Tony Abbott has said the Liberal party should always preference the Nationals ahead of One Nation as Barnaby Joyce warned that the West Australian premier was “flirting with a concept that would put his own side and Liberal colleagues in opposition”.
Abbott said Pauline Hanson was a “better” person than she was 20 years ago, and the Liberals should preference One Nation ahead of Labor – but not ahead of the party’s Coalition partner under any circumstances.
A decision by the Liberals in WA to preference One Nation ahead of the Nationals in the upper house country regions – in return demanding that One Nation preference the Liberals above Labor in the lower house seats it is contesting – is reverberating in Canberra.
Federal Liberals have been ducking the issue, arguing that preferences are a matter for state divisions, or actively paving the way for the Liberals to preference One Nation in forthcoming state elections, such as the looming Queensland poll.
On Monday morning the trade minister, Steve Ciobo, who represents a Gold Coast seat, said preferences should be determined on what’s best for the people of Queensland, and “what can put us in a position to govern”.
Both Ciobo and the treasurer, Scott Morrison, said Labor was in no position to criticise the Liberal party for preferencing One Nation when it regularly entered preference deals with the Greens.
Morrison told 2GB the Greens were the most extreme party in parliament and would “open our borders, trash the budget and trash our sovereignty”.
The attorney general, George Brandis, told Sky News on Monday that the WA Nationals had preferenced One Nation ahead of the Liberals at the 2008 state election and in 2013 put the Shooters and Fishers ahead.
“There has been a history in Western Australia ... of the Liberal and National parties ... putting other conservative parties intermediately between themselves in the upper house,” he said.
But Abbott’s comments are a notable departure from his colleagues. In a radio interview on Monday, the former prime minister said Hanson was a different person than she was 20 years ago, which would justify the Liberals preferencing One Nation ahead of Labor.
But he said the Nationals should always be preferenced by the Liberal party ahead of everyone else.
“It’s not up to me to decide where preference should go but, if it was, I’d certainly be putting One Nation ahead of Labor and I’d be putting the National party ahead of everyone,” Abbott said. “Because the National party are our Coalition partners in Canberra and in most states and they are our alliance partners in Western Australia.”
At the beginning of the month Joyce warned the Western Australian Liberals against giving preferences to One Nation in the state election because it would spark a political fight with the Nationals.
On Monday Joyce again made his displeasure known. “It is a statement of fact that the most successful governments in Australia are in Liberal-National government,” he told reporters.
“Colin Barnett has been around the political game a long while and should seriously consider whether he thinks this is a good idea or whether he is flirting with a concept that ultimately will put his own side is in opposition.”
Malcolm Turnbull has continued to deadbat the issue. Asked whether John Howard was right 20 years ago when he said One Nation should be put last on how-to-vote cards, Turnbull said preferences were “a matter for the WA division”.
“They have got to make their judgment based on their assessment of their electoral priorities,” the prime minister said. “You have to remember their objective is to persuade people to vote Liberal and to return the Barnett government – and my suggestion is that West Australians vote Liberal … for the return of Colin Barnett’s very capable government.”
On Monday the Labor frontbencher Anthony Albanese dismissed arguments from the government that Hanson had evolved during her 20-year political career.
“Pauline Hanson herself has declared very proudly that her views are exactly the same and, indeed, much of the language in her first speech in the Senate mirrored the sort of xenophobia that we saw in her first stint in the House of Representatives after she was elected in 1996,” Albanese said.
“Bizarrely today the government chose to send out its trade and tourism minister to defend One Nation and to say that they had sensible, economic policies.
“Of all portfolios to pick, to pick the minister for trade and the minister for tourism to get out there and defend One Nation, to bring them into the mainstream, if you like, is quite extraordinary.”
He said One Nation’s vision of Australia was “one nation of Anglo-Celtic Christian people who, of course, are in heterosexual relationships and have nuclear families”.
“What we have seen in recent times is One Nation candidates get out there and abuse people on the basis of their cultural diversity that makes this country so strong,” Albanese said.
On the issue of Greens preferencing, Albanese said the Liberals were happy during the last federal election “to sit down and have preference negotiations with the Greens”.
He said he had major differences with the Greens “but there’s a big difference between the Greens political party, the views of people like Bob Brown and others who I disagree with, and the views of Pauline Hanson. A major difference.”
The Labor leader, Bill Shorten, said on Sunday that his party would not do preference deals with One Nation because “you’ve got to stand for something in politics”.
Shorten said Howard had decreed that One Nation be put last, and that was Labor’s position also. “I hope that will be the same for the federal Liberal party,” he said.
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