Coalition and One Nation leave CPAC without plan to defeat Labor

Hanson signs Coalition pledge after urging distrust of it

Many mainstream Australians would feel as if they’d been dropped in a foreign country at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Brisbane this weekend, The Guardian reported, lost amid oblique references to transgender swimmers, blue hair, women’s bathrooms, jokes about falling off stages and Matt Canavan in hi-vis and “speed dealer sunnies.”

The Guardian described the scene as “an interesting spectacle.” Right-wing campaigner Monica Smit was deep in conversation with a Donald Trump impersonator, opera singers belted out the national anthem — the first verse, twice, for unknown reasons — and Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price and her folk singer husband sang the anthem again. Karl Stefanovic joked that CPAC was “rudely interrupting my unemployment.”

Stickers depicting Anthony Albanese with a Pinocchio nose, holding a brown burlap sack and a large blue sex toy emblazoned with “United Nations global citizen award,” were found in the conference hall and in the men’s urinals. The Guardian reported that the stickers carried no authorisation message and did not appear to be officially endorsed by CPAC. Journalists were asked to wear a large red media accreditation lanyard emblazoned with “FAKE NEWS” — a gag CPAC has been pulling for years.

Beneath the spectacle, the conference revolved around one prevailing theme: preferences. In The Guardian’s telling, the event was about how Australia’s conservative right planned to remove Albanese and Labor from office at the next election. To attend this year’s CPAC was to see Australia’s right recognising in real-time that they needed to figure out a way to cooperate. Alongside boilerplate rightwing positions like lower taxes, fiscal discipline and welfare, the outlet wrote, CPAC is a hotbed for hyper-engaged conservatives “riled up on the red cordial of Sky After Dark.”

The arithmetic facing the parties is steep. With Labor holding 94 seats, and a splintered rightwing vote — Angus Taylor’s diminished Coalition opposition being “whacked” by Pauline Hanson’s surging One Nation — it is a tall task, The Guardian reported. For all the mocking of Albanese Labor as allegedly “the worst government in history,” conservatives face a third successive election defeat.

CPAC’s messages to attenders identified what it saw as the problem: “If you support One Nation but won’t preference the Coalition, or support the Coalition but won’t preference One Nation, you risk reinstalling Labor.” But identifying the problem is only half the challenge. By the conference’s end, it wasn’t clear how parties of the right would, or could, cooperate, The Guardian reported.

Hanson signed a pledge to “work together,” challenging Taylor and Nationals leader Matt Canavan to follow suit. The pledge came hours after she had told the conference they shouldn’t trust the Coalition, and appeared to call the Liberal leader a “smarmy management consultant” unfit to replace Albanese. Hanson told CPAC in 2025 she would “no longer be the bridesmaid” to the Coalition; The Guardian reported she seems wedded to that, and said the ball was in Taylor’s court as to how their two parties would coexist.

Taylor had earlier dodged questions from Stefanovic — to boos from the audience — about how the Coalition should cooperate with One Nation, The Guardian reported. He sought to burnish his conservative credentials by apologising for net zero, pandemic spending and immigration increases under Coalition governments, and said “I know how to get Australia out of the hole Labor has put us in.” It was clear, the outlet reported, that many at the conference had only come to see the Hanson show.

Seemingly every One Nation figure with a public profile, besides Farrer MP David Farley, was wandering the halls, The Guardian reported. Barnaby Joyce handed out a few notes as props during his free-wheeling lecture about the value of money and the historical silver content of Roman coins.

The mood at the conference in previous years has been a decent weathervane indicating where the wind of the right is blowing, The Guardian reported. In 2022, CPAC’s prevailing theme was urging the opposition to oppose the Indigenous voice referendum; a month later, the Nationals did, later followed by the Liberals. In 2025, alarmed Coalition speakers begged attenders for their loyalty in the face of One Nation’s rise, culture warriors railed against Sussan Ley’s leadership, and Canavan said the Liberals were on “the cusp” of dropping net zero. Within months, the Coalition split again, the Liberals dumped net zero and then Ley, and Hanson’s surge continued. Last year’s event featured speakers criticising Peter Dutton as “Labor-lite.”

There is still time before the next election, due by May 2028. The conservative side of politics still lays splintered, The Guardian’s analysis concluded, and observers will look back on this weekend to see whether it was the start of the right’s rebuild, or just another forum to bag the prime minister.