Written by Mike Newman, the leader of ONe Nation New South Wales

One Nation got name-checked forty-six times in Legislative Assembly Question Time on 15 September 2026. Flattering, given the party holds no seats in either house. Get used to the discomfort. An empty government treats a party that isn’t even in the chamber as the threat.

First tell: a government in trouble needs its own MPs to bowl up Dorothy Dixers so it can clap itself. That is career politicians. One Nation’s bet is on candidates from the real economy, people who feel the cost of living when Labor is not tossing $100 off rego or writing toll caps that mainly help the metro.

Minns has already shown he cannot add. Treasurer Mookhey admitted the $12 billion Hunter trains package celebrated on the floor has not been costed. Then the Premier claimed One Nation’s payroll-tax cut would blow $65 billion over the forwards. The Budget papers put the entire payroll-tax take over that period at $64.82 billion. Even a metro half-cut and a regional zero cannot vaporise more money than the tax collects.

He also ignores the upside. Firms stop hiring when they hit the payroll-tax wall. Cut the tax and the tape and you get jobs, activity, and a bigger tax base. Lift Labor’s 1 per cent growth forecast to 2.5 per cent and NSW adds about $139 billion in extra GSP. Grant the Premier half his scare: lose $7.5 billion a year, about 6 per cent of revenue. After the blowouts, the wasted capital and the duplicated departments, finding 6 per cent is not heroic. Ten per cent is easy if senior bureaucrats face performance pay. People who have run a P&L understand what punitive rules do. Career politicians do not.

Labor sells data centres and renewables as the growth engine. Renewables still lean on Canberra subsidies. If wind were that good, operators would pick it without being herded. Not every data centre works. Where are the restoration bonds so the taxpayer is not left with the wreck, as already happens with renewables?

Worse is the energy plan that all but books blackouts in 2029 by legislating Eraring’s closure. Labor’s own Energy Security Target Monitor and Electricity Statement of Opportunities undercut the “safe transition” line. Close Eraring and the economy slumps: firms fold, jobs go, investment dries up except for vultures. Forget Hunter trains and Tomago if the lights flicker.

Net-zero politics is why $1.225 billion of taxpayer money is now propping up Tomago, money that should never have been needed. Labor broke the legs, then posed with the crutches. The Hunter jobs they fuss over look a lot like Labor MPs. Tomago workers can see it. One Nation’s version is commercial: sit down with Rio Tinto, put cheap coal baseload back in the mix, and get off the subsidy drip. Done properly, that also builds export capability instead of another departmental blank cheque.
Government is not the only investor. Set the scope, buy the outcome, hold people to it. Car makers did not wander off. After $30 billion in protection and subsidies, they still could not compete. That is not a template for trains. Rebuild capability without paying to invent the wheel from scratch. Asbestos ferries that would not fit under bridges were built to the specs bureaucrats wrote.

Milei is what a real-world operator looks like. Labor’s path, confirmed by its own Intergenerational Report, is the old Argentina. The piece Labor MPs keep quoting was written before I took over the NSW One Nation lead. Thanks for the traffic.

Frontline services are already hollow. Cessnock has no maternity or cardiac ward. Maitland is a write-off for parking and staff. Labor opens wings it cannot fill because the regions have been economically gutted. A 37 per cent retail vacancy rate in Cessnock is not a staffing puzzle. It is economics. You cannot sack nurses who are not there. One Nation’s line is more frontline people and a reason for them to live outside Sydney.

Sophie Cotsis cannot decide if the scare is 104,000 sackings or a hiring freeze. Police Minister Catley piled on while her force runs about 2,800 officers short. General duties cop the workload, juveniles bounce through bail, and bosses use the “balance of probabilities” to climb. Pronoun modules and DEI eat hours that belong on the street. Operation Shelter pays time-and-a-half for “presence” on days off and thins the home command. Officers who wanted long arms in cars were ignored before Bondi.

Labor blames the Coalition and calls inexperience a risk. Daily incompetence is the bigger one. One Nation’s pitch is not more government. It is people from energy, mining, shops, factories, medicine and small business who will change the settings, not tinker at the edge. NSW first.