Pauline Hanson is a threat in Australian politics, but can she save or destroy the Liberals?

ANALYSIS: Pauline Hanson is threatening to take votes at a state and federal level. If it happens, a Turnbull government minister will need to explain.

Pauline Hanson holding a One Nation forum in Laidley. Picture: Mark Calleja

BY Saturday evening, Australia will have a clearer picture of just how popular Pauline Hanson has become in an era of disillusionment that has produced Trump and Brexit, and left Malcolm Turnbull struggling to explain what value his mainstream party offers.

Hanson’s campaign in the WA election has been neither well-organised nor well-funded.

She has mostly sat back, in Queensland and Canberra, and relied on the cult of her personality to propel her little-known candidates forward.

Yet Pauline Hanson’s One Nation, or PHON, is widely expected to gain four upper house seats, which could give it the balance of power; and it has an outside chance of picking up one lower-house seat as WA Premier Colin Barnett faces likely defeat to Labor’s Mark McGowan.

These are not huge numbers and in no way foretell a time when Hanson’s party might hold a state in its own right, but if Hanson does hold the balance of power in WA, it formally announces the start of a major political realignment that reaches beyond the federal senate, where Hanson’s team holds four seats.

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Pauline Hanson holding a One Nation forum in Queensland, where her political career began. Picture: Mark Calleja

For the nation, it will be a guide to a new world where parties with extreme views inhabit the political mainstream — although John Howard, visiting Perth to support Barnett, argued politics was already infiltrated by fanatics, saying “there’s only one extremist party in Australian politics now and that’s the Greens”.

The next state locked in to hold an election is SA, which will go to the polls in March next year. However, Queensland — where Hanson according to one poll has a primary vote of 23 per cent, and unlike SA does not have fixed terms — could go earlier.

Newspoll has support for PHON running at 10 per cent across the nation, an extraordinary result given that it is all about Hanson rather than her candidates, who are for the most part total unknowns.

One Nation’s Pauline Hanson is ready to take on the major parties in the WA election. Here she is at Kings Park in Perth. Picture: Colin Murty

Hanson’s adviser, James Ashby, says Hanson will make her third visit to Perth tomorrow to give the 35 lower house and 14 upper house candidates — thrown together in haste and with little vetting — a final boost before the poll.

Asked how it was looking in the west, where PHON currently has no parliamentarians, Ashby says: “Good. We can’t have any less people elected than what we have.”

Hanson’s party made big inroads at the turn of century but it all fell apart.

It may have toned down, slightly, but there are once again signs of the disunity that always plagues Hanson, who has copped heat in WA for accepting a preference deal offered by the WA Liberals.

Pauline Hanson holding a One Nation forum, addressing her supporters. Picture: Mark Calleja

The Liberals will preference PHON ahead of their alliance partners, the Nationals, in upper house seats, in return for PHON preferencing the Liberals above Labor in the lower house.

A number of PHON candidates despise the deal, because the whole point of Hanson is supposed to be a rejection of mainstream parties.

Hanson has angrily told the WA branch to pull their heads in and do as she orders.

“I think the preference deal has been a negative for the Liberal Party and a negative for One Nation,” says Anthony Fels, a former Liberal who brought together many of PHON’s 2017 WA candidates but was himself rejected by Hanson to run in the upper house.

“Those people wanting to swing away from the Liberals to PHON have a suspicion that PHON are running to re-elect the Liberals.

“And people don’t want that. They don’t want her to be a lackey for the Liberal Party.”

Ashby disagrees. “We’re not there to shore up the Liberals, we’re there to win seats,” he says. “No matter who wins, we’ll work with them. We’ve made that clear. The preference deal benefits One Nation.”

One Nation’s Pauline Hanson in Bunbury walking the streets to plug her candidates for the March 11 WA State election. Picture: Colin Murty

Last week, Hanson ended the party membership two of her most faithful WA supporters, elderly couple Ron McLean, 87, and Marye Louise Daniels, 79, who have supported Hanson for 20 years and raised money on her behalf.

McLean had hoped to stand for PHON in the upper house. They were given no clear reason for being booted from the party and despite being hurt by the decision, have stayed silent to give PHON its best chance.

“I’m not going into internal details,” says Ashby.

With several other candidates kicked out for complaining about Hanson’s and Ashby’s management style — Hanson said they “were disendorsed because they were rude, arrogant, they wouldn’t follow direction, you couldn’t talk to them about anything” — the inevitable discontent has begun.

Pauline Hanson in Perth before the upcoming state election at Wellington Square, WA. Picture: Colin Murty

Yet the clear message from the preference deal is that it is the Liberals, not PHON, who are worried.

Hanson is seen as more likely to steal votes from Liberals than Labor, at both state and federal levels.

If it goes badly wrong for the Liberals, WA-based Finance Minister Mathias Cormann, who reportedly brokered the deal with Hanson, will have some explaining to do.

But he won’t need to go cap-in-hand to Turnbull, who no doubt approved of the WA preference intervention.

Minister for Finance Senator Mathias Cormann appearing at a Senate Estimates hearing this week. Picture: Kym Smith

It will be the federal Liberal party room again demanding answers of Turnbull and Cormann.

Nick Xenophon, himself the leader of a minor party success story, says there is one clear way for the major parties to deal with the rise of Hanson.

“All these pollies who get precious about the Hanson vote need to roll up their sleeves and argue their case in their communities,” he says.

“It’s a contest of ideas. Just get on with it. Listen to people and everyone needs to be subject to scrutiny on our policies. It’s pretty straightforward. People want leadership, and solutions and want to be listened to.”

Originally published as Pauline Hanson is a threat in Australian politics, but can she save or destroy the Liberals?