The Queensland Liberal National party’s decision to direct Senate preferences to Pauline Hanson’s One Nation party has raised surprisingly few objections.
In the past, such a move has proved political poison.
Just ask the former state opposition leader, Tim Nicholls. At the 2017 state election, the LNP sent preferences to One Nation in 50 seats. Nicholls said he would consider forming government with the rightwing party and, on the eve of the election, his tongue slipped just enough to imply the parties were in cahoots.
Hanson and her political vehicle retain some hardcore support in Queensland – enough to mean that One Nation voters’ preferences can be strategically important in certain seats. A deal can have political benefits; but it can also have some broader problems.
Hanson has proved adept at corralling her pockets of support to cobble together enough votes to win a Senate quota. But at the same time, pollsters say that her “unfavourables” – the percentage of voters who disapprove of her – are extremely high.
There’s a toxic byproduct to any political payoff that an alliance with Hanson might deliver.
Nicholls can attest. The LNP lost seven seats in south-east Queensland at the 2017 state election, with the party almost wiped-out in greater Brisbane, where it was left with just four MPs.
There’s little doubt that Nicholls (a lawyer from the well-to-do inner-Brisbane suburb of Clayfield) was damaged in the city by the perception of an association with Hanson.
At most federal polls since Hanson’s political emergence in 1996, major parties have been urged to put her party last. Even as recently as 2019 (after Hanson’s key adviser James Ashby and Senate candidate Steven Dickson were filmed “on the sauce” discussing seeking donations from the US gun lobby) the Liberal party succumbed to pressure to put One Nation below Labor on its how-to-vote cards.
The LNP’s decision to direct Senate preferences to Hanson in 2022 seems a risk, but probably an educated one based on a few new variables. First is the fracturing of the rightwing fringe (who include former LNP folks) in a way that means Hanson has serious competition for the election’s biggest pantomime villain.
The second is that Labor’s own north Queensland how-to-vote cards have complicated their ability to tell city voters that the LNP is courting the fringe right.
Compare the pair: Labor’s how to vote cards in Brisbane vs Dawson
— Emerald Moon (@emeraldxmoon) April 27, 2022
Pretty insulting that they’ll seek to align themselves with Palmer & Katter in regional Qld where they think progressive voters won’t see it. Talk about not learning lessons from 2019 lol pic.twitter.com/DWvcfhtcQw
In inner Brisbane, Labor is directing preferences to the Greens. But in the seat of Dawson, which is based around Mackay, Labor how-to-vote cards suggest voters first go to minor parties led by Bob Katter and Clive Palmer.
Finally, Hanson’s own claims she is targeting moderate Liberals could help, rather than hinder, city-based MPs like Trevor Evans in Brisbane and Julian Simmonds in Ryan avoid to any backlash. The One Nation vote in these places is tiny, bordering on inconsequential.
A sceptical person may wonder why Hanson’s anti-moderate stance doesn’t also extend to long-serving MP Warren Entsch in the far north seat of Leichhardt, where the One Nation vote is three times higher than in the city.
Changing the conversation
The election conversation in regional Queensland has been, so far at least, noticeably different from 2019. Especially around the topics of coal, climate and energy transition.
On the eve of the election campaign, the Queensland government made a series of announcements in Gladstone, talking the region up as a “renewable energy superpower” and foreshadowing new economy jobs around hydrogen.
Two things have changed, say people in the know. The first is that significant work has been done on the ground in places like Gladstone, where grassroots campaigns have been running (under the national radar) to have more positive conversations about the opportunities that can flow from investments in new economies.
The second is that these sorts of projects are now starting to feel real. Andrew “Twiggy” Forrest lent some mining credibility to those efforts this year, when he turned up in Gladstone to turn the first sod on a renewable hydrogen hub.
If the real conversation in these places has moved on from 2019, this week Scott Morrison sought to wind the election debate back three years, hitting on all of the same “us and them” rhetoric touchstones that reduce Queensland’s complex political landscape to a city v regions binary.
“We don’t want two Australias,” Morrison said in Rockhampton, with no attempt at irony, before saying regional Queenslanders felt “looked down on”.
“Their jobs and lifestyles derided or seen as somehow unworthy, in a world where the big talkers all seem to work in government, or finance, or the tech industry or the media.
“You witnessed this sort of thing first-hand at the last election – courtesy of Bob Brown and the Greens and their convoy to central Queensland. A convoy against coal jobs.”
Labor’s 2019 election review found that Coalition campaigning “associating Labor with the Greens in voters’ minds” contributed to the party’s loss of support in regional Queensland.
Morrison is back there again, evoking the anti-Adani convoy. Labor seems to be going out of its way not to direct preferences to the Greens in Dawson.
It seems both major parties have found a new political villain; while the old one, Hanson, looks set to ride under the radar, via LNP preferences, to another six-year Senate term.
