As the Coalition competes with One Nation for rural and regional seats at the next federal election, the covert racism within the National Party and sections of the Liberals will become increasingly overt.

Those of us occupying the sensible centre – both Labor and Liberal – have a moral responsibility to fight racism in all its forms.

One Nation was created following Pauline Hanson’s election to the Australian Parliament in 1996, appearing on ballot papers as the Liberal candidate for the Queensland seat of Oxley.

Hanson had been disendorsed by the Liberals for racist remarks about First Nations people. But it came too late for the Australian Electoral Commission to print and issue new ballot papers.

 One Nation performed spectacularly well at the subsequent Queensland state election, winning 11 seats.

In 2016, Hanson won a place in the Australian Senate and has been there ever since. For a decade, One Nation was a fringe party, occasionally picking up and then losing Senate seats but not making a big impact electorally.

But when Barnaby Joyce defected from the Nationals before Christmas last year, the political dynamics began to change.

One Nation made headlines in South Australia, winning four seats (assisted by Liberal preferences), and competing with the Liberals, on five seats, for the position of official opposition.

Its political ascendancy was confirmed when in the Farrer byelection – following Sussan Ley’s retirement after her loss of the leadership to Angus Taylor – it roundly defeated both the Nationals and the Liberals, whose combined vote was little more than half that of One Nation.

Nationals and regional Liberal MPs are terrified of losing their seats to an ascendant One Nation. Most have decided the best strategy for fending off One Nation is to emulate One Nation.

Coalition MPs are terrified of losing their seats to One Nation. Photo: AAP

When One Nation speaks of “mass migration”, the Liberals speak of “mass migration”, Taylor even adopting it in his budget reply.

A standout exception is Liberal senator Andrew McLachlan, who has criticised the repeated use of mass migration as “technically inaccurate” and “extremely unhelpful”, adding that its use in the immigration debate is “irresponsible and inflammatory.”

In discussing migration, Taylor and shadow minister Jane Hume have repeatedly asserted that Australia’s net overseas migration is more than half a million people.

They are fully aware that this was one-off in the year after the reopening of Australia’s borders following the Covid pandemic during which, for two years, net migration was negative.

It was a make-up year after a once-in-a-century global pandemic. But the Liberal leadership wants voters to believe half a million a year is the norm under Labor.

Does Taylor believe that no make-up for skill shortages and no family reunion should have occurred in the post-Covid period? Or does he see political advantage in jumping onto the One Nation anti-immigration bandwagon?

During the last federal election campaign, Hume referred to “Chinese spies” handing out how-to-vote cards for a Labor minister.

And Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price accused the Albanese government of deliberately favouring Indian migrants because they tended to vote Labor.

Expect more of these references to migrants and their families as the Coalition competes with One Nation on its right flank.

Curiously, the Liberal leadership does not seem to care that its discrimination will hurt it badly in the few remaining better-off electorates it holds in Sydney and the one it holds in Melbourne.

Taylor seems willing to sacrifice seats such as Berowra, held by Julian Leeser, and Goldstein, won back by Tim Wilson from teal MP Zoe Daniel, just to help the Nationals keep One Nation at bay.

Australia has not had a racially discriminatory policy since Gough Whitlam’s formal abandonment of the White Australia Policy in 1973.

As the Liberal and National parties seek to fend off the threat from One Nation, racial discrimination appears set to rear again in all its ugliness.

People of good heart, regardless of their political dispositions, need to stand up and speak out against racial discrimination in our country. I am. Here and now.

Craig Emerson was a minister in the Rudd and Gillard Labor governments