Steven Miles accuses David Crisafulli of ‘embracing racists’ as LNP urges voters to preference One Nation ahead of Labor

Steven Miles has accused David Crisafulli of ‘embracing racists’ after the Opposition Leader revealed his Liberal National Party would urge voters to preference Pauline Hanson’s One Nation ahead of Labor and the Greens.

Queensland Premier Steven Miles says he will be directing voters to put One Nation last on their ballot papers, unless there are ‘independents out there who are even worse than One Nation’. Picture: Adam Head

Steven Miles has accused David Crisafulli of “embracing racists” after the Opposition Leader revealed his Liberal National Party would urge voters to preference Pauline Hanson’s One Nation ahead of Labor and the Greens at the October 26 election.

The Premier launched a scathing attack on Mr Crisafulli on Friday, while suggesting Labor planned to put One Nation at the bottom of its how-to-vote cards in all 93 seats.

“I intend to be highlighting to all of our multicultural communities how David Crisafulli is embracing the right-wing racist party, One Nation,” Mr Miles said.

“We don’t embrace racists, David Crisafulli does.”

Labor’s powerful administrative committee will meet next week to finalise its how-to-vote cards, after the official Electoral Commission’s draw on Tuesday to determine the order of names on ballot papers.

Mr Miles said it was usually Labor’s approach to put One Nation last in every seat, but it was “possible that there’ll be independents out there who are even worse than One Nation”.

“But we’ve been putting One Nation last for 25-odd years. There have been times when there were LNP leaders who were principled enough to do the same thing, the current LNP leader clearly is not,” he said.

Asked on Wednesday, while campaigning in the central Queensland seat of Keppel, which is being contested by Senator Hanson’s chief of staff James Ashby, whether he was comfortable favouring One Nation with LNP preferences, Mr Crisafulli said: “We will be putting the Greens and Labor last … that does not take a lot of decision-making in my mind”.

Mr Ashby told The Weekend Australian that Mr Miles’ attack on One Nation reflected Labor’s concern that it was losing support to the Hanson party, especially in regional areas.

“They’re in effect calling those previous Labor voters racist for coming across to us, and they’re not, they just don’t like what Labor stands for,” Mr Ashby said.

“So these are really lame attacks in a desperate hour for Steven Miles. I find it quite incredible he is saying that.”

Mr Crisafulli pledged an LNP government would scrap compulsory preferential voting – introduced by the ALP under former premier Annastacia Palaszczuk – if elected later this month.

Until 2016, Labor in Queensland had embraced optional preferential voting to allow electors to “just vote 1” on the ballot paper.

“But you shouldn’t be forced to have to vote for someone who you fundamentally do not believe is a fit and proper person,” Mr Crisafulli had said.

Liberal National Party state director Ben Riley did not respond to request for comment on Friday.