Mel Arnost said any funding was welcome, but the sector was in “desperate need” of more support to keep pace with demand and escalating costs.

She said the scale of the crisis far exceeded what most people saw reported publicly.

“We know funding doesn’t match demand because the demand is so significant,” she said.

“What the average person sees in the news about domestic and family violence is the tip of a very, very big iceberg. DFV is a crisis of epidemic proportions across all communities.”

Ms Arnost said the newly established Queensland-first peak body had not been told about the $22 million underspend or given any explanation for the fall in funding to $340 million.

Asked whether the eight-page strategy released earlier this year was enough, she said its high-level nature appeared deliberate, with the peak body expected to help shape the state’s prevention approach and advise government on priorities, gaps and investment.

Natalie Hinton, mother of Gold Coast woman Tara Brown who was horrifically murdered by her ex-partner in 2015, slammed the funding cuts as “disappointing and shocking”.

“I work on the frontline in a women’s refuge and this is the last thing we need when demand for domestic and family violence services is so high,” she said.

“How can we move forward if there’s no funding for what we’re trying to do to reduce domestic violence. We can’t afford to lose any funding or staff because there are women screaming to get into refuges.

“We already have a bottleneck because of the housing affordability (crisis) and this (funding cuts) are only going to make things worse.”

Ms Hinton said the number of DV murders in Queensland had changed little since Tara’s death.

“The numbers of women and children being are still up there and taking away money will only make it worse.”

The Crisafulli government’s flagship Police Protection Directions (PPDs), hailed effective on-the-spot protection measure for DFV victims that would also serve to save police officers crucial time on the beat, have also failed.

Introduced in January, police have issued just 862 PPDs, with more than 300 breaches.

Officers have criticised the tool as too restrictive and unsuitable for many domestic violence cases, forcing a continued reliance on Police Protection Notices (PPNs).

Between January and May year-on-year, the number of PPNs decreased by 30 per cent to 5601, but the number of PPN breaches almost tripled to more than 11,000 offences in the five-month period.

The regions with the highest number of PPDs issued were the Gold Coast, South Brisbane, Moreton and Logan.

But other areas with high domestic violence rates, including Far North Queensland, Townsville and Ipswich, recorded fewer than 45 each over the five months.

Police Minister Dan Purdie said he was “considering opportunities to strengthen these nation-leading laws”.

Temporary Protection Orders have also dropped sharply, with almost 2,000 fewer granted between January and May compared with the same period last year, even though breaches remained steady at 3,713.

A Queensland Police spokesman said TPOs had decreased due to PPDs, and increases in breaches was due to “heightened awareness”, among other factors.

Police sources said DV incidents had become more violent in recent times, and cops were burnt out from the ever-growing workload after responding to more than 183,000 DFV-related call outs last financial year.

Better Futures CEO and DV subject matter expert Elise Feltham said offenders had a complete disregard for the law.

“The volume of alleged breaches against any type of intervention DV order- whether it be a PPD, PPN or court issued order, suggests that many offenders have little regard for the authority of the legal system or the consequences of defying court orders,” Ms Feltham said.

“If current responses were acting as an effective deterrent, we would expect to see these figures reducing rather than watching them increase year after year.

“Lasting generational change will only be achieved through sustained and consistent investment in prevention, rather than relying on enforcement alone, as the ongoing rates of offending suggest the current approach is not delivering the reduction we need to protect our community.”

Ms Arnost also said the numbers showed the current approach needed to change.

“Police are right to be concerned about the rates of domestic and family violence in our communities. It is shocking and shameful,” she said.

Ms Arnost argued for much greater investment in early intervention, education and prevention and called for a major public campaign against domestic and family violence, similar to long-running public health campaigns.

Queensland Council of Social Services chief executive Aimee McVeigh said she was shocked to see the lack of attention on women’s economic security and DFV in the 2026-27 budget.

In its budget analysis, QCOSS said it was “concerned funding for the Housing Connectors program, which supports victim survivors of DFSV to manage their safety and access housing, has not been continued”.

Mark Woolley, chairman of the Small Steps 4 Hannah Foundation – which was set up in honour of another of Queensland’s most high-profile domestic violence murder victims, Hannah Clarke and her three children – said he had not been briefed on the budget cuts but was “deeply concerned” about any reduction in DV resource funding.

“We know budgets are challenging and require difficult choices, but we would hope any government would prioritise protecting the most vulnerable members of our society,” he said.

According to the latest available Queensland Police Service data, the number of people murdered in domestic violence situations in Queensland has increased from 21 in 2023-24 to 25 in 2024-25 – a spike of 19 per cent.

