Two years ago, if you'd told me One Nation would launch its Victorian election campaign in a sold-out room at Crown Casino, I would have laughed. If you'd added that the protest outside would struggle to hit 15 people, I'd have asked what you were drinking.

I was there and saw it with my own eyes. Forget the headcount. The faces in that room should terrify Labor, the Liberals and the Greens alike.

The media has spent years telling Victorians that One Nation is a club for angry old Liberals, but that story falls apart the moment you start asking people how they got there.

One supporter had voted Labor at the last couple of elections and was simply sick of major parties offering nothing different. The turning point was watching One Nation get called racist for saying what most people can already see. The government admits it can't build the houses it needs, so how do you bring in 500,000 people with nowhere to put them? "It's not racism," came the answer. "It's just fact."

Another supporter came from further left still, a former Greens and Labor voter who saw the Liberals as nothing more than Labor lite. This was someone who still cares about the climate and wants a future for the next generation, but never signed up for the pro-Hamas insanity, decolonisation or reparations that came to define the Greens. Sitting in on a few calls with Lydia Thorpe and hearing the vitriol up close was enough to walk away for good.

Even then, there were nerves before that first One Nation meeting, because the media had promised a room full of Nazis. What was actually there was a mix of immigrants and Australians who simply want the country to stay Australian. By this supporter's count, 98 per cent of the migrants they speak to are now backing One Nation, for a simple reason. "We don't want the country to go back to where we came from." That's a journey from the loony left to rational in about three years, and it's far from unusual in that room.

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It's also the part the "racist" label can't survive. Walk around that function room and it looked far more diverse than any progressive rally I've covered. A barrister who migrated here because those skills were needed told me the system has since become a free-for-all, with scams running right through the universities.

Then there's the cost of living, which came up in almost every conversation. A candidate from the mortgage belt described families at breaking point after months of door-knocking, with people queuing at a Baptist church food bank for potatoes and beetroot.

"This is Australia," the candidate said. "It's insane."

A farmer told me the dream is simply for the kids to afford a house and get a decent job, which used to be the bare minimum in this state and now feels out of reach for a lot of Victorian families.

Outside, the opposition was pathetic. Roughly 15 protesters huddled under umbrellas in the car park, most of them in keffiyehs, and they scattered almost as soon as we arrived to give them the platform they so clearly crave. At least the rain gave them their first shower of the year.

We brought security anyway, because you never know which version of the mob will turn up. If you want to help us keep covering these events safely, head to ProtectAvi.com.

Protesters used to be the story at One Nation events. Now they can't fill a car park, while a sold-out crowd of former Labor, Greens and Liberal voters packs a room at Crown. With November's election coming, that should worry every major party in Victoria.