Speaker 1: From Schwartz Media. I'm Ruby Jones. This is seven am.
Speaker 1: Under Peter Dutton's leadership, the Coalition has placed One Nation
Speaker 1: candidate second on scores of how to Vote cards across
Speaker 1: the country. The decision goes against decades of principled support
Speaker 1: within the Liberal Party to oppose One Nation's prejudice and racism.
Speaker 1: It signals a shift not just in strategy, but in
Speaker 1: what the Liberals stand for today. National correspondent for the
Speaker 1: Saturday Paper, Mike Secam on the preference steal between One
Speaker 1: Nation and the Liberal Party and how it could backfire.
Speaker 1: It's Wednesday, April thirty, So I wanted to ask what
Speaker 1: your first thought was when you heard that the Liberal
Speaker 1: Party and One Nation had done a deal to preference
Speaker 1: each other on their how to vote Cuz what was
Speaker 1: your first thought?
Speaker 2: Well, I thought it was pretty extraordinary. Actually, Coalition voters
Speaker 2: are being told to put One Nation second in more
Speaker 2: than fifty seats across the country and to rank them
Speaker 2: above Labor in one hundred and thirty nine seats. As
Speaker 2: far as I know, this is unprecedented. These two parties
Speaker 2: have been feuding, I guess you would say, for almost
Speaker 2: thirty years, ever since Pauline Hansen was kicked out of
Speaker 2: the Liberal Party way back in nineteen ninety six. So
Speaker 2: you know, One Nation and the Coalition have been bitter rivals,
Speaker 2: I think you would say ever since then, because One
Speaker 2: Nation has done its best to peel voters off the
Speaker 2: right wing of the Coalition, particularly in Queensland. But clearly
Speaker 2: this is no longer the case. They're swapping preferences and
Speaker 2: according to Pauline Hansen's chief of staff James Ashby in
Speaker 2: an interview last week, it's all about quote saving Peter Dutton.
Speaker 1: Unquote saving Peter Dutton from.
Speaker 2: What well, from losing the election and maybe even his
Speaker 2: own seat. You know, at the start of the year,
Speaker 2: Dutton and the Coalition were polling very strongly. People were
Speaker 2: starting to think they might actually you know, unseat a
Speaker 2: one term labor government. But over the course of the
Speaker 2: campaign the wheels have really fallen off and the Albanesi
Speaker 2: government has now odds on to be returned, either in
Speaker 2: as a minority government or maybe even in majority. Meanwhile,
Speaker 2: Peter Dutton's personal approval is tanking. You know. Bear in
Speaker 2: mind he only holds his seat Dixon on the queens
Speaker 2: Ane Sunshine Coast by about one point seven percent.
Speaker 3: Well, what happened was in the preference preferences, and it's
Speaker 3: only a recommendation. I must tell you listeners.
Speaker 2: That, according to Hanson herself, this preference deal came about
Speaker 2: because Clive Palmer had put Teal candidates above the Coalition
Speaker 2: in some.
Speaker 3: Seats, and he's supposed to be a conservative his preferencing
Speaker 3: the Teals and going to labor before the coalition.
Speaker 2: So she decided that One Nation needed to act.
Speaker 3: That's why we changed our preferences in eleven seats and
Speaker 3: we've put him by coalition now.
Speaker 2: Frankly, it was also a bit of a stunt, you know,
Speaker 2: because it focused attention on Hanson and One Nation, which
Speaker 2: you know they desperately need.
Speaker 1: Okay, So Mike tell me, though, what this arrangement looks
Speaker 1: like in practice. If we were to take Peter Dutton's
Speaker 1: seat in Brisbane, for example, how does the deal work.
Speaker 2: Well, right up until pre polling started, which was last Tuesday,
Speaker 2: One Nation had its how to vote cards out there
Speaker 2: telling voters to put Peter Dutton fourth in the seat
Speaker 2: of Dixon. Then just before pre polling, the party suddenly
Speaker 2: issued knew how to vote cards elevating Dutton to second place,
Speaker 2: and in return, the Liberals in a bunch of seats,
Speaker 2: including Dutton's, have put One Nation in third place just
Speaker 2: after Family First.