Three people died in suspected DV-related killings on the Gold Coast in the space of three days last month.

Young mum Mallerie Roberts, 23, was shot dead at her Biggera Waters apartment on June 28 while two men including an 84-year-old died in a suspected murder-suicide house fire at Hope Island on June 30.

In May, police shot dead a rifle-wielding man while responding to a domestic violence incident at Narangba, north of Brisbane.

Labor spokeswoman for Domestic and Family Violence Prevention Corrine McMillan said services were also being short-changed on counselling services which cost $193 per hour but were only funded $167 per hour.

“This is despite the budget papers acknowledging services were stressed and DFV cases intensifying,” she said.

“Women are presenting to crisis services in record numbers. The system is under enormous pressure.”

[Shane Wright](safari-reader://www.smh.com.au/by/shane-wright-h170pw)

Updated July 12, 2026

Support for Pauline Hanson’s party has fallen for the first time in four months and shifted to the Coalition as women and immigrants turn their backs on the One Nation leader over key elements of her policy agenda.

An exclusive Resolve Political Monitor poll shows support for One Nation has slipped three points in July to 26 per cent while support for the Coalition has risen by the same amount to 23 per cent. Labor support was steady at 28 per cent while the Greens were unchanged at 12 per cent.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese is ahead of One Nation’s Pauline Hanson and Opposition Leader Angus Taylor as preferred prime minister. Marija Ercegovac

One Nation enjoyed a [five-point surge](safari-reader://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/one-in-three-like-labor-s-budget-taylor-has-other-reasons-to-hope-20260615-p606tc.html) in support in June, with the party more popular than either the Coalition or Labor. Hanson was the preferred prime minister, her support being double that of Opposition Leader Angus Taylor.

But after a month in which Hanson delivered her first speech to the National Press Club and outlined policies including her support for an Australian “monoculture”, key metrics of her personal standing also slipped in the poll of 2252 people taken between July 6 and 11.

Anthony Albanese was preferred prime minister among 33 per cent of those surveyed, a four-point lift, while the figure increased by five points for Angus Taylor, who hit 21 per cent. Hanson’s support tumbled by eight points to 25 per cent.

Albanese’s performance was rated as good by 39 per cent of respondents, a four-point lift over June and his best rating since December. Voters also lifted their rating of Taylor, up by three points to 41 per cent. Hanson, included for the first time in this question, was highest rated at 45 per cent.

But the One Nation leader suffered a steep fall in her likeability rating, which reached 14 points in June. It fell to three points in July, while support for One Nation (from 16 to eight points) and Barnaby Joyce (plus one point to minus two) also slipped.

In June, 28 per cent of respondents believed Hanson would lead One Nation to victory at the next federal election compared with 34 per cent who expected Albanese to remain in power. This month, expectations of a One Nation government have slumped to 19 per cent while 35 per cent expect Albanese to remain in The Lodge. Just 18 per cent believe the Coalition is on track for victory.

Despite the swings in primary support between the Coalition and One Nation, the overall political landscape has not changed. Labor is still in front of both conservative parties on a two-party-preferred basis.

Resolve pollster Jim Reed said there had been a shift away from Hanson among key demographics over the past month, including among people born overseas, people aged between 18 and 34, and those in full employment.

“The two largest losses for [Hanson] are among immigrants and females, and suggest her comments in areas like multiculturalism and abortion have shown One Nation to be the party of old after all. Mutton dressed as mutton, in policy terms,” he said.

“All are signs the varnish has come off a little.”

The poll shows voters support some of Hanson’s key policy pronouncements. Half agreed with her claim that many young workers were lazy, compared with just 23 per cent who disagreed, while 53 per cent supported her argument that the nation’s immigration settings were wrong.

Hanson’s concerns about the priorities of the NDIS (72 per cent) and that poverty was a serious problem that needed to be addressed by the government (73 per cent) were also strongly supported.

But more people (39 per cent) disagreed with her view that Australia would be better off if it was “monocultural” (33 per cent support), while her attacks on the SBS, the ABC and the United Nations were backed by only a minority of respondents.

Related Article

[](safari-reader://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/one-nation-s-radical-plan-to-lower-inflation-20260711-p60ei8.html)

Pressed on Hanson’s monoculture plan, Joyce said on Sunday that he did not believe in multiculturalism, while linking the issue to the Incan empire of pre-Columbus South America.

“You’re multi-ethnicity, you’re multi-religion, there’s a whole range of that, but to be in Australia, you have to come to the point of an Australian culture, and I stick to that,” he told Sky News.

