Courier Mail Monitor section page 24, by State political writer John Lehmann.
Saturday 9th May 1998
“With a state election on the horizon, the Liberals are desperately trying to woo voters - with a controversial strategy to pass on preferences to One Nation candidates.
For two years the Liberals have twisted themselves in knots trying to deal with their “Frankenstein”.
When Pauline Hanson, the then unknown Liberal candidate for the “unwinnable” Labor seat of Oxley, whined on to the political stage with a bout of Aboriginal bashing in 1996, the Liberals expelled her on the spot, guaranteeing national exposure.
When their indignation turned to shock at Hanson’s subsequent federal election victory, they tried to ignore her.
When thousands of Australians braved protesters to hear her speak, they attacked her.
“Pauline Hanson has pushed the emotive, headline-grabbing issues without any thought of the short and long-term damage the thoughtless grandstanding can, and will cause,” Liberal state leader Joan Sheldon exclaimed 18 months ago.
Now, as the Liberals prepare for a difficult state election, they have effectively aligned themselves with their volatile creation in last-ditch bid to win back Hanson’s followers and save their political hides.
Call it pragmatism, call it blatant hypocrisy - either way, Liberal state president Bob Carroll’s push to deliver preferences to One Nation ahead of Labor will be perceived by many voters as a latent acceptance of Hanson’s populism.
Whether this strategy will draw more voters back or push more away is debatable but the move is clear evidence the Coalition is fearful of One Nation’s potential impact on its re-election bid.
If Carroll was hoping the ploy this week would fade into the background, behind the machinations of the waterfront dispute, Brendon Abbott’s recapture and Terry Lewis’s release. he was mistaken.
A procession of Liberals, from Prime Minister John Howard to unheralded party members, bought into the debate, ensuring the issue dominated news coverage in what was likely to be the second last week before Premier Borbidge called a June 13 election.
Former Liberal Senator and Aboriginal elder Neville Bonner described it as repugnant; party stalwart Sir James Killen claimed an alien philosophy had evolved; state minister Bruce Davidson indicated a preference for Nazi party candidates over Labor; recently resigned Liberal MP John Bradford said the party was shamelessly adopting the Graham Richardson motto: “Whatever it takes”.
And southern Liberal leaders Jeff Kennett and Peter Collins explained that Queensland had always been “a little different”.
By Thursday night, Carroll was explaining the decision to Chinese community leaders - a significant source of the party’s financial and electoral support - after the Sunnybank candidate, Taiwanese-born Steven Huang, vowed to lobby for the “correct decision”.
But amid the controversy, Carroll, who has endured a baptism of fire since winning the presidency last year, received support from some senior Liberals, including Howard who defended the decision by saying most Hanson supporters were decent people, not racists.
Senior nationals, including Borbidge, also privately backed Carroll. Nationals’ state president David Russell, who personally loathes Hanson, said: “You don’t have to be Einstein to work out what we’re going to do (with preference allocation).”
Carroll, a hard-nosed realist, remained adamant the Coalition had no real choice, “People may talk of principles but my main principle is ensuring Queensland has good, responsible government,” he said.
“In the end the choice comes down to Rob Borbidge or (Labor leader) Peter Beattie.
“We don’t agree with Pauline Hanson - she’s got no answers - but to win the state election we need people who are tempted to flirt with One Nation to pass on their preferences.”
He played down the importance of the strategy by arguing that Liberal preferences were rarely counted, as the party’s candidate usually finished first or second on the primary votes.
While Carroll’s assessment is theoretically correct, the move sends a potential signal to the electorate.
How voters respond will be a key factor in determining who rules Queensland into the 21st Century.
National political analyst Malcom Mackerras said the Carroll strategy was “sensible and wise”, giving the Coalition its best hope of claiming victory.
“The last thing the major parties can afford to do is further alienate voters by ganging up on Pauline Hanson,” Mackerras said.
“The Liberals are positioning themselves to pick up One Nation preferences.”
