Queensland election: Leaders leave door open for Hanson

It is a state election that has really become all about a federal senator.

Pauline Hanson.

It is a state election that has really become all about a federal senator.

Pauline Hanson might sit in the red chamber in Canberra, but her presence looms large over the most unpredictable and tightly contested poll in Queensland for decades.

And Annastacia Palaszczuk and Tim Nicholls have only themselves to blame.

Labor and the Liberal National Party might look to Brexit or Donald Trump to explain their dismal poll positions as a global phenomenon of voters looking to break the status quo. Both parties’ primary votes hover around the mid-30s per cent.

But One Nation has been allowed to flourish because of an indecisive government and uninspiring opposition.

The already risk-averse Palaszczuk has had to walk the delicate line of compromise that comes with minority government. She hasn’t been helped by the rampant factionalism in her government, with the dominant left undermining her support for job-creating projects such as Adani in the unemployment-stricken areas of regional Queensland.

Nicholls, the urbane Liberal who was supposed to lead a return to power from the urban southeast corner of the state, is struggling to be heard or to convince voters, particularly outside Brisbane.

Both leaders yesterday again showed their limitations.

When Palaszczuk was confronted with Adani protesters, the Premier didn’t turn to defend her government’s support for the Carmichael coal mine as a jobs-creating project for Townsville, Mackay and the surrounds. Instead, voters in those marginal Labor-held seats heard her respond by boasting that her government had boosted spending on renewables.

Nicholls is pitching his campaign on infrastructure spending in the regions and cutting the cost of living by backing a new coal-fired power station in north Queensland.

But he is short on detail, and looks unconvinced about the proposal himself, so why would people in the north believe it worth backing with their vote?

With the spectre of One Nation holding the balance of power, it is up to Palaszczuk and Nicholls to win back voters flirting with the protest party.