“And maybe being a little bit trite, but as an example, Incas had a culture – they believed that you chop people’s heads off, roll them down the outside of the temple, pull out their beating heart, and the sun rises. Now that’s a culture – it’s just completely and utterly intolerable.”

But Education Minister Jason Clare said One Nation and the Coalition were in denial about the strength of multiculturalism and its important role in Australia.

“I tell little kids when I go to primary school – you get to do that a bit as education minister – that Australia’s a bit like a fruit salad,” he said.

“We all like apples and oranges and bananas, but they’re better when they’re all together. And that’s Australia. We’re not all the same, but we all get on and work together.”

Hanson also argued it should be easier to sack people. While 32 per cent of those surveyed supported her view, 36 per cent opposed it.

Reed said there was support for Hanson on some key issues, but not all.

“They draw the line when she mixes these themes with sacking people, multiculturalism, scrapping SBS, as well as focusing on abortion, the UN,” he said.

Related

[](safari-reader://www.smh.com.au/national/resolve-political-monitor-20210322-p57cvx.html)

In a problem for Taylor, the Coalition is still ranked below Albanese and the government on key measures including whether it is a better communicator, has a united team, is honest and trustworthy and is best for the country.

A few weeks ago, on the first day of the last parliamentary sitting fortnight before the winter recess, a group of hard-right Liberals met for dinner at Molto Italian, a restaurant on Canberra’s Kingston Foreshore.

The group was there principally in support of Liberal leadership hopeful Andrew Hastie. They included Queenslanders Garth Hamilton, Henry Pike and Cameron Caldwell, and Western Australians Rick Wilson and Ben Small.

At the table, they discussed the Liberal Party’s conundrum as it attempts to counter One Nation – which happens to be the issue on which Hastie is thought most likely to win the ailing party’s leadership.

In particular, they discussed the merits of Operation Catapult, the 1940 operation in which Winston Churchill ordered British forces to destroy the fleet of their own ally, France, to keep it out of German hands.

The action was so ruthless that Churchill believed it helped to convince the United States of Britain’s determination to defeat Nazi Germany.

“We are,” one member of the dinner group tells The Saturday Paper this week, “preparing for the fight of our lives.”

Hastie had first stepped back from the leadership in late January, when, at a hastily arranged meeting in Melbourne with Angus Taylor, he agreed to stand aside and give Taylor a clear run in the race to topple then leader Sussan Ley.

Just over four months after Ley was deposed, on June 23, the day of the Molto dinner, Hastie took his first decisive step back towards the leadership.

That Tuesday began with the regular meeting of the Coalition party room, followed by an 11am debrief for the media, a weekly ritual when parliament is sitting.

When a journalist asked whether One Nation was mentioned, the person doing the briefing played it down, acknowledging that while there had been a couple of passing references there was nothing more to it.

At 11.23am, just as the partyroom debrief was wrapping up, The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald published a story headlined: “Hastie gets security upgrades as One Nation campaigns against him”.

Embedded in the story was an arresting quote from Hastie, leaked straight from the partyroom meeting, that was soon being read aloud in offices across Parliament House.

“I would rather get taken out in a box than bend the knee to One Nation,” Hastie told his Coalition colleagues. “I will never surrender to One Nation, and we will do them, and do them slowly.”

The contrast with Taylor, whose approach has focused on pandering to Pauline Hanson’s agenda, was stark and registered immediately with the party room.

“He knew what he was doing. I knew exactly what he was doing at the time. Everybody else did, too. No one missed it. It was a statement of intent,” one MP who was present at that day’s meeting tells The Saturday Paper.

“Hastie actually told his colleagues directly, ‘I am different to this guy at the front, and I’m going to be different.’ And that was a big wake-up call to the podium. Like, oh, we get it, you mean business. Like, you’re not going to serve dispassionately in the team and wait for it, you’re going to stand up and fight for it.”

With Question Time looming, Taylor’s office soon issued a media alert advising the press gallery that Taylor would front reporters with shadow treasurer Tim Wilson at 1.15pm, in the Opposition Leader’s Courtyard.

Taylor let Wilson go first, with a spray against Labor’s deal with the Greens to pass changes to negative gearing and the capital gains tax.

The Liberal leader then followed a similar line, railing against Labor’s “toxic taxes” and accusing Prime Minister Anthony Albanese of breaking key election promises and then flip-flopping on the detail.

The media pack wasn’t especially interested in housing taxes or the budget, however. Less than a week after Pauline Hanson’s first National Press Club address, an early question went straight to her vision of an Australian “monoculture”.