According to Mackerras, One Nation’s greatest threat to the Coalition will arise if electors vote for a One Nation candidate but decide not to allocate preferences, thereby restricting the flow-on to Coalition candidates.
Unlike the federal voting system, it is optional for voters in Queensland to allocate a preference, meaning a substantial portion of the primary votes could be “extinguished” before being passed on to major candidates.
But other political commentators, such as veteran Canberra journalist Wallace Brown, branded the move a “disgraceful and unprincipled preference swap” which was unnecessary.
He argued it was not even pragmatic because One Nation voters were likely to allocate preferences to the conservative candidate anyway, “Where else do the gun lobbyists, anti-Aboriginal, anti-immigrants, anti-Jewish, League of Rights types and other far right conservatives... go with their preferences?” he said.
The deepest concern among senior Liberals - even those who support the move - is whether small “l” liberal voters, particularly those in Brisbane seats such as the marginal Liberal seat of Mount Ommaney and marginal Labor seat of Ashgove and Everton, will buy Labor’s argument that the Coalition is “dancing with the Devil”.
The impact on seats with a significant Asian community, such as Mansfield, Mt Gravatt and Sunnybank, could also be substantial.
Carroll was locked into a meeting last night, attempting to convince senior Liberals to support his push to put Labor last on how-to-vote cards, If he fails, the loss will be humiliating.
Labor state secretary Mike Kaiser, who usually strives to play down Labor’s standing, believed Labor ended the week in a stronger electoral position than when it started due to Carroll’s public statements.
“The strategy won’t work - people who have deserted the Coalition parties because they’ve been badly let down won’t give their preferences back just because now the Liberals try to be nice to them,” he said.
“And it just won’t be worth the cost - the grief caused by a week of bad publicity, the people who feel the Liberals’ lack of principle is hard to swallow.”
Kaiser’s deepest fear is that Carroll’s move is merely the first step in a Coalition courting process with One Nation which would end with a direct swap of preferences in key seats.
He admitted such a strategy could result in Labor losing a swag of seats, especially in regional Queensland. The danger would be acute in marginal Labor-held seats such as Thuringowa, Maryborough, Hervey Bay and Whitsunday where a significant portion of traditional Labor voters could drift to One Nation.
In Maryborough, for example, if Labor’s 1995 primary vote of 46% fell to 42% and One Nation hived off 10%, a tight exchange of preferences with One Nation would allow the Nationals to sneak home.
As evidence that such a deal was being cooked up, Kaiser pointed to the Coalition’s failure to deliver on its promise to introduce legislation forcing how-to-vote cards to be registered well before polling day.
In 1995, Borbidge, as opposition leader, was extremely critical of what he called as Labor’s habit of using “bogus” how-to-vote cards to trick supporters of minor parties into allocating preferences to Labor.
The cards, which are disguised to look genuine how-to-vote cards distributed by minor parties, are handed out at polling booths on election day. By the time a court ruling is obtained, the damage has been done.
As recently as March, Borbidge was committed to introducing the laws but last month they were dropped, with the government arguing they were too difficult to implement.
Carroll and national party state director Ken Crooke denied Kaiser’s suggestion of a deal, while One Nation principal adviser David Oldfield said the party would leave voters in most seats to decide for themselves if they wanted to allocate preferences.
But he revealed that in the Labor-held seat of Ipswich, local Liberals had undertaken that the party would recommend their first preferences be delivered to One Nation candidate Heather Hill.
What is beyond question is that if One Nation holds the balance of power - a scenario which all major parties believe is a distinct possibility - they are likely to side with the Coalition.
One Nation Gympie candidate Ian Petersen pulls no punches when asked what would be demanded in exchange for its support: he lists winding back the gun laws, tougher sentencing of criminals, stricter disciplining of children, including corporal punishment and night-time street curfews, cutting back the impact of national competition policy and safeguarding land from native title laws.
If such a situation eventuated the Liberals would require another dash of political expediency to enter a new arrangement with its Hanson creation.