Queensland Election 2017: One Nation banks on US-style voter backlash

ONE Nation has declared it will win two strong Labor seats in southeast Queensland and pose a major threat to more than 20 others as a US-style voter backlash grips Queensland.

Steve Dickson is bullish about One Nation’s election chances.

ONE Nation has vowed to hold the balance of power by going after two Labor strongholds in southeast Queensland.

The party’s state leader Steve Dickson said the party would claim Logan and Capalaba in the November 25 poll, blowing the major parties “out of the water”.

Matriarch Pauline Hanson will not campaign in Queensland until Saturday but Mr Dickson said her absence from the campaign trail in the first crucial days would not dull the resurgent party’s impact at the polls.

He said voters would see Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk’s decision to call the election just 24 hours after Senator Hanson jetted out of the country on a parliamentary delegation to India as opportunistic.

Ms Hanson described it as gutless.

Seems a cowardly Anna Palaszczuk decided to wait until I was out of the country to cancel on her grandma & call a snap election-PH #qldpol

— Pauline Hanson (@PaulineHansonOz) October 28, 2017

“She has expressed her frustration and anger at a gutless Premier, but she knows the party is in good strong hands with Steve Dickson,” a spokesman for Senator Hanson said.

The right-wing minor party wrested 11 seats from the major parties when it burst on to Queensland’s political scene in 1998 and Mr Dickson said he believed they could better that.

They are banking on the Trump effect being replicated here.

“At this stage we are still looking to put all sitting MPs last (on how-to-vote cards),” Mr Dickson said.

“To use a terminology from the United States election, maybe it is time to drain the swamp.”

Seats considered under threat from One Nation include Lockyer, Burnett, Bundaberg, Thuringowa, Burdekin, Keppel, Maryborough, Hervey Bay, Ipswich West, Gympie and Logan.

Mr Dickson would not put a figure on how many seats One Nation could win this time but said it had more than 60 candidates in place and more on the way.

“We are going to win Logan and we are going to win Capalaba. They are strong Labor-held seats and we are going to win both of them,” he said.

“There is an underlying current that I don’t think any pollster or anybody can really just tap into and go ‘this is what the outcome of the election is going to be’.

“The feedback I have been getting and I’m getting it from candidates all over the state and people all over the state that I talk to is that they have had a gutful of the major parties.

“This is the United States, it’s Germany, it’s France, it’s Venezuela, it’s New Zealand, it’s happening everywhere. There is just a world change, a seismic change in politics and I think Queensland is next.

“They have been let down by the two major parties and we are the third option.”

One Nation MP Steve Dickson holds a press conference at the Headland Golf Club on Sunday.

Senator Hanson will likely miss two weeks of the campaign with both her India trip and a federal parliamentary sitting in a fortnight.

Her daughter is also due to give birth about November 11.

One Nation’s support is strongest in regional areas and in seats on the fringes of the southeast.

Both major parties are concerned about the impact One Nation could have on their vote as they race to claim the 47 seats they need to win majority government.

Mr Dickson said the first demand the party would make on the new government would be to immediately scrap the $5.4 billion Cross River Rail.

“We are going to kill the Cross River Rail project immediately,’’ he said.

Labor is concerned any preference deal between the LNP and One Nation could help both parties leapfrog its candidates and sitting MPs, aided by the reintroduction of compulsory preferential voting.

Seats considered under threat from One Nation include Lockyer, Burnett, Bundaberg, Thuringowa, Burdekin, Keppel, Maryborough, Hervey Bay, Ipswich West, Gympie, and Logan.

One Nation polled as much as 42 per cent in booths in some of these electorates during the 2016 federal election when it burst back on to the political scene.

But it is expected to have an impact on the outcome in several more, including Bundaberg, Callide, Hinchinbrook, Cook and Rockhampton in the regions and in seats such as Morayfield and Pine Rivers in the southeast.

Originally published as Queensland Election 2017: One Nation banks on US-style voter backlash