Speaker 1: Tell me a bit more about Family First, Mike, and
Speaker 1: I suppose the significance of the coalition preferencing them right well.
Speaker 2: In almost all the seats where it has not placed
Speaker 2: One Nation second, the coalition has endorsed Family First for
Speaker 2: the second spot. Someone I was speaking to about this
Speaker 2: described Family First as quote, one nation with Bibles unquote.
Speaker 2: It's a religious based party, very much in the mold
Speaker 2: of the sort of religious right in America. It's anti gay,
Speaker 2: anti trans, anti abortion, anti euthanasia, anti surrogacy. It opposes
Speaker 2: renewable energy and the Paris Court on climate change. It
Speaker 2: opposes multiculturalism. It wants an end to Muslim immigration to Australia.
Speaker 2: It opposes tighter gun laws. It advocates for radically increased
Speaker 2: military spending. It's not much different from One Nation, frankly,
Speaker 2: and Family First is running ninety two candidates in the
Speaker 2: Lower House and two Senate candidates in Queensland, New South Wales,
Speaker 2: Victoria and South Australia. So anyway, it's second on Dutton Seed.
Speaker 2: In Dixon, it's also second on the ticket of the
Speaker 2: Liberal's deputy leader, Susan Lee, who very much like her leader,
Speaker 2: put Family First in second spot, One Nation in third.
Speaker 2: The Challow treasurer Angus Taylor put Family First second, a
Speaker 2: Libertarian can at third, and One Nation fourth. So variations
Speaker 2: on this theme have been repeated all across the country.
Speaker 2: Only in a handful of seats where they're trying to
Speaker 2: win back very moderate constituencies. Have they not put these
Speaker 2: two right wing parties at the top of the ticket.
Speaker 1: Okay, So these deals have been done, Mike, with both
Speaker 1: Family First and One Nation to preference each other in
Speaker 1: various ways. But even though there might seem to be
Speaker 1: some alignment in the values of some of these parties,
Speaker 1: One Nation and the Liberals have been at war for decades,
Speaker 1: as you said earlier. So tell me more about that
Speaker 1: and how they fell out in the first place.
Speaker 2: Well, we go all the way back to the nineteen
Speaker 2: ninety six election John Howard versus Paul Keating. Pauline Hansen
Speaker 2: was at that stage the endorsed Liberal candidate in the
Speaker 2: Western Brisbane seat of Oxley out near Ipswich, but she'd
Speaker 2: started causing problems for the party. She kept going off script.
Speaker 2: She had twice been formally warned about expressing her I
Speaker 2: think you would call them extreme prejudices against Indigenous Australians
Speaker 2: and as migrants. And then came the third and final straw.
Speaker 2: She gave a newspaper interview where she attacked welfare payments
Speaker 2: to Indigenous people and also to Chinese and other migrants.
Speaker 2: And the Queens and State Director of the Liberal Party
Speaker 2: was Jim Barron, and just three days out from the election,
Speaker 2: he decided enough was enough and he called her in
Speaker 2: and told her he was disindorsing her. I spoke to
Speaker 2: him about this and he said that the conversation wins
Speaker 2: something along these lines. He said, you're just refusing to
Speaker 2: play along. You're not behaving as a Liberal candidate. You're
Speaker 2: running against our policies, and she replied pretty much, bring
Speaker 2: it on. It didn't seem like a very consequential decision
Speaker 2: at that point because the seat that she was contesting, Oxley,
Speaker 2: the Liberals didn't really expect to win anyway. It was
Speaker 2: one of the safest labor electorates in the country. But
Speaker 2: to everyone's surprise, Hanson won six.
Speaker 4: Weeks ago, hardly anyone had ever heard of Pauline Hanson.
Speaker 4: Now she's the name in just about every radio bulletin
Speaker 4: every television newscast, a newspaper. No one can recall anything
Speaker 4: like it. She is a phenomenon.
Speaker 2: And then in September that year ninety six, she gave
Speaker 2: her infamous first speech in Parliament saying that Australia was
Speaker 2: in danger of being swamped by Asians.
Speaker 5: It is refreshing to be able to express my views
Speaker 5: without having to tow a party line. It has got
Speaker 5: me into trouble on the odd occasion, but I am
Speaker 5: not going to stop saying what I think.
