The Greens, Katter’s Australian Party and pro-climate action independents don’t often sing from the same songbook.
But One Nation’s fielding of a candidate from suburban Melbourne to represent the north Queensland city of Townsville has drawn a chorus of condemnation from those rival candidates, one of whom says she is “flabbergasted and disgusted” by the move.
It was not long after midday on 22 April that a representative from the Australian Electoral Commission read aloud the order in which candidates would appear on the ballot for the seat of Herbert.
There were 11 candidates, but one name stood out: Diane Pepe.
It was not Pepe’s party – One Nation – which raised eyebrows , but her home address in Pakenham, Victoria.
Pepe was not present at the event, but most of the other candidates were, the Katter’s Australian party candidate Clynton Hawks said.
“When they said ‘Victoria’, we all looked around at one another,” Hawks told Guardian Australia.
“Victoria is classed as Mexico in my books. They get all the gold paved roads and the nice new trains, while up here in north Queensland we fight for the crumbs.
“You are supposed to be representing the people and this person is a ring-in from three states away?”
An AEC spokesperson confirmed Pepe’s address in Pakenham – in Melbourne’s outer south-east – was read out at the declaration of nominations. The spokesperson said a candidate was not required to live in the division that they are contesting.
A doctor running as an independent, Angela Egan, and the Greens candidate, Scott Humphreys, said they were as shocked as Hawks.
“I was flabbergasted and disgusted,” Egan said.
Egan said she had never heard of Pepe prior to her name being read out and had not seen her since.
“This is exactly why I am standing,” she said. “To give people a local, independent option. Not even being in the state of Queensland, that’s pretty sad.”
One Nation secured 11.09% of primary votes in Herbert at the 2019 election, more than the KAP, the Greens and the UAP, and behind only the two major parties. In such a crowded field, preferences proved crucial to electing the Liberal National party’s Phillip Thompson, whose primary vote was 37.11%.
Pepe was contacted for comment. Her husband answered the phone but stopped responding after questions about her address.
A private Facebook page under Diane Pepe’s name, last updated in late 2020 and displaying pro-One Nation and anti-Covid-19 vaccine-mandate posts, lists her as living in Melbourne.
Pepe does not appear to have any official social media presence as a candidate and, as of Wednesday afternoon, her profile was not listed on One Nation’s candidates page.
Her current Australian Business Number is linked to her address in Pakenham, stretching back to at least 2007.
One Nation was asked where Pepe lived but did not respond.
Graeme Orr, a politics expert at the University of Queensland (UQ), said there was “nothing morally or normatively wrong” in candidates living outside their electorates and that One Nation was not the only party to do so.
Orr cited the example of Kennedy, where Bob Katter has held a stranglehold and, in the past, a Labor candidate might have been on a “hiding to nothing”.
“So they might get a UQ student who’s an activist, to be the dummy,” Orr said.
“But people living in Kennedy, who want to vote Labor, are entitled to have a Labor choice – we do have a party-based system.”
One Nation, he said, was a “genuine party with a history” and was entitled to do similarly. The question was: why they had done so in a seat in which they polled so strongly in 2019?
“One Nation, we’d always presumed, had a reasonably strong nationwide set of activists and supporters,” he said.
“But that may be a false assumption based on 20 odd years ago, when Hanson exploded on the scene.”
Greg Dowling, a former rugby league footballer, is representing Clive Palmer’s party in Herbert; the previously One Nation-linked Steve Clare is running as an independent; while the the Great Australian party and the Informed Medical Options party are also running candidates, in addition to KAP.
“[One Nation] are not an astroturf party, they’re not even a Palmer party,” Orr said.
“At previous elections where they might have been expected to do well, One Nation would get a swell of genuine of activists. But now they’re competing for candidates as well as activists with four or five or six other parties … There may just be too much competition on the libertarian right.”
Pepe’s does not appear to be an isolated case. The Guardian has seen internal emails that show One Nation was still desperate to find people to run for it just hours before the nominating deadline on 21 April, telling one prospective candidate that the party didn’t “require you to do anything or campaign at all”.
A similar, 11th hour scramble appears to have occurred with One Nation’s preference deals.
Last week, the party’s candidate for the marginal seat of Longman – where One Nation preferences could prove decisive – told Guardian Australia that preference recommendations were his call and that he would be putting the LNP last.
In contrast to Pepe, Ross Taylor’s picture and profile appear on One Nation’s website. The local electrician’s contact details are publicly available, and when contacted, Taylor spoke with some authority about his electorate and the issues that had been raised to him on the campaign trail.
Taylor clearly wanted to win and believes he can do so. Asked about how he would recommend his voters order their preferences, Taylor texted a written list which had the LNP incumbent Terry Young last.
“I made the final decision yesterday in consultation with HQ, just making sure that we get it right, making sure I’m in a position where I can actually win,” he said last week.
Within days, however, Hanson had announced One Nation would preference the LNP in every seat in Queensland.
Asked about this on Monday, Taylor confirmed that his preferences had since been “modified”. By this point, Taylor had party-endorsed, printed how-to-vote cards, which had Young now at fifth, Labor at sixth, the Animal Justice party at seventh and the Greens last.
Taylor said he couldn’t remember when the order was modified but denied he had been railroaded into the changes by party operatives.
“I just can’t put a Labor party in and I can’t put a Greens party in at all, there’s just no way, gotta put them down the bottom,” he said.
He noted that Young’s how-to-vote card had since preferenced One Nation second.
The LNP is recommending its Queensland voters preference One Nation second on their senate ballots, a move some political analysts believe could be “the deciding factor” that sees Pauline Hanson re-elected.
