SMH · Peter Hartcher · Friday 27 March 2026
Peter Hartcher argues rising global resentment will fuel Hanson's protest politics and create serious problems for Labor, but the deeper question is why major parties left the grievance unattended for so long.
Hartcher discovers that resentment fills vacuums — someone alert the Bourbons. Hanson doesn't create grievance any more than a thermometer creates fever; she reads a temperature that major parties have spent two decades refusing to take. The 'minefield' isn't Hanson — it's the twenty years of housing policy, wage stagnation and strategic drift that built the field. Albanese's problem isn't a protest party on the flank; it's that the flank is where his own voters went looking for someone who'd noticed them.