Speaker 2: And then she set up her own party, One Nation, okay.
Speaker 1: And so once Pauline Hansen got in, Mike, how did
Speaker 1: her old party? How did the Liberal Party treat her? Well?
Speaker 2: They have ever since largely kept their distance. And so
Speaker 2: in the nineteen ninety eight and two thousand and one elections,
Speaker 2: One Nation candidates were placed last on the Liberal how
Speaker 2: to Vote cards. But you know there was internal debate
Speaker 2: about it. The issue has reared its head at various
Speaker 2: points since. In twenty seventeen, for example, the Libs in
Speaker 2: Western Australia decided they would preference one day ahead of
Speaker 2: the nationals. If you can believe it, John Howard, you know, ever,
Speaker 2: the political Opportunist came out and supported that, saying, oh,
Speaker 2: one nation has changed. Of course it really hadn't as
Speaker 2: recently as twenty nineteen. It came up again. At that
Speaker 2: time there were media revelations about One Nation's links to
Speaker 2: the US gun lobby. Former Prime Minister Tony Abbott, among
Speaker 2: others on the parties right argued they should still be
Speaker 2: preferenced ahead of Labor, but Scott Morrison eventually made a
Speaker 2: big show of ordering Labor to be placed above One Nation.
Speaker 2: So that's been the history, and then along came Peter
Speaker 2: Dutton and things have changed.
Speaker 1: After the break how the Liberal Party has shifted.
Speaker 3: Right.
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Speaker 1: Mike, you've been speaking to Liberal Party elders, people who
Speaker 1: were instrumental in pushing Pauline Hanson out of the party
Speaker 1: in the first place. Now we're in a position where
Speaker 1: the Liberals are preferencing her party One Nation. So how
Speaker 1: are these people that you're talking to reacting to that?
Speaker 2: Well, Jim Barron, the former state director who actually checked
Speaker 2: her out, told me he was appalled, and I'll quote
Speaker 2: him because he was very strong. He said, all these
Speaker 2: years later, the Liberal Party has embraced the person who
Speaker 2: at once excommunicated. That's what he told me. He went
Speaker 2: on to say, it's devastating, and I think it says
Speaker 2: more about the Liberal Party than it does about One Nation.
Speaker 2: Its radical, hard line racist policies used to be at
Speaker 2: the fringe of politics. Now they no longer live on
Speaker 2: the fringe. The Liberal Party has pretty much normalized a
Speaker 2: lot of what Hanson was going on about.
Speaker 1: Okay, so pretty strong stuff, then, Mike.
Speaker 2: Very very strong stuff, and he's right. This is a
Speaker 2: slap in the face for those who historically fought to
Speaker 2: distance the Coalition from Hansonism. Ron Boswell, for example, was
Speaker 2: a national senator who represented Queensland for more than thirty years.
Speaker 2: In his valedictory speech when he left Parliament about a
Speaker 2: decade ago, he actually said that he had, quoting again,
Speaker 2: risked everything to stand up against Paulin Hanson's aggressive, narrow
Speaker 2: view of Australia. He said it was the greatest thing
Speaker 2: he'd done in his entire thirty year career. When I
Speaker 2: contacted Boswell, he declined to comment directly on the coalition's
Speaker 2: preference decision at this election, but he did point out
Speaker 2: that previously he had threatened not to stand again if
Speaker 2: the Coalition preferenced one Nation, So that's how strongly he
Speaker 2: felt about it.
Speaker 1: Okay. So given that, then, Mike, what does this deal
Speaker 1: say to you about the current Liberal Party and how
Speaker 1: its ideology is shifting under Dutton?
Speaker 2: Well, I would argue it's been shifting even before Dutton.
Speaker 2: You know, the Libs have been drifting right woods ever
Speaker 2: since John Howard. There was something of a purge of
Speaker 2: the moderates under him. Then, of course we had Tony Abbott,
Speaker 2: hard man of the right, who took the party arguably
Speaker 2: even further to the right. And Peter Dutton is very
Speaker 2: much a creature of the Queensland Liberal National Party, which
Speaker 2: is very conservative. He's part of the party's hard right.
