Meet the Sri Lankan immigration lawyer handing out for Pauline Hanson at the election

详细摘要

A truckie who says Labor is stuffed; a cleaner raising three kids with his Samoan ex-partner; a unionist who turned his back on Labor. These are the people voting for One Nation.

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As a One Nation-supporting, Sri Lanka-born migration adviser, Lalin De Silva is alive to the irony. He mentions it immediately.

“It’s very ironic that I’m a registered migration agent who is supporting Pauline Hanson against mass immigration. Plus, my best friend happens to be a Muslim,” says the 65-year-old lawyer, enjoying a late afternoon coffee. In the fading light, the main street is virtually empty, while the Pakenham Marketplace shopping centre is still going strong.

We’re in Pakenham, the lower house seat on Melbourne’s eastern fringe where One Nation’s Victorian leader Warren Pickering is hoping to make history as the right-wing populist party’s first Victorian lower house MP.

Back in the late 1990s, the first wave of momentum for Hanson’s party was met with protests in Victoria and defeat for the party electorally in Australia’s most progressive state. Now, with less than two weeks until the election, One Nation’s primary vote is at 23 per cent, according to The Age’s Resolve Political Monitor – 1 point ahead of Labor.

Pollsters expect Victorians will elect several One Nation MPs, particularly in the upper house, where Rikkie-Lee Tyrrell is the party’s sole representative. Pickering himself wants to be the premier – as he told the Melbourne Press Club this week, his party is “here to govern”.

“We are now part of the permanent political landscape here in Victoria, whether people like it or not,” he said. “Get used to it.”

This is One Nation in 2026: a truckie who stops outside Coles to tell us Labor is stuffed; a cleaner raising three kids with his Samoan ex-partner; a retired tuckshop lady who lived in Traralgon for 44 years but would leave tomorrow if she could; a lifelong Labor-supporting staunch unionist who turned his back on the party because he says Labor turned its back on him.

For many, life has simply got worse. It’s a bitter given that the government doesn’t…

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