Stranded Hanson brands Palaszczuk a coward

Pauline Hanson, touring India for the next week, hits out at the timing of Annastacia Palaszczuk’s election announcement.

One Nation's Pauline Hanson at the Taj Mahal.

Pauline Hanson will be missing in action for the first week of the Queensland election campaign, giving Premier Annastacia ­Palaszczuk added incentive to chance her arm with the early poll called yesterday.

The One Nation leader is in India with a delegation of federal parliamentarians until Saturday — meaning she will miss the crucial opening exchanges of the sharp 28-day contest.

Senator Hanson hit out at the timing of the election announcement, tweeting that “a cowardly Anna (sic) Palaszczuk decided to wait until I was out of the country” to bring on the November 25 poll.

The needle underlines how high the stakes are for Senator Hanson and her resurgent party, as well as for the ALP and LNP facing a haemorrhage of votes to One Nation.

An October 17 Newspoll for The Australian put One Nation on a statewide vote of 16 per cent, but this will tick up in regional and metropolitan-fringe areas where its support is concentrated.

Labor’s primary vote is 37 per cent while the LNP is down to 34 per cent in Newspoll — suggesting both sides will struggle to win a majority in the expanded 93-seat parliament. Politics professor John Wanna, from ANU and Griffith University, predicts the preference flows of minor-party and independent candidates could be influential in 30 seats.

Although the Hanson party broke into the upper house of the West Australian parliament at the March 13 state election, its vote was well down on expectations after her gaffe-prone campaign checked the momentum from last year’s federal election haul of four Senate spots.

The disqualification of Senator Hanson’s running mate on the Queensland Senate ticket, Malcolm Roberts, over his citizenship status ramps up the pressure on One Nation to perform at the state election.

 

Mr Roberts will stand for the safe Labor seat of Ipswich, a big ask with its 16 per cent margin to the ALP.

Another sub-par performance would be disastrous for One ­Nation. The Senate quota will likely be double what it was at the 2016 double-dissolution election. This would put all but Senator Hanson at risk in a regulation half-Senate poll, based on the vote pulled by the party last year.

Queensland campaign leader Steve Dickson, a former LNP MP who defected in January, said Ms Palaszczuk might have been ­trying to get the jump on One ­Nation by bringing on the ­election while Senator Hanson was away.

“It is not going to help her … Pauline will come back bright-eyed and bush-tailed, very keen to get into the election,” Mr Dickson said. “We all know that nominations don’t close for eight to 18 days. We are yet to find out who is actually running, how preferences are going to land.

“Everyone is talking the talk, but that’s all it is. There real action does not start until that happens.”

A breakdown of federal voting hot spots in Queensland from the federal election points to the state seats One Nation will target now. Tellingly, the majority of them are held by the LNP outside Brisbane.

Heading the list is the state seat of Lockyer, an hour’s drive west of Brisbane, with its knife-edge margin of 1.6 per cent to the LNP. Senator Hanson went close to winning when she stood there at the 2015 Queensland election.

A year later, 23 polling stations within the state seat’s new boundaries returned votes of 20 per cent-plus for One Nation in the federal election. Party stalwart Jim Savage is standing there, taking on former LNP frontbencher Ian Ruckuss, who won the seat from then One Nation state leader Bill Flynn in 2004.

The LNP seats of Gympie, north of Brisbane (margin 7.6 per cent), Scenic Rim southwest of the capital (9.2 per cent) and Nan­ango held by deputy LNP leader Deb Frecklington (13.3 per cent) are promising for One Nation, but by no means certain gains.

On the other side of the ledger, Hanson candidates will be competitive in the ultra-marginal Labor seats of Bundaberg (0.5 per cent) and Maryborough (1.1 per cent). While Senator Hanson has described Ipswich as “One Nation heartland”, it has only one booth that returned more than 20 per cent at the federal election.

Ms Palaszczuk has said Labor will put One Nation last on how-to-vote cards, but there is likely to be leakage of its secondary vote to the Hanson party.

Both One ­Nation and the LNP insist there will be no repeat of the comprehensive preference deal that backfired on both parties in Western Australia in March.

Mr Dickson predicted One Nation would emerge with the balance of power. At the least, its preferences will be decisive to the election outcome. “Where we are sitting right now, today, is that all sitting members will be put last on the ballot paper,” he said.

One Nation has endorsed about 60 candidates so far, but will not run against the two Katter Australian Party MPs, Robbie Katter and Shane Knuth, maverick Labor MP Jo-Ann Miller in Bundamba, near Ipswich, and the LNP’s Mark Robinson in his Brisbane seat of Cleveland.