‘Devastating’: Inside the Liberals’ One Nation deal

Just days out from the 1996 election, Jim Barron, then Queensland state director of the Liberal Party, decided he had to disendorse one of the party’s candidates.

Her name was Pauline Hanson and, says Barron, she had twice been formally warned about expressing her extreme prejudice against Indigenous Australians and Asian migrants.

“The third and final straw was a newspaper interview she gave, bagging welfare payments to Indigenous people and to Chinese and migrants. And that was it for me,” Barron tells The Saturday Paper.

“I said to her, ‘You’re just refusing to play along, you know. You’re not behaving as a Liberal candidate. You’re running against our policies.’ And she pretty much said, ‘Bring it on.’ ”

At the time, it did not seem a very consequential decision to dump Hanson. The seat she was contesting, Oxley, was one of the safest Labor electorates in the country.

Then she won.

In September 1996, she gave her infamous first speech in parliament and set up her own party, One Nation.

Over the decades since, the Coalition has largely kept its distance from Hanson and One Nation. There was an active conversation about not giving oxygen to the new racist party. At the 1998 and 2001 elections, One Nation candidates were placed last on Liberal how-to-vote cards.

In more recent times, Hanson’s party has been placed higher in the order of preferences – the Coalition parties now reserve bottom spot for the Greens – but still consistently below Labor.

Not anymore. Under Peter Dutton’s leadership, the Coalition has placed One Nation candidates second on scores of its how-to-vote cards across the country.

Liberals such as Jim Barron are appalled.

“All these years later, the Liberal Party has embraced the person who it once excommunicated,” he says.

“It’s devastating. And I think that says more about the Liberal Party than it does about One Nation. Its radical, hardline, racist policies used to be at the fringes of politics. Now they no longer live on the fringe. The Liberal Party has pretty much normalised a lot of what Hanson was going on about.”

It’s a slap in the face for those who fought to distance the Coalition from Hansonism. Ron Boswell, for example, was a Nationals senator who represented Queensland for more than 30 years. In his valedictory speech in June 2014, Boswell recounted his battles over many years against far-right organisations such as the League of Rights.

“In the fight of my life, against Pauline Hanson, I risked everything to stand up against her aggressive, narrow view of Australia,” he said. “Defeating Pauline Hanson and One Nation in 2001 has been my greatest political achievement.”

When contacted this week, Boswell declined to comment directly on the Coalition’s preference decision at this election. He did, however, point out that in 2007 he had threatened not to stand again if the Coalition preferenced One Nation.

The question of whether or not to favour One Nation has long roiled.

As recently as 2019, the preference question caused major division in the Liberal Party. Despite media revelations about One Nation’s links to the United States gun lobby, former prime minister Tony Abbott, among others on the party’s right, argued they should be preferenced ahead of Labor. Scott Morrison eventually made a big show of ordering Labor to be placed above One Nation.

Under Dutton, the Coalition has widely preferenced Hanson’s party.

Interestingly, in almost all the seats where it has not placed One Nation second, the Coalition has endorsed another fringe right-wing party, Family First. The latter was described to The Saturday Paper by one source as “One Nation with Bibles”.

Family First is a manifestation of the Christian right, very much in the American mould. Its national director since 2022 and lead Senate candidate for New South Wales is Lyle Shelton, who was the former head of the Australian Christian Lobby and ran the “No” campaign in the same-sex marriage postal vote.

Family First is anti-gay, anti-trans, anti-abortion, anti-euthanasia and anti-surrogacy.

It opposes renewable energy and the Paris accord on climate change. It opposes multiculturalism and wants to end Muslim immigration to Australia. It opposes tighter gun laws. It would abolish the Australian Human Rights Commission and its state-based counterparts and wind back anti-discrimination laws. It advocates radically increased military spending.

On the Liberal how-to-vote ticket for Dutton’s seat of Dickson, on the north-western edge of Brisbane, Family First’s candidate Suniti Hewett is placed second, after Dutton. One Nation’s Joel Stevenson is third. Labor’s Ali France is relegated to seventh. The Greens’ Vinnie Batten is placed last.

The ticket of the Liberals’ deputy leader, Sussan Ley, likewise placed Family First second and One Nation third. Shadow treasurer Angus Taylor put Family First second, Libertarian Party third and One Nation fourth. The Nationals leader, David Littleproud, allied himself even more closely with the right-wing fringe parties, preferencing One Nation second followed by Family First third and Clive Palmer’s Trumpet of Patriots fourth.

Ali France has pared back Dutton’s margin over the past two federal elections to just 1.7 per cent, so he needs all the preferences he can get.

Despite this, Family First has not been as kind to Dutton as he has to them. On their how-to-vote card for Dickson, the opposition leader is placed fourth, behind Hewett, Stevenson and Michael Jessop, who is representing Clive Palmer’s Trumpet of Patriots.

Until this week, One Nation also had Dutton fourth on its ticket. Then, just before pre-polling began on Tuesday, it issued new how-to-vote cards, elevating him to second place, along with Coalition candidates in nine other close contests – Hunter, Paterson, Shortland, Whitlam, Calare, Blair, Monash, Bruce and Lyons.

Hanson told the ABC the change was a response to the decision by Palmer’s party to preference teal candidates above the Coalition in some seats. One Nation chief of staff James Ashby told the Murdoch papers the move was about “saving Peter Dutton”.

It’s questionable how much the Coalition will benefit from its unprecedented closeness to One Nation and Family First, for a number of reasons.

Family First in particular is something of an unknown quantity at a federal electoral level. Although it has been a player in some states, particularly South Australia and Victoria, this will be the first time it has run candidates in most federal seats, including Dutton’s. Its appeal to conservative voters and its capacity to channel preference votes to the Coalition parties are yet to be tested.