Speaker 2: Back in twenty seventeen, Peter Dutton said of Pauline Hanson,
Speaker 2: she doesn't deliver on it, but she says a lot
Speaker 2: of things that people want to hear. So some of
Speaker 2: Dutton's positioning on matters of race, migration, Islam, cultural issues
Speaker 2: in general, his views are not a million miles from Hanson's. Frankly, okay.
Speaker 1: So to come back to the preference deal, then, how
Speaker 1: much of an impact do you think that that is
Speaker 1: actually likely to have Mike on how people ultimately decide
Speaker 1: to vote.
Speaker 2: Look, it's hard to determine the extent to which voters
Speaker 2: will be influenced by how to vote cards. After all,
Speaker 2: they're only the party's recommendation of how you should vote.
Speaker 2: You don't have to follow it. And a lot less
Speaker 2: people use how to vote cards these days than they
Speaker 2: did in the past. Back in the nineteen eighties and
Speaker 2: the early nineteen nineties, about sixty percent of people would
Speaker 2: follow the how to vote card. These days, it's only
Speaker 2: about one in three. According to Professor In McAllister, who
Speaker 2: I spoke to, he's Distinguished Professor of Political Science at
Speaker 2: the ANU, and he says that people are not only
Speaker 2: less likely to follow how to vote cards, they're also
Speaker 2: much more likely to vote tactically. And he gave me
Speaker 2: an example citing the Teal wave at the last election.
Speaker 2: He said that a huge number of people, almost half
Speaker 2: of those who voted for the Teals, were voting tactically.
Speaker 2: They were former Greens and Labor voters who voted Teal
Speaker 2: essentially to get the sitting liberal out. They weren't disaffected
Speaker 2: liberal voters, and this adds to other evidence from past
Speaker 2: elections that suggest progressively inclined voters are more disciplined and
Speaker 2: tactical than right wing voters. So between eighty and eighty
Speaker 2: five percent of those who vote number one for the Greens,
Speaker 2: those preferences eventually flow back to Labor, even if they
Speaker 2: pass through other left of center candidates en route. But
Speaker 2: only about sixty percent of one nation preferences come back
Speaker 2: to the Coalition. When I spoke to the ABC's election
Speaker 2: analyst Anthony Green about this, he said that the concern
Speaker 2: for the Coalition has always been when the Coalition loses
Speaker 2: votes to these right wing parties, they tend to wander off.
Speaker 2: These are his words. They tend to wander off all
Speaker 2: around the ballot paper. They don't automatically come back, and
Speaker 2: if history is any guide, the overwhelming majority of Green's
Speaker 2: preferences and Teal voters preferences will ultimately flow back to Labor.
Speaker 2: So the big question in this election campaign is whether
Speaker 2: the embrace by Dutton and the Opposition of One Nation
Speaker 2: and Family First will bring them a similar benefit, or
Speaker 2: given their very divisive policies, will it simply drive away
Speaker 2: more votes than it attracts. All I can say is
Speaker 2: we'll know pretty soon.
Speaker 1: Indeed it's not well, Mike, Thank you so much for
Speaker 1: your time.
Speaker 2: Thanks a lot.
Speaker 1: Also in the news today, Labor has announced it will
Speaker 1: fund some of its election promises by raising visa fees
Speaker 1: for international students. Finance Minister Katie Gallahas says the fee
Speaker 1: hike only amounts to a small rise, up from sixteen
Speaker 1: hundred dollars to two thousand. Meanwhile, when asked about the
Speaker 1: costings for the coalitions election promises, Opposition leader Peter Dutton
Speaker 1: said they'll be provided in due course, but says they
Speaker 1: have been properly funded and prominent indigenous leaders have accused
Speaker 1: politicians of fueling division over Welcome to Country ceremonies following
Speaker 1: Peter Dutton's comments that the ceremonies were overused. Former Liberal
Speaker 1: minister Ken Wyatt says Welcome to Country ceremonies are not political,
Speaker 1: and co chair of the Ularoo Dialogue Pat Anderson says
Speaker 1: the ceremonies are not about welcoming people to Australia, but
Speaker 1: to cultures and lands. I'm Ruby Jones. This is seven am.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening.