Queensland election: One Nation preference game cost LNP all hope

One Nation’s decision to preference against sitting MPs cost the LNP any chance it had in the Queensland election.

One Nation federal leader Pauline Hanson. Picture: AAP

One Nation’s decision to preference against sitting MPs cost the Liberal National Party any chance it had in the Queensland election, gifting Labor the Brisbane seats that turned the result.

On Saturday, Pauline Hanson’s supporters did exactly what they were told and followed the how-to-vote card, making the One Nation vote a lose-lose proposition for the LNP.

The Hanson effect explains why the LNP lost a quartet of key mortgage-belt seats in Brisbane even though the ALP base vote in them was mostly below what it was in 2015. Latest counting gives Labor 42 seats, LNP 37 and Katter’s Australian Party two, with 12 undecided. To win a majority, 47 seats are needed.

One Nation’s statewide vote of 13.6 per cent is yet to deliver it a single seat, though the party is still in with a chance in at least two ­lineball contests. In southside Mansfield, former Newman government minister Ian Walker shed votes to the Hanson party that did not come back as preferences because One Nation had put him next to last to the Greens, in line with its disruptive preferencing policy.

Strike One was the hit Mr Walker took to his primary vote, down from 46.8 per cent at the 2015 election to 40.3 per cent, largely as a result of the 9.17 per cent One Nation polled in Mansfield. Strike Two happened when the One Nation preferences split 30-70 against Mr Walker, in favour of Labor candidate ­Corrine McMillan, who also scooped up most of the Greens’ distributed vote of 10.7 per cent. This allowed Ms McMillan, a school principal, to pull ahead even though her primary vote of 39.7 per cent was marginally less than what Labor secured at the last election. With 77 per cent of the vote counted in Mansfield, Ms McMillan was on 51.5 per cent of the two-party-preferred vote and poised to deliver strike 3 against Mr Walker, one of the LNP’s brightest talents.

The train wreck for the LNP continued in northside Aspley, Mount Ommaney in the western suburbs and bayside Redlands.

Another former LNP minister, Tracy Davis, staged a fightback in yesterday’s counting to close to within 245 votes of Labor’s Bart Mellish in Aspley. She had been down by 1300 on election night.

Her primary vote crashed by nearly 12 points, while Mr Mellish polled 37.3 per cent against the 38.2 per cent that Labor pulled at the last election. One Nation, however, came from ­nowhere to grab 9.6 per cent. When preferences were distributed, Mr Mellish was ahead on the 2PP count, 50.4-49.6 per cent. Ms Davis said One ­Nation’s preferencing was not the only factor against her. “We have had a redistribution that made things more difficult, a change in voting to compulsory preferential (from optional preferential), and in Aspley we had seven candidates when we normally would have three,” she said. “I don’t think there is any one reason why the result is as close as it is.”

 

LNP insiders said the adverse 30-70 split in One Nation preferences was being seen across Brisbane. In Redlands, three-quarters of One Nation preferences are estimated to have flowed to Labor, electing architect Kim Richards on 55 per cent of the 2PP vote.

The LNP’s election strategy was predicated on holding its Brisbane marginals and taking the fight to Labor in the regions where the Palaszczuk government was struggling. But the ALP was able to turn the tables in Brisbane and also challenge for seats on the Gold Coast, while its losses in regional centres such as Townsville were not as heavy as anticipated. The counterintuitive aspect of One Nation’s preferencing policy was evident in the closely fought sugar and coalmining seat of Burdekin, south of Townsville.

The Hanson candidate, Sam Cox, held the Townsville-based seat of Thuringowa for the LNP during the 2012-15 term of Campbell Newman’s government before switching to One Nation. Now, he was asking former LNP supporters to vote One Nation and preference Labor above the LNP, at the expense of sitting MP Dale Last. The ALP’s man, former union official Mike Brunker, said he would win if he picked up 40 per cent or more of One ­Nation’s preferences.

A dismayed LNP figure hit out at One Nation, saying: “Sam Cox in Burdekin has basically given the seat to Labor.”

A second successive state election flop for Senator Hanson — at the March 11 West Australian poll One Nation won upper house seats but failed to break into the main chamber — promises to be offset by another handy payday from the taxpayer. Based on the 321,398 votes it has so far been credited, the party is entitled to an election refund of up to $1,010,000 from the Electoral Commission.