Queensland election: a hug and a plug when Miller met Hanson

It was hard to say who was more shameless: Pauline Hanson or Jo-Ann Miller when they embraced like long-lost friends.

‘We’re all battlers out here’: Maverick Labor MP Jo-Ann Miller meets One Nation leader Pauline Hanson in Bundamba yesterday. Picture: AAP

It was hard to say who was more shameless: Pauline Hanson or Labor MP Jo-Ann Miller when they embraced like long-lost friends yesterday.

Three days out from the Queensland election, the ALP is trying to put as much distance as possible between itself and One Nation even though there is every chance the Hanson party could emerge with the balance of power.

Evidently, the memo didn’t get to Ms Miller, a former minister who has a history of going rogue on Labor. She bounced up to Senator Hanson outside a pre-poll booth in Bundamba, west of Brisbane, and presented the chuffed 62-year-old with a present for her newborn grandson.

“We’re all battlers out here. When it’s pouring rain, we’re all under the marquee together,” Ms Miller said, as the heavens opened.

Senator Hanson reciprocated with a hug and plug for the Labor woman. “She’s worked hard with the electorate and I believe she should be returned to parliament,” the One Nation leader said.

If the intention was to needle Annastacia Palaszczuk, it worked.

The Premier insists she would rather go into opposition than cut a deal to govern with One Nation were Labor to fall short of an outright win, and was deeply unimpressed when told of the cosy meeting between Ms Miller and Senator Hanson.

Initially, she refused to rule out disendorsing the maverick MP. Campaigning in Gladstone, on the central Queensland coast, Ms Palaszczuk said: “Well, I’m not happy about that, am I … I’m going to get all the facts first, this is the first I’ve heard about it. I’m going to look at the facts and I’ll come back to you.”

Senator Hanson at her former chip shop in Ipswich with Malcolm Roberts. Picture: AAP

Liberal National Party leader Tim Nicholls, who has kept open the option to seek One Nation support for confidence and supply in the event of a hung parliament, said the stage-managed encounter highlighted Labor’s internal strife.

“Jo-Ann Miller has been one of the most critical vocal critics of her own government, has been so again today,” he said. “This is a Labor government that is racked with internal divisions, a Premier who doesn’t have authority to lead and she’s been undermined by her own backbench and her former police minister, who she sacked.”

Ms Miller is the only Labor MP backed by One Nation, which is not running in her seat of Bundamba. A controversial figure in the ALP, she fell out with Ms Palaszczuk after being forced to resign from cabinet in 2015 over an adverse ethics finding. This week she pointedly said it was the Premier’s call to blackball One Nation.

Senator Hanson milking the moment. Picture: AAP

After getting up to speed, Ms Palaszczuk walked back the suggestion Ms Miller could face disciplinary action, saying there was nothing wrong “about people being nice” in a campaign.

Senator Hanson went on to pay a visit to where it all started for her — at the fish and chip shop in Ipswich that was her launching pad into politics two decades ago.

She dismissed a Galaxy poll finding that the defection from One Nation of new senator Fraser Anning on the day he was sworn in to federal parliament had damaged the party’s state vote. “You can make a poll come out any way you want to, it depends on how you ask the question,” she said.