Tony Abbott seals his ‘new’ Pauline Hanson friendship with a kiss

Tony Abbott has urged Coalition voters to preference One Nation ahead of Labor and the Greens at the next election.

Pauline Hanson and Tony Abbott exchange pleasantries at Parliament House yesterday. Picture: AAP

Tony Abbott has urged Coalition voters to preference One Nation ahead of Labor and the Greens at the next election, arguing the government is unable to pass its agenda “but for the constructive work of Pauline Hanson and her team of senators”.

The comments represent a reversal of Mr Abbott’s position two decades ago when he wrote in The Australian in June 1998, urging Liberal voters to preference One Nation last.

Mr Abbott warned that One Nation “could destroy the Howard government and give responsible conservatives a bad name” and inflict “as much harm to the Liberals as the DLP did to the Labor Party”.

“The first step to halt the Hanson contagion is to put One Nation last on the Liberal how-to-vote,” he wrote.

Mr Abbott was also behind a trust fund set up to fund legal cases against One Nation in the 1990s, when the party posed a threat to the Liberal Party.

But launching her book Pauline, In Her Own Words at Parliament House in Canberra yesterday, the former Liberal prime minister said Senator Hanson had forced Australia to face up to its problems.

Mr Abbott said that, if more people over the past two decades had heeded her political message, Australia would be a “better country today”.

While he acknowledged there had been a lot of “dirty water under the bridge” between himself and Senator Hanson in previous years, Mr Abbott said she was proof of the “old adage that you are always better the second time around”.

“Let’s face it, we should scale back immigration and we should be more proud of our country. We should build new coal-fired power stations because if it is right to export our clean coal, it is right to use it here,” Mr Abbott said.

“We should build more dams because water is wealth. And we shouldn’t be frightened of using resources ... And we do have a problem with Islamism that does require decent Muslims to stand up to the death to the infidel extremists”.

Mr Abbott said the only way the Coalition could win the next election was if it were able to “harvest Hanson preferences and if I can make that more likely that is a very positive contribution”.

He urged Coalition supporters to preference Senator Hanson’s party ahead of both Labor and the Greens. “Based on the current record, I would put the Greens last. I would put Labor second-last. Then I would put constructive independents and minor parties on. Then I would put the Coalition and its allies first,” Mr Abbott said.

“I would certainly put One Nation above Labor and the Greens because, let’s face it — we have been able to work constructively in the Senate with One Nation.”

Senator Hanson and One Nation co-founder David Ettridge served 11 weeks of a three-year jail sentence after being convicted of electoral fraud in 2003. The convictions were later overturned on appeal. Soon after her release from jail, Senator Hanson said: “Heaven help this country if Tony Abbott is ever in control of it. I detest the man.”