Clive Palmer the key as protest pendulum swings away from One Nation

The Coalition was warned in the wake of the last federal election that One Nation posed an exist­ential threat to the Liberal National Party in Queensland.

The sense was, and still is, that a global fracturing in democratic two-party systems as a result of voter disenchantment was giving rise to minor parties in the Western world.

A confidential research paper commissioned by the Coalition in November 2016, obtained by The Australian, suggested it was being fuelled by a movement within the conservative Right to “reclaim the social agenda from the Left and to replace free-market economics with a more protectionist model”.

The major parties no longer spoke to their needs. For young men in skilled trades, Labor had failed in its mission to provide job security and better wages while the Coalition had failed to provide a “pathway” to these aspirations through free-market economics.

Stay-at-home mothers who had abandoned the major parties had stopped believing that either of them would fulfil longspoken promises for better health and education services, safer communities for their children and policies based on family values.

An older version of the first group, men between 45 and 65 of modest means, had been left by the wayside and now feared for their future and that of their kids.

They were not subscribers to free-market ideology, nor its beneficiaries, yet believed Labor was now on the wrong side of the culture wars and had become too close to the Greens.

Similarly, the over-65s who would not be expected to be socially progressive were looking for a voice that spoke to their need for greater protection in retirement and a pledge to stop messing around with their super.

These groups are as disparate as they come — yet One Nation voters came from all three.

It was easy to assume that the success of One Nation at the 2016 federal election after more than a decade in the wilderness was because Pauline Hanson had decided to make a comeback and rejoin the party.

Yet the Coalition research suggested One Nation was a vehicle rather than a destination for most.

While there was no “collective agreement”, the polling work showed that 60 per cent were ­protest voters, with 40 per cent driven by the party’s policy positions on immigration and economic protectionism.

The briefing note dated Nov­ember 24 concluded that Hanson’s resurrection in 2016 may have been less about her and more about the implosion that wiped Clive Palmer’s Palmer United Party from the political map.

At the 2013 election, when Palmer leapt on to the stage, One Nation was a dormant force. The passing of one naturally gave rise to the other.

The research, which is as relevant today as it was then, identified precisely the mechanism required to break One Nation.

“There is an opportunity to expose One Nation,” the paper said.

The exposure would come from uncovering who was really behind Hanson, who was funding the party, proving its structural dysfunction and linking it to extreme “dark side” elements, groups or ideas that made them too unpalatable.

The advice was prescient.

All these questions have been answered. And the final and most prophetic — the guns-for-funds scandal — has already shown up in the polls. A Newspoll last month showed a collapse in support to just 4 per cent from a high two years ago of 11 per cent.

So, in 2019, the tables appear to again have been turned on their head. The latest marginal-seat polling conducted for The Australian at the weekend shows Palmer pulling between 5 and 14 per cent.

His re-emergence has come at the expense of One Nation, the reverse of three years ago.

The LNP’s dilemma is that voters have not come back to them. They’ve gone back to Palmer.

Polling in Herbert, the country’s most marginal seat, is indicative. LNP and Labor primary votes have gone backwards, as has Hanson’s — quite significantly. Palmer’s UAP is at a whopping 14 per cent. The possible and probable cannibalisation of conservative votes from One Nation to Palmer shows that the theory foretold six years ago with the decaying of the two-party system lingers.

A significant protest vote is hesitant to yet entertain a return to the major parties, despite showing signs of that only a month ago with an increase in the national collective primary vote for Labor and the Coalition parties at the expense of One Nation.

It is difficult without further analysis to determine whether Palmer’s relaunch over the past two months through a $30 million advertising campaign — with which Hanson cannot compete — has attracted votes away from her to him, or whether Palmer has come out of the woods to pounce at precisely the right time with One Nation mortally wounded by its self-generated scandals.

Palmer has taken votes away from the major parties as well, with a 5 per cent primary vote in Deakin in outer suburban Melbourne, 8 per cent in the Perth seat of Pearce and 7 per cent in the bellwether seat of Lindsay in western Sydney.

The briefing paper identified then what rings true today, in reverse. The rise of Hanson in 2016 was “about a general disdain Australian voters hold for politics in Australia which they see as having degenerated into poll-driven voter manipulation … It is (also) about the demise of Palmer United Party, with (its) voters left with nowhere to go ­except One Nation”.

There is no doubt that Palmer will play a big role in the election and may even find himself holding the balance of power in the Senate.

Preferences will be pivotal. And this is the great unknown. At the 2013 election, PUP preferences broke 54/46 in favour of the ­Coalition. In 2016, One Nation preferences broke 51/49 in favour of the ­Coalition.

The important point is that this was a national average. In the Queensland seats of Flynn and Capricornia, preference flows from One Nation were between 60 and 70 per cent.

What happens with Palmer preferences in Queensland is impossible to know. If they break lower for the LNP than One ­Nation — assuming the primary vote has also switched to Palmer — then the LNP is in real strife.

As may be any other Liberal MP on a margin of less than 3 per cent, of which there are a dozen.

It is little wonder that Liberals and the LNP are in frantic efforts to stitch up a preference deal with Palmer. It could easily alter the outcome for the Coalition.