WA election: Labor has a One Nation strategy; Turnbull doesn’t

Has Pauline Hanson’s bubble burst? Not quite, or at least not yet. Only the Queensland election will confirm if the One Nation juggernaut is running out of steam.

The party’s poor showing in Western Australia, however, raises a discomforting issue for Malcolm Turnbull: unhappy Coalition voters thought to be parked with One Nation have suddenly driven off to join Labor.

The moral of WA is that preference deals will mean little for the Coalition nationally if it doesn’t address the fundamental issue of One Nation’s primary vote, where it comes from and how it will be recycled.

Preference flows from One Nation are generally said to split 50/50 between the Liberal/LNP and Labor parties. It’s a troubling formula for Turnbull, suggesting that of every two primary votes the government loses to One Nation, only one comes back.

Bill Shorten has worked this out. Largely under the radar, Labor went hunting for One Nation votes in WA. A robo-call campaign in the final two weeks last two weeks warned that Hanson supported cutting penalty rates. This was repeated by Labor and union volunteers at booths where One Nation fielded candidates. Word coming back is that voters were surprised Hanson had aligned herself to the federal Coalition on this issue. Many didn’t like it.

This strategy, one must assume, was a national road test piggybacked on the WA election. While the Liberals were pussy-footing around with preference deals, Labor took One Nation on over primary votes — on a blue-collar cost-of-living issue.

It is impossible yet to rank the reasons for One Nation’s weak showing. Over-optimism, some poorly-behaved candidates, and Hanson’s own bungling on vaccination, the GST and Vladimir Putin no doubt all took toll. But how much was due to Labor’s penalty rates campaign is the interesting question — for Turnbull as much as anyone else.

There are senior MPs in his party room furious about the kid-glove approach to Hanson. Shorten seized on that also, tying Hanson and Turnbull together over penalty rates and calculating the association damages both.

The PM needs to deal with One Nation in the Senate but he also needs a strategy to halt the erosion of votes from the Coalition’s conservative base. He can’t use immigration, political correctness or economic policy against One Nation. He will lose.

Shorten, though similarly hobbled on the first two issues, clearly intends to challenge Hanson’s economic nationalism. Labor’s penalty rates operation reveals a deeper understanding of voters sympathetic to One Nation than Hanson has of her “own people”.