Family First has been substantially “rebuilt” over the past couple of years, says Shelton, and is running candidates in 92 House of Representatives seats, as well as two Senate candidates each in Queensland, NSW, Victoria and South Australia.

In Victoria, it has done a “two for two” deal with the Liberal Party – meaning each party will place the other’s candidate second on its ticket, in both the House and Senate. Elsewhere it varies on a case-by-case basis, with other like-minded candidates placed above the Coalition.

“But,” says Shelton, “always ahead of Labor.”

Opinion polls currently show One Nation’s primary vote at about 8 per cent nationally, but its appeal varies widely by electorate. In Dutton’s seat, it pulled a little more than 5 per cent of the vote at the last election.

In any case, it is hard to determine the extent to which voters will be influenced by the Coalition’s how-to-vote recommendations. Or those of other parties, for that matter. How-to-vote cards are, after all, only a party’s recommendation of how people should vote. Electors are increasingly disinclined to follow those recommendations.

“Many fewer people use how-to-vote cards these days than did in the past,” says Ian McAllister, distinguished professor of political science at the Australian National University, who founded the Australian Election Study in 1987. “Back late 1980s, early 1990s, about 55 to 60 per cent of people would use how-to-vote cards. It’s about one in three now.”

Furthermore, says McAllister, many more voters now cast their ballots tactically. He cites the “teal wave” at the last election, which saw community independents unseat incumbents in a handful of affluent, socially progressive, formerly blue-ribbon Liberal seats.

“In 2022, the election study found that a huge number of people – almost half – in the teal seats were voting tactically. So there were former Greens and Labor voters who were voting teal to get the sitting Liberal out. They weren’t disaffected Liberal voters.”

This adds to other evidence from elections past that suggests progressively inclined voters are more disciplined and tactical than conservative voters.

Between 80 and 85 per cent of Greens preferences, for example, eventually flow to Labor, even if they pass through other left-of-centre candidates en route.

“The concern for the Coalition has always been that if Labor loses a vote to the Greens, it almost all comes back as a preference,” says ABC election analyst Antony Green.

“But when the Coalition loses votes to these parties, they tend to wander off … all around the ballot paper. They don’t automatically come back.”

Green says the Coalition parties get only about 65 per cent of right-wing preferences.

About three quarters of teal preferences also go to the Labor Party, he says.

Whether the Dutton opposition’s decision to ally itself so closely with One Nation and Family First does the Coalition any electoral good remains to be seen, but it might well help One Nation.

The standout example is the Senate race in South Australia. One Nation is polling particularly strongly there and this is a major concern for the Greens and one of the party’s most high-profile senators, Sarah Hanson-Young.

The Greens point to recent polling that shows them on 11 per cent of the primary vote, the same as One Nation. A further complication is that former senator Rex Patrick is running for the Jacqui Lambie Network, a development the Greens fear could draw some of the progressive vote away from them.

The Liberal how-to-vote ticket stands as an attempt to capitalise on this. It recommends its supporters vote “above the line” – that is, to fill in only six boxes on the ballot paper, giving their preferences to the Nationals, One Nation, Family First, the Libertarian Party and the Jacqui Lambie Network, in that order. Such a vote cuts out the Greens entirely.

Hanson-Young is concerned for her future and also furious that “the Liberal Party and Peter Dutton are legitimising One Nation”.

“In South Australia, it will come down to either the Greens or One Nation,” she tells The Saturday Paper. “It’s a scary thought, a nightmare that might come true…”

Labor is recommending its voters give their second preference to the Greens, and Antony Green believes the likely outcome will be that Labor will win two of the six Senate seats, the Liberals will win two, and the Greens will take one of the remaining two.

Such are the peculiarities of the Senate voting system that the only way Green could see Hanson-Young losing is if Labor takes an exceptionally large share of the progressive vote and wins three seats. Even though Labor is polling well in South Australia, it is not polling that well, he says.

The likelihood is that the Greens will hold all six of the Senate seats it is contesting in this election. Less certain is whether it can retain its four current House seats. Party leader Adam Bandt looks safe in his seat of Melbourne. Max Chandler-Mather looks likely to successfully defend his seat, Griffith. Its other two seats, Ryan and Brisbane, will be tight.

The Greens also have identified five additional “priority target seats”: Wills and Macnamara in Victoria, Richmond in NSW, Sturt in South Australia and Perth in Western Australia. All but Sturt are currently held by Labor, a fact that has caused some consternation within the ALP, especially as the party is giving preferences to the Greens in most contests around the country.

Macnamara is particularly interesting. The sitting Labor member, Josh Burns, has not allocated any preferences. He is Jewish and a trenchant critic of the Greens’ position on the Middle East, which condemns “Israel’s illegal occupation of the Palestinian territories and its ongoing genocide in Gaza”.

Labor has been roundly condemned in the Murdoch media for preferencing the Greens, given the party’s position on Gaza. An editorial in the The Australian this week was headlined “Preferences of degenerate Greens buffering Labor”.

Greens strategists believe their criticism of Israel has done them no harm and recent opinion polls show the party’s primary vote is higher nationally than it was in 2022.

Clearly Labor sees no disadvantage in preferencing them above the Coalition in most contests, given the minor party’s pitch to voters: “Vote 1 Greens to keep Dutton out & get Labor to act.”

Interestingly, the Greens’ advice to voters is to put their candidates first, then vote in any order they choose, so long as they put Labor above the Coalition. If history is any guide, the overwhelming majority of Greens preferences will ultimately flow back to Labor.

The big question of this campaign is whether the embrace by the Dutton opposition of One Nation and Family First will bring a similar benefit. Or – after decades of principled condemnation of Hanson – will it drive away more votes than it attracts?

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