One Nation jilted and facing annihilation

One Nation has lost its Queensland campaign leader and his deputy and could finish with no seats in Queensland.

One Nation leader Senator Pauline Hanson leaves the campaign party house in Buderim on the Sunshine Coast. Picture: AAP

One Nation has lost its Queensland campaign leader, his deputy and highest-profile figure next to Pauline Hanson in a devastating setback to their bid to make the populist party a permanent fixture of Australian politics.

Instead of winning the predicted swag of seats on Senator Hanson’s home turf at the Queensland election, One Nation is not guaranteed to have a single MP in state parliament. Its state leader, Steve Dickson, lost his seat of Buderim as the Liberal National Party exacted revenge for his defection to One Nation in January.

Senator Hanson’s Senate running mate from Queensland, Malcolm Roberts, failed to find a new slot in state politics after being disqualified from federal parliament for holding dual British citizenship.

Mr Dickson’s 2IC and former LNP MP, Sam Cox, admitted his chances in the north Queensland seat of Burdekin had “pretty much slipped away”, contradicting upbeat comments by Senator Hanson.

And the party stalwart who was snubbed by Senator Hanson during the campaign, Jim Savage, seemed certain to fall short in the seat of Lockyer that was considered One Nation’s surest bet of all. The party’s best prospect was in the Labor-held seat of Mirani on the central coast, which Mackay businessman Stephen Andrew was close to winning on LNP preferences. One Nation candidates remained in contention in the seats of Thuringowa and Hinchinbrook in the greater Townsville area.

one nation graphic for election day

Despite polling strongly outside of Brisbane and on the city’s fringes — in Lockyer, west of Brisbane, Mr Savage came second on primaries on 34.47 per cent behind LNP candidate Jim McDonald — One Nation’s inability to secure preference flows from the major parties stranded its candidates. They received no help from the Greens and limited assistance from other minority players and independents. But One Nation’s policy of preferencing sitting MPs next to last to the Greens cost the LNP seats in Brisbane. Among the big-name LNP casualties was shadow attorney-general and former minister Ian Walker, who lost his bellwether seat of Mansfield to the ALP. One Nation polled 8.8 per cent there, slicing enough off Mr Walker’s primary vote to make him vulnerable, then returning too few preferences to allow him to fend off Labor’s Corrine McMillan, who benefited from a stronger flow of secondary votes from the Greens.

This pattern played out to Labor’s benefit in the LNP seats of Aspley on Brisbane’s northside, Mount Ommaney in the west and Redlands on the eastern bayside. At the same time, the ALP vote held up better than expected in Townsville, where it had feared a wipeout.

Senator Hanson was clinging to hope yesterday that late counting and pre-poll and postal votes could swing the result One Nation’s way in some of the 13 seats still in doubt. “It’s a long way to go yet and I think we will win some seats … I’m not disappointed at all,” she said.

But Mr Cox was so resigned to losing in Burdekin, where LNP incumbent Dale Last was ahead, that he sent his scrutineers home yesterday “for a sleep”.

Mr Cox followed Mr Dickson in defecting from the LNP, having lost his seat of Thuringowa in Townsville to Labor at the 2015 election. He told The Australian that One Nation’s preferencing policy was “confusing” given it asked conservative-minded voters in Burdekin, a sugar and coal- mining seat, to direct preferences to Labor. “I had mates of mine, cane farmers, who asked me, ‘Why did you want us to put Labor ­second?’ ”

However, Senator Hanson’s chief of staff, James Ashby, insisted that One Nation was still in the hunt in nine seats including Burdekin, Thuringowa, Mirani, Keppel, Cook, Hinchinbrook, Lockyer and Maryborough.

If One Nation fails in Queensland, it bodes ominously for the party’s future as the three senators elected alongside Senator Hanson would struggle to be returned in a regulation half-Senate poll, with the quota twice what it was at last year’s double-dissolution election.