Brisbane’s new Labor candidate to hit Peter Dutton where it hurts.

SHE’S the new Labor candidate set to take on Coalition heavyweight Peter Dutton. But her past could come back to haunt her.

THE Queensland ALP has preselected a candidate for Peter Dutton’s seat of Dickson who has a colourful record of opposing offshore detention.

She has not only been a prominent critic of Mr Dutton’s policies, Ali France has also loudly condemned those of Labor leader Bill Shorten.

But Brisbane’s Courier-Mail today revealed that once chosen as the Dickson candidate, Ms France abruptly dedicated herself to the party line she had long disputed.

And today her critical posts on that issue were removed from social media sites.

Mr Dutton now has a prime political opportunity to question his Labor rival’s commitment to offshore detention and party policy. She had previously called supporters of the policy “hypocrites” and called for detainees on Manus and Nauru to be settled on the Australian mainland.

Ali France is the new Labor candidate for Dickson

And she appeared to support a social media comment suggesting power be cut off from Mr Dutton’s house after it was shut down at the Manus detention centre as it closed.

“Anyone celebrating Easter but supporting refugee detention is a hypocrite of the worst kind,” the Courier-Mail reported her tweeting last year.

On being chosen for Dickson she said: “I’m now standing as a Labor candidate and I support the Labor Party position on immigration.

“I will say that the current situation where people are detained indefinitely can’t go on.”

Mr Dutton is considered vulnerable in his Brisbane suburban seat and Labor had been looking for a killer candidate.

In the 2016 election he was pushed by the ALP’s Linda Lavarch who rode Green preferences to reach a 49.4 per cent share of the two-party preferred vote to Mr Dutton’s 51.6 per cent.

Ms Lavarch had hoped to again stand in the seat at the election expected next year but was replaced by Ms France, the oldest daughter of former Queensland Labor MP Peter Lawlor.

The preselection battle points to further trouble for Bill Shorten on asylum seekers when the ALP holds its national conference in July.

The Government and Mr Dutton in particular are also expected to exploit the switch in policy tone of the newly-elected member for the Melbourne seat of Batman, Ged Kearney.

Ms Kearney had what she called “a very well recorded activism record standing up for refugees and humane policy”.

When preselected for Batman to combat a hefty Greens vote she said: “I will within the party do my very best to be a very strong progressive voice for humane policy and at this stage that’s all I can say.”

Ms France’s campaigning came after she lost a leg after a 2011 car accident and was treated by an “amazing surgeon” who was a refugee from Iraq who arrived by boat.

Ali France, who had to have her leg amputated after being pinned down by a car driven by an 88-year-old man, is now standing as a politician. Pic Mark Cranitch.