‘Existential Threat’: Nationals Face Bloodbath in the Bush as Pauline Hanson’s One Nation Storms Their Heartland, and Matt Canavan Bets His Career on a Risky Lower House Gamble
- One Nation is surging through regional Australia, raising the prospect that a century-old party could be all but wiped out in NSW.
- Nationals leader Matt Canavan is quitting the Senate to chase the Queensland seat of Capricornia, but how many colleagues will still be standing when he gets there?
- Party sources fear three of their four Senate seats could fall in 2028, with Bridget McKenzie among those at risk.
- Barnaby Joyce’s defection to Hanson’s camp has handed One Nation new credibility, and given disaffected country voters permission to follow him.
In the pubs, saleyards and footy clubs of regional Australia, something is shifting.
For more than a hundred years, the Nationals have treated the bush as home turf. Generations of farming families voted for them without a second thought.
Now that loyalty is cracking, and the party that once supplied deputy prime ministers is staring down the very real possibility of being reduced to a rump.
The force behind the upheaval is Pauline Hanson’s One Nation, which is recruiting members, volunteers and voters at a pace that has rattled the Coalition’s junior partner to its core.
Into this storm steps Matt Canavan.
The Nationals leader has confirmed he will seek preselection for Capricornia, the central Queensland electorate that takes in Rockhampton and its surrounding coal and cattle country, abandoning his Senate seat in a bid to enter the House of Representatives at the 2028 federal election.
He is expected to start as the frontrunner, even though One Nation polled strongly in the seat well before its current national surge. The more uncomfortable question for his party is whether there will be much of a team left to greet him.
The warning signs are already flashing. In May, One Nation claimed the southern NSW seat of Farrer at a by-election.
It was a symbolic blow: the electorate was once held by Tim Fischer, the late Nationals leader and deputy prime minister who embodied the party’s rural identity.
Two state elections will now serve as brutal stress tests. Victorians go to the polls this month, and NSW follows in March.
Victoria looks survivable.
The state branch has its own distinct brand, One Nation is weaker there, and party insiders believe they will hold most of their nine lower house seats, with only one considered genuinely vulnerable.
They are even eyeing Bendigo East, which is being vacated by former premier Jacinta Allan. Internal polling reportedly suggests the personal profile of sitting Victorian MPs is worth around 10 percentage points.
NSW is another story entirely.
There, whispers of a near wipe-out across the party’s 11 lower house seats are growing louder, and the state’s optional preferential voting system threatens to make the fight even harder.
Commentators have been writing the Nationals’ obituary for decades, and they have always been wrong. So why is this moment different?
Part of the answer is hidden in the numbers.
Respected election analyst Antony Green has noted that after the 2025 federal election, the Nationals held almost 36 per cent of the Coalition’s seats, their largest share since World War II.
But Green has also pointed out a long historical pattern: the junior partner’s share always swells when the Coalition is in opposition and shrinks when it governs.
That headline figure masked a deeper rot. In NSW, the party’s primary vote has slumped across most of its seats over two consecutive elections.
Incumbency held the line federally. At a state level, that buffer may finally give way.
Then came the self-inflicted wounds.
Between the 2025 poll and David Littleproud’s resignation as leader in March, the Nationals tore up the Coalition agreement twice, leaving voters with the impression of a party that was erratic and stubborn.
Worse still, Littleproud froze out Barnaby Joyce, who promptly walked across to One Nation. Joyce was often a headache inside the party, but his departure proved catastrophic.
He has lent Hanson’s outfit political weight and, surprisingly, a steadier face, softening some of its harder edges and fronting ABC interviews even as One Nation has banned the national broadcaster from its events.
Crucially, his move has signalled to wavering Coalition voters in the regions that switching is acceptable.
Analysis: What This Means for Australia
This is far more than a contest between two conservative brands. The Nationals’ slide carries serious consequences for how regional Australia is governed and funded.
The party’s value has always rested on its seat at the Cabinet table. Through the Coalition, country communities have secured roads, dams, telecommunications and drought support.
A fractured conservative vote, split between a party of government and a party of protest, risks weakening the bush’s bargaining power just as cost of living pressures bite hardest outside the capitals.
Regional economies built on agriculture, mining and resources depend on stable, predictable policy. A political landscape dominated by anti-establishment anger may deliver louder voices but fewer concrete outcomes on energy policy, water and regional infrastructure.
The social fallout is just as real. Rising support for One Nation reflects a deep sense of abandonment in country towns, fuelled by grievances over housing, services and distance from Canberra.
If the major parties cannot answer that discontent, the rural-urban divide is likely to widen.
Global events are feeding the mood too.
Canavan has seized on what he called the “earthquake” of the US midterms, arguing that voters were rejecting another failed Middle East war that had hurt working people’s living standards.
He reminded followers that Hanson had described the Iran conflict as “our problem” and urged support for Donald Trump’s campaign against global evil, while he had opposed the war from the outset.
The Senate picture is grim. Nationals sources believe three of their four upper house spots are in jeopardy: Victoria’s Bridget McKenzie, NSW’s Ross Cadell, and whoever replaces Canavan in Queensland.
Only Queenslander Susan McDonald, who is not up for re-election in 2028, appears safe.
Political strategists say the survival of individual lower house MPs will hinge on two things: how firmly they have established themselves as local champions, and Labor preferences, which rank One Nation below the Coalition.
Insiders describe Canavan as tough, hardworking and a sharp communicator.
A first-class honours economics graduate and former Productivity Commission staffer, he has steered the party along its own path while keeping relations with Liberal leader Angus Taylor as smooth as possible.
Some observers wonder whether, with his former boss Joyce still beside him, the battle with One Nation might look very different.
Not everyone is predicting doom.
ANU historian Stephen Wilks, biographer of long-serving Country Party leader Earle Page, argues the party has deep reserves: continuous federal existence since 1920, an enduring city-country split, a proven ability to adapt from a farmers’ lobby into a voice for country towns, and the privileged position the Coalition affords it.
One Nation, he suggests, struggles for credibility on governing.
Wilks sees One Nation as a kind of echo of the early Country Party, an anti-political movement driven more by broad resentment than carefully considered policy.
It was only through coalition with city conservatives that the Country Party matured into a party of government.
If he is right, those deserting the Nationals for Hanson may be walking backwards into history. Whether the party survives long enough to prove it is the question that will define regional politics until 2028.