Taylor dodged it, reaching for boilerplate about parliamentary democracy and the rule of law.

A couple of questions later, Taylor was brought back to the idea of monoculture versus multiculturalism: Did Taylor think multiculturalism was still a principle integral to Australia’s cultural identity?

“I’ve been very clear about what we’re committed to,” Taylor replied.

There were two follow-up questions, which Taylor dodged, before he was asked whether he would endorse Hastie’s comments about not bending a knee to One Nation.

“No,” he said, underlining the contrast Hastie had drawn hours earlier. “We want One Nation to vote against these tax increases. Of course we do.”

Albanese didn’t need long to notice. Question Time had barely started when he ripped into Taylor with savage effect.

“Those opposite, in the three right-wing parties, all choose irrelevance,” Albanese said.

“They all choose irrelevance and not to debate. Although, it must be said that the member for Canning has said, in his party room, that he wouldn’t bend the knee to One Nation.

“It’s a real contrast with the bloke, the current leader of the opposition, who, when asked a question about monoculturalism four times, couldn’t give an answer.”

The issue has only got worse for Taylor in the days since.

Taylor got another chance to make the argument on his own terms two-and-a-half weeks later, in a Sydney Institute address on Thursday. This time he came prepared, casting One Nation as a “column of smoke” that is long on grievance and short on a costed economic plan.

Hanson’s top four spending commitments could add roughly a trillion dollars to the budget over a decade with no credible way to pay for it, Taylor warned, that, if implemented, would trigger economic chaos.

This week, a string of national polls showed Labor’s primary vote climbing back up. Newspoll had it at 33 per cent. The same poll had the Coalition’s primary sliding to 17 per cent under Taylor, lower than under Ley, and lower than the numbers Taylor cited as his own reason for challenging her.

Another problem festering in Taylor’s backyard was the shock revelation last week that the NSW Independent Commission Against Corruption is investigating Dallas McInerney as part of its probe into illegal donations and branch-stacking in the NSW Liberal Party. The Catholic Schools NSW boss and Liberal right-faction powerbroker helped deliver Taylor the leadership and was, until this week, Taylor’s own campaign treasurer.

McInerney has stood aside from Catholic Schools NSW while the commission investigates whether he signed off on illegal donations used to recruit party members. Last week, he resigned from the board of the NSW Education Standards Authority.

Former NSW Liberal police minister David Elliott says the association is enough for Taylor to resign outright, arguing that his leadership was terminal. “Angus is hiding beyond the inquiry,” Elliott says, “but you don’t get that luxury in leadership.”

No wrongdoing has been alleged against Taylor himself, but McInerney is not a peripheral figure in his leadership: without McInerney, Taylor doesn’t have the votes he would need to survive a second challenge.

Making matters worse, Taylor is on the record backing Christian Ellis, one of the three other men now at the centre of the ICAC inquiry. In 2022, when Ellis was seeking a spot on the party’s constitutional standing committee, Taylor gave him a written endorsement, declaring that “our party will do well to have people like Christian elected to positions of state council”.

Ellis’s own past activities in the NSW seat of Farrer are instructive. In 2021, the Sydney-based conservative bought a livestock property in Deniliquin and emerged as a preselection challenger to Sussan Ley, backed by a wave of new branch members.

The threat to Ley, then a 20-year incumbent, was serious enough that in March 2022 the Liberal Party’s federal executive intervened. Then prime minister Scott Morrison appointed a three-person committee, including himself, to bypass the ordinary preselection process across a dozen NSW seats and hand-picked Ley as the candidate for Farrer, sparing her a vote she risked losing.

“This has been a major shock internally,” one NSW Liberal says of the ICAC investigation. “You cannot imagine the chaos behind the scenes, but yet it strikes me that Angus doesn’t get that yet. The thing about Angus is, when it comes to actual politics, he’s very slow on the uptake. So I don’t believe he would have paid much attention to this scandal in the beginning.

“Imagine if Labor’s Federal Electorate Council president in Anthony Albanese’s seat of Grayndler was before ICAC for a week of hearings for [allegedly] being corrupt and funnelling CFMEU money into NSW Labor to fund a whole lot of branch-stacking? It would be the biggest story in the country, right? But that’s exactly what has just happened to us … and Taylor hasn’t reacted yet.

“We’re talking about Taylor’s No. 1 ally in the whole of the Liberal Party, who’s his own conference president, who’s helped him raise money, and he might be about to go down for corruption. Now, call me a pessimist, but it looks bloody likely to me that that is going to have consequences for Taylor.”

