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Labor is ramping up its economic argument against Pauline Hanson as it prepares to fight an election within the next two years against both One Nation and the Coalition, as Opposition Leader Angus Taylor scrambles to kill off talk of a partnership with Hanson.
As the Coalition attacked Hanson’s admission on the Inside Politics podcast last week that her party was “infiltrated by extremists”, former prime minister John Howard told this masthead he “totally agreed” with Taylor’s stance on One Nation.
Employment and Workplace Relations Minister Amanda Rishworth will kick off a fresh push from Labor to paint Hanson as anti-worker, using a speech to coal miners on Friday to say Hanson would “support the Liberals and Nationals when they deliberately try to keep wages low”.
In a tour through Perth on Thursday, Hanson named Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke, a western Sydney MP, and a group of other ministers as her targets at the next election.
Taylor was forced to shut down the alarm triggered after his ally and frontbencher Tony Pasin called for a seat-sharing arrangement with One Nation that would make it difficult for the Coalition to govern in its own right and would allow Labor to argue the parties would work as a united force.
Senior party sources said Taylor was infuriated by Pasin’s intervention and phoned the South Australian on Thursday to make this clear.
“These were Tony’s comments. We’re not going to be doing that,” Taylor told reporters in Perth when asked about seat sharing.
Asked about Pasin’s future, Taylor said the spokesman on government waste would remain in shadow cabinet, before cutting his sentence short and moving on to a point about Labor.
Earlier in the week, new party president Tony Abbott made a general remark about preferencing right-wing parties ahead of left-wing ones. The statement reflected preferencing decisions at recent elections, but was interpreted by some as opening the door to a more formal deal with Hanson.
The same party sources said that Taylor had this week asked Abbott to be more circumspect, as the Coalition’s polling dip and One Nation’s continuing rise prompted panicked statements from opposition figures.
Abbott declined to comment on Pasin’s remarks. Some figures close to Taylor are worried that Abbott does not share the view that it would be poisonous to work more closely with Hanson.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese on Thursday seized on Pasin’s “extraordinary statement”.
“Saying that the Liberal Party should give up on trying to win seats, should step aside, so … One Nation wouldn’t run in some seats where the Liberal Party wants to contest. That says it all about the way that the once-mainstream Liberal Party … is almost giving up, two years before an election,” Albanese said in Sydney.
Treasurer Jim Chalmers took swipes at both parties at Labor’s national policy forum in Sydney on Thursday, saying the Coalition and One Nation were absurd to claim the government was pulling up the “ladder of aspiration” with its budget reforms.
“Not everybody is born already at the top of the ladder like Angus Taylor was, not everybody fails upwards like he has,” he said.
“And unlike One Nation, we vote the way workers need us to, not the way Gina Rinehart tells us to. The irony of their position is they want to change the government in order to leave everything as it is – a truly absurd proposition.”
Opposition defence spokesman James Paterson, a factional ally of Pasin, gave an unequivocal “no” when asked about Pasin’s seat-swapping idea. “I am not interested in dividing the spoils,” he said on ABC Radio.
Paterson also seized on Hanson’s comments last week that her party branches were being “infiltrated by extremists”.
“Pauline Hanson has publicly said she is concerned about the fact that extremists have infiltrated her,” Paterson said. “Pauline Hanson is worried about it. I think all of us should be concerned.”
Labor’s primary vote has dipped below One Nation’s in several polls. Party researchers are speaking to voters to understand how to win back financially strained voters, some of them younger, who have drifted from Labor to Hanson.
Rishworth, viewed as a minister who resonates with the party’s remaining blue-collar supporters, will speak at the mining union conference in the Hunter Valley, where One Nation has polled well at recent elections.
Party sources said Albanese was likely to put more focus on the hip-pocket effect of Hanson’s policy agenda in coming months.
Rishworth will say that “the only way the Liberals and Nationals can get back into government is with the support of One Nation”, creating a “unity ticket to erode wages and working conditions”.
“Just like the Liberals, Pauline Hanson has said that she wants to ‘overhaul’ the workplace system,” she will say, according to speech notes.
“One Nation would support the Liberals and Nationals when they try to unwind all our government’s efforts to improve the working lives of millions of Australians.
“And One Nation would support the Liberals and Nationals when they try to rewrite workplace laws in favour of employers. Pauline Hanson has said herself she wants to make it easier for bosses to sack workers.”
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