Pauline Hanson’s One Nation flips on 30-year Coalition how to vote card standoff

Pauline Hanson’s One Nation and the Liberal National Coalition have buddied up, breaking a 30-year stand off.

One Nation has rewritten its how to vote cards, urging Pauline Hanson supporters to mark the Coalition candidate as their second preference on the ballot.

The Coalition has returned the favour, suggesting voters vote One Nation as their second preference in the vast majority of lower house seats.

“If it means saving Peter Dutton by shifting a ‘how to vote’, then we will do so,” One Nation chief of staff James Ashby told The Daily Telegraph.

One Nation telling its voters to vote for the Coalition flies in the face of Senator Hanson’s 30-year political career, which rose to notoriety when she was disendorsed by John Howard.

In the 147 seats One Nation is contesting this election, 139 of the Coalition’s how to vote cards suggest voters put One Nation number two.

This includes in Peter Dutton’s seat of Dickson, where industrial electrician Joel Stevens is challenging for the Opposition Leader’s long-held marginal seat.

“(Pauline Hanson) says things that people want to hear, she doesn’t deliver on it, but she says things that people want to hear,” Mr Dutton said in 2017.

“And if that works for her, good luck to her. But at some stage, as we found out in 1998, that comes to an end … There’ll be a crash landing again of One ­Nation.”

However, now even the Coalition how to vote cards in Dickson are telling voters to go with One Nation as their second preference.

Voters are not obliged to follow the how to vote cards when they cast their votes.

One Nation was born when the Liberal Party disendorsed Senator Hanson in 1996. Since then the minor party has taken votes off the Coalition in Queensland.

Senator Hanson is not up for re-election on May 3, but party colleague Malcolm Roberts is.

One Nation’s historical reversal in putting the Coalition number two is also at odds with Clive Palmer’s Trumpet of Patriots.

The fellow right wing, Queensland-based protest party is putting any incumbent last on the how to vote cards.