Queensland election: One Nation offers digital choice

The Hanson party will invite voters to run their preference choices through an online app, testing the limits of electoral law.

One Nation staffer James Ashby. Picture: Peter Lorimer

The Hanson party will invite voters to run their preference choices through an online app, testing the limits of electoral law for Queensland’s COVID-gripped general election.

One Nation has embraced the cutting edge technology to ramp up pressure on both major parties at the October 31 poll in Pauline Hanson’s home state.

The app, a digital companion to the conventional printed how-to-vote card, will coach users to order the ballot paper to the detriment of either Labor or the Liberal National Party, depending on which side the voter most disliked.

Compulsory preferential voting in Queensland means people must number every square when they vote at the state level.

Senator Hanson’s right hand man, James Ashby, said the app would empower One Nation supporters to maximise their say and avoid inadvertently voting informal. It made sense when COVID-19 social distancing restrictions were likely to limit the presence of party volunteers at polling stations and the distribution of how-to-vote cards.

“I think this is a changing environment, and not only because of COVID,” Mr Ashby said. “What I saw at the federal election last year was a look on people’s faces of terror when they went to vote and had to face this horde of volunteers outside the booth … they don’t want to be harassed and pressured like that.”

The move by One Nation came as Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk brushed off a Newspoll in this newspaper showing that the LNP narrowly led Labor, 51-49 per cent two-party preferred.

She was adamant that containing the coronavirus was her sole concern. “Everyone is absolutely focused on dealing with this COVID response, whether that’s the health response or the economic response,” she said.

“My cabinet is 100 per cent united in this. There is nothing more important.”

Mr Ashby said One Nation’s planned app, now in the final stage of development by a private tech contractor, would provide a seat by seat voting guide to those who downloaded it, a first for Australian politics.

It would ask the user: “Which of the two major parties would you least like to see govern?”

Depending on their choice, the app would detail how the person should allocate their secondary votes to most disadvantage the major party concerned. But the Greens party would always be last on One Nation’s list.

“If they put Labor as their least preferred government, the app will indicate a flow of preferences to put Labor next to last to the Greens,” Mr Ashby said.

“If they don’t have confidence in an LNP government, it will put the LNP second from the bottom. We have always said that people ultimately own their preferences and … as far as we are concerned, let them make their own determination.”

The Electoral Commission of Queensland said it had not seen the proposed One Nation app, but it was unlikely to need the agency’s approval to be rolled out for the state election. The app would, however, be required to show an authorisation from a One Nation representative and a contact address for that person.

Mr Ashby said the party aimed to run in 91 of Queensland’s 93 state seats, the exceptions being those of Katter Australian Party leader Robbie Katter and his north Queensland colleague, MP Shane Knuth.

Previously, it had mostly directed preferences against sitting MPs from the major parties. Both Labor and the LNP shun preference swaps with One Nation.

Newspoll shows that the Hanson party’s statewide vote in Queensland has slipped from 13.7 per cent at the 2017 election to 11 per cent. Despite polling well above 20 per cent in some regional seats last time, only one One Nation MP was elected.

Tipping a hung parliament after the October 31 election, Mr Ashby said One Nation’s record in the upper houses of the WA and NSW parliaments as well as in Canberra showed it could work constructively with Labor and coalition governments.