Australia's Liberal Party Loses Senior Leader to Rival Right-Wing Party

Teena McQueen, a top official in Australia's Liberal Party, switched to Pauline Hanson's One Nation in June 2026. She died weeks later. The move signals that the Liberals are losing conservative supporters to One Nation—a pattern since the early 2000s. The party faces a core problem: it wants to win voters in cities while holding onto its own right-wing supporters. Those two goals pull in opposite directions.