Labor takes aim as the perils for Pauline Hanson resurface

Senator Pauline Hanson talks to Malcolm Turnbull after Senator Jim Molan delivered his Maiden speech in the Senate Chamber..

Pauline Hanson is once again embroiled in a desperate struggle for political survival.

The battleground is the Queensland seat of Longman. This time the fight is with Labor.

Yesterday Labor MPs one after the other, led by Bill Shorten, launched a frontal assault on Hanson after she signalled support for the government’s full $144 billion personal income tax package.

Labor treasury spokesman Chris Bowen accused her of voting for a tax cut for the rich as well as herself. “Maybe Senator Hanson simply doesn’t know what she is voting on,” he said.

Bill Shorten accused her of betraying Queenslanders. His rejoinder: “Pauline, remember who voted for you.”

There was no attempt to disguise the strategy behind the tactical play.

Labor MPs Murray Watt and Jim Chalmers mentioned the seat of Longman eight times in their spray at the One Nation leader.

Either Labor has early polling suggesting the LNP is a chance of winning on the back of One Nation preferences, or it is simply taking out insurance.

The seat was delivered to Labor at the last election on a large 7.7 per cent swing when Hanson decided to preference Labor ahead of the unloved sitting LNP member Wyatt Roy.

A primary vote of 9.4 per cent in a seat that rings the coastal retirement belt north of Brisbane delivered enough preferences to Labor — an 80 per cent flow — to get its candidate Susan Lamb over the line by 1390 votes.

Hanson has declared she will not repeat the mistake this time, having tanked in the Queensland state election after adopting a similarly nonsensical strategy. So the preference flow in the by-election is likely to substantially favour the LNP.

While Labor is expected to hold the seat, this may largely depend on ensuring One Nation’s primary vote is suppressed enough to limit the size of the preference flow to the LNP.

Hence the start of the campaign yesterday to muddy the waters and link Hanson with the LNP in Labor’s class-war campaign against both the individual and corporate tax cuts.

The Longman by-election is a litmus test for both major parties, as are the four others triggered by the dual citizenship farce.

But Longman is the critical test for Hanson. The party’s national primary vote has almost halved from its high of 11 per cent a year ago to six points in the latest Newspoll, published in The Australian this week.

While this is not indicative of the higher Queensland vote for One Nation, the same downward trend in the party’s home state has been recorded in the past two sets of Newspoll Quarterly analysis. Hanson’s mercurial nature, policy inconsistency and internal party fracturing have played their role.

Now Longman has Hanson spooked, as shown by her shifting positions on company tax and the game of ducks and drakes over personal income tax cuts.

If Hanson tanks in Longman, it will signal that One Nation has entered its second historical and inevitable decline.