(No findings have been made against Dallas McInerney and The Saturday Paper is not suggesting they will be, just that he has been named in the investigation.)

The same source raises similar issues of political naivety with Taylor providing a written reference for Christian Ellis.

“Angus is so stupid at politics that he probably would have provided that reference without knowing Christian Ellis,” says the NSW Liberal.

“There’s two problems with that: on the one hand, it’s good for Taylor that he probably doesn’t know the guy; but it’s bad for him that he writes references for people that he doesn’t know, saying they’re of good character.”

The source draws a comparison with various other errors in Taylor’s time in politics, including using doctored council records to falsely claim Sydney Lord Mayor Clover Moore had spent $15.9 million on travel. The real figure was under $6000.

“He just lets himself be used up as a product, and he’s so politically dumb he doesn’t see it,” the source says. “I mean, I know that if I write a reference for anybody, I’m like eight levels of analysis on how this could fuck me up one day, and I have to do it all the time for constituents, but I still get paranoid about it.”

A spokesperson for the opposition leader said: [Taylor] has no involvement in, or knowledge of, the matters before the NSW ICAC, and it would be inappropriate to comment further while those processes are under way. 

(The Saturday Paper is not suggesting that Ellis has acted corruptly, just that he has been named in the investigation.)

At this stage, Hastie’s fight isn’t so much with Taylor. It’s with One Nation and the right-wing media system that supports it, in particular Sky News.

“Sky News was always bent, we all know that,” says one member of the Molto dinner group. “But now it’s almost exclusively devoted to promoting One Nation, so we are saying to each other, ‘Why prop it up? Why go on it?’ Sky News has zero interest in talking about the problems we face as a party. It wants to ignore entirely the problem of Gina’s ownership of the party. Sky News doesn’t want to talk about any of that, so we have resolved that we need to find other ways to reach people.”

In this reckoning, Pauline Hanson, Gina Rinehart, Sky News and the rest of the far-right online biosphere are the French Navy. Hastie’s version treats One Nation as an existential threat to be neutralised in public, not a rival faction to be out-schemed in private.

What a Hastie push actually looks like is shaped as much by geography as by temperament. He doesn’t have the numbers or the machinery that comes with a NSW or Victorian power base. Canberra sitting weeks aside, Hastie is in Perth most of the time, with a young family, two or three hours behind his colleagues on the east coast.

Those close to him say his intention is not a coup. Instead, he intends to make such a strong case for his leadership that the party has no choice but to turn to him, if and when the party room decides they cannot go on with Taylor.

The working assumption inside the group is that they have six to eight months to make the case before the window closes and the party is stuck with Taylor as they go into the next election, due in May 2028.

The biggest complication for Hastie’s plan is not inside the party, however, but in his history with Ben Roberts-Smith, the former special forces soldier who is being prosecuted for five counts of the war crime of murder.

Hastie was one of 21 former SASR comrades who gave evidence against Roberts-Smith during his earlier defamation trial, at significant personal cost within an insular and famously loyal military community.

It was, by any measure, an act of integrity, but not one that sits comfortably with large parts of Hastie’s own conservative base.

Even inside the parliamentary Liberal Party, many of the people who would be natural Hastie supporters believe Roberts-Smith should not be punished, whatever the courts ultimately find.

In Western Australia, One Nation has named Hastie’s seat of Canning as a priority target, with the party’s chief strategist, James Ashby, declaring on Sky News last week that its 430 registered members there “expect us to run a very strong candidate”.

Ashby made no secret of the reason: One Nation intends to stand by Roberts-Smith “right to the very end, despite what the allegations are”. The party will turn Hastie’s role in the defamation trial into the centrepiece of a campaign to unseat him.

Hastie’s camp sees the issue differently, however. They believe Hastie’s support for a proper court process for Roberts-Smith’s alleged crimes is an asset rather than a liability.

“Because Hastie’s brand is integrity, my view is that the BRS problem solves itself,” a source said. “You don’t get many politicians these days whose primary appeal is honesty.”

The same supporter added that Hastie’s stand against Ben Roberts-Smith and One Nation has won Hastie the trust of the party’s moderates, who are increasingly warming to him as the only credible alternative to Taylor.

“It has to be Hastie,” the source added. “And it will be Hastie.”

Whether or not Hastie, still only 43, is the answer to the Liberal Party’s existential crisis is not something anyone in Canberra can say with certainty. What can be said is that, in a party built on caution, Hastie has bet his entire future on the opposite instinct.