Would Pauline Hanson really risk a tilt at the lower house?
- Written by Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra
As high poll numbers are increasingly emboldening One Nation, Pauline Hanson now says she might seek to move to the House of Representatives.
Her adviser James Ashby first floated the idea on Sky News on Monday, saying he would “throw a new one into the mix”.
“Pauline Hanson might step down from the Senate […] and run for the seat that she lives in,” he said.
On Tuesday Hanson confirmed a lower house tilt was a possibility, saying, “It’s under consideration; no decisions have been made.
"We’re still two years outside the election.”
The speculation around Hanson follows One Nation’s Barnaby Joyce repeating in recent days that he might stand for the party in his present seat of New England, rather than run for the Senate at the next election, which has been his more likely option since he defected from the Nationals.
He told Sky on Sunday, “If it looks like we’re going to get […] a reasonable number of House of Representatives seats, then the party will no doubt make the request that I stand for New England,” he said.
“We have to have some oversight and some process to make sure we look like a professional diligent outfit in the House of Representatives.
"If that is not the case, then we continue with Plan A, which is stand for the Senate.”
Hanson lives in the Queensland seat of Wright, which is held by the Liberals. An alternative for her would be the Labor-held seat of Blair.
But hard heads will be warning Hanson of the dangers of trying to make a shift to the lower house. Failure to pull it off could not only see her out of parliament but could lead to the collapse of the party, which is built around its 71-year-old leader.
Hanson started her parliamentary career in the House of Representatives when she won the seat of Oxley as an independent. She had been disendorsed by the Liberal Party because of remarks about programs for Indigenous people, but given the timing she still had the Liberal tag beside her name on the ballot paper. She lost the seat in 1998.
Hanson is up for re-election at the 2028 election.
One Nation’s surge in the polls in recent months is leading to some muscle-flexing and a degree of hubris. Senior party figures have been saying that if there were a hung parliament, One Nation would give confidence and supply for a Coalition government but would want to obtain concessions on policy in return.
The party’s federal support is about to be tested in real time this weekend in the Farrer byelection, seen as a tight contest between One Nation’s David Farley and independent Michelle Milthorpe. Farley is receiving preferences over Milthorpe from both the Liberals and the Nationals.
If Farley wins Farrer, this will be the first time One Nation has won a House of Representatives seat.
A win would give it an important platform for trying to win regional seats in the November Victorian election.
Hanson was in Adelaide on Tuesday for the swearing in of the One Nation team in the new South Australian parliament. The party there has four lower house members and three in the upper house; its leader is Cory Bernardi, a one-time Liberal senator.
