Queensland premier Annastacia Palaszczuk called an early election on Sunday. Photo: AAP
The woman who could decide the Queensland election was nowhere to be seen on day two of the campaign, but her name was on everyone’s lips.
As Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk and Opposition Leader Tim Nicholls hit the hustings on Monday, One Nation leader Pauline Hanson was tweeting furiously more than 7000 kilometres away in India.
She slammed as “cowardly” Labor’s decision to call a snap election for November 25.
“I don’t think it matters where Pauline Hanson is,” Ms Palaszczuk retorted on Monday.
“I understand she’s on a trade mission and that’s where she should be because she needs to realise that Queensland has $69 billion worth of exports and it’s creating jobs here in Queensland and I don’t want to see anyone put that at risk.”
Tim Nicholls says Labor will try scare voters to vote against the LNP. Photo: AAP
Most experts, including former LNP premier Campbell Newman, believe the LNP will struggle to win government without One Nation’s support.
Professor John Wanna, a political expert at ANU and Griffith University, told The New Daily that “fighting against One Nation” would make it “very hard” for the LNP to form a majority.
“They might need One Nation’s support on the floor of Parliament,” he said.
“They might also need One Nation’s preferences in some of the key seats where they can’t beat Labor on the primary.”
Professor Wanna added that Malcolm Roberts, the former One Nation senator disqualified by the High Court on Friday, stood a decent chance of an upset win in the Labor-held seat of Ipswich.
Although she will miss the first week, Senator Hanson will loom large throughout the campaign, he said.
“She’s probably bigger [than the Premier],” he said. “If you go to barbecues, not many people are talking about Palaszczuk. People will talk about Pauline Hanson and how they’re going to go in Queensland.”
Mr Nicholls said on Monday there would be “no deal, no Coalition and no shared ministry with One Nation” while Ms Palaszczuk has signed a statutory declaration ruling out a deal with the minor party.
But One Nation’s state leader Steve Dickson disagreed.
“This is the elephant in the room,” he told ABC Radio on Monday.
Steve Dickson was left to head up One Nation’s campaigning efforts with Pauline Hanson in India. Photo: AAP
“What they’re saying at the moment is we won’t do a deal, but I can tell you it’s like saying, ‘We’re not going to drink water’.
“They’re going to drink water, they’re going to crawl across broken glass, they’ll do whatever it takes to get their backsides on the leather within the Queensland Parliament.”
In the marginal seat of the Whitsunday on Monday, Ms Palaszczuk was for the second time targeted by ‘Stop Adani’ protesters during a live television interview, only one day after protesters stormed the stage at Labor’s election launch.
“I think people have a right to have their say … And I will listen to their views, but I did think that a couple did get a little out of hand,” she said.
“That was just my personal feeling, I didn’t know whether I was personally going to be tackled.”
An anti-Adani mine protestor has again interrupted an interview with Queesnland Premier @AnnastaciaMP #auspols MORE: https://t.co/25o4xoPffl pic.twitter.com/uaXqDMsu6k
— Sky News Australia (@SkyNewsAust) October 29, 2017
Aside from Adani’s controversial mining Galilee basin mining project, which is supported by both major parties, observers expect the election to be fought on power prices, local jobs and development in the regions.
At a hardware store in the marginal electorate of Springwood in Brisbane’s south on Monday, Mr Nicholls pre-emptively attacked what he predicts will be a fierce scare campaign tapping into voter fears about the previous LNP government.
“Let’s start off on a positive campaign, not go down the sort of nasty, smear and fear and no idea campaign of the Labor Party,” said Mr Nicholls, who was treasurer under Campbell Newman’s government that was dramatically turfed out by voters in 2015.
Ms Palaszczuk’s minority Labor government begins the campaign with 45 seats to the LNP’s 42 MPs in the state’s unicameral 93-seat Parliament.