Queensland election 2017 analysis: One Nation of LNP members

PREMIER Annastacia Palaszczuk is right when she says a vote for One Nation is a vote for the LNP, writes Steven Wardill.

Pauline Hanson with a Melbourne Cup race ticket at The Grand Hotel in Gladstone yesterday. Picture: Dave Hunt/AAP

ANNASTACIA Palaszczuk is right.

A vote for One Nation really is a vote for the LNP, at least in the four seats where former Newman government MPs are running for Pauline Hanson at this election.

Buderim, Mansfield, Burdekin and Jordan voters will all have One Nation candidates on their ballot papers who were elected for the LNP in 2012.

However, only Steve Dickson, who defected this term, will run in the same seat.

One Nation leader Pauline Hanson with the party’s Queensland leader Steve Dickson. Picture: Dave Hunt/AAP

The other three have decamped to more fertile political territory after losing their previous electorates to Labor by significant margins at the last election.

The trio, Sam Cox, Neil Symes and Michael Pucci, were oncers washed up in the high tide of two elections ago who then found themselves marooned without a seat.

Pucci, the One Nation campaign director, is the latest to enter the race.

“When it comes to loyalty, I’m loyal to the…community,” he offered.

Obviously, patriotism is a transportable commodity for the former US marine given he’s contesting Jordan, a new seat near Springfield, after originally being elected in Logan, 20km away.

Steven Wardill’s election playlist:

No doubt, there’s a healthy degree of opportunism in this awesome foursome’s allegiance switch with Hanson on the rise.

The more free-wheeling nature of One Nation’s policy positions also helps given it allows them latitude not available in the two big political parties.

Yet none seems to be able to enunciate why Hanson is the answer, preferring hokey rhetoric about how they’ve learned to listen.

Really though, they’re just LNP members in exile.

Unwanted, unloved and unworthy. Some might, unkindly, suggest unhinged.

Most of all though they’re dim reflections on their former party, caricatures on cardboard corflutes that demonstrate just how far the LNP has fallen since the dizzy heights of 2012.

Originally published as Queensland election 2017 analysis: One Nation of LNP members