Well, something is happening in Queensland that is not happening anywhere else.

Campbell Newman

Ah, Queensland. Beautiful one day, bat shit crazy politics the next. The Queensland Senate race is shaping to be one of the key races in this election and could shape what far-right politics looks like over the next three years. Simply put: Pauline Hanson, Clive Palmer, Campbell Newman and others can’t all fit in the same single seat.

What we know

Being a half Senate election six of the state’s twelve seats are up for grabs. This means that quota for a seat requires the attaining of 14.29% of the total votes cast. Looking at the 2019 results, the LNP received 38.90% (2.7231 quotas), the ALP 22.57% (1.5797), Pauline Hanson 10.27% (0.7189), the Greens 9.94% (0.6956), Palmer 3.52% (0.2466), Katter 1.77% (0.1240) with a whole bunch of other minor parties and independents receiving nothing of great significance.

The net result of all of that, once the counting had been completed some two weeks after the polls closed, was LNP 2 seats, ALP 2 seats, PHON 1 seat and the Greens with the final seat.

The 2022 cycle can probably expect a couple of things, based on current polling – a strengthening of the ALP first preference vote, a dip of the LNP first preference vote, a split of the far-right vote (for a couple of reasons I’ll go into detail below), and the Greens remaining relatively stable.

In practice, this means we can expect the following likely results: 2 LNP seats, 2 ALP seats, 1 Green seat and then…. who knows?

Splitting the right

The rise of far-right politics globally, and within Australia, has been a key point of western democracies for the last few election cycles and were brought to a head during the COVID-19 pandemic, with so-called ‘Freedom’ rallies occurring with monotonous regularity (including, without the littlest hint of irony, after most key restrictions had been lifted across the country), and politicians across the far-right spectrum more than willing to push conspiracy theories in the name of gaining support, and therefore votes, virtually without shame.

Whereas in 2019 the Palmer United Party was fairly low-key in terms of converting its strategy to direct votes (if not on actual election spend, or its wider priority of passing preferences to the Liberal and National candidates which directly help elect several government members), as shown by the figures above, the emergence of Craig Kelly as a ‘leader’, and with the budget of a sitting Federal Parliament member, gave the party a more public face and a media ready to lap it up.

Conversely, Pauline Hanson has struggled to maintain momentum with the United Australia Party (what was in 2019 called Palmer United) essentially splitting their vote.

Former Queensland LNP Premier and Brisbane Lord Mayor Campbell Newman is running as an independant and has a fairly similar policy positioning to both UAP and PHON. He has solid name recognition throughout the state which could play into when the counting gets serious for the final, sixth seat in the Senate.

What the result will look like

Who knows? A lot will depend on how much the LNP vote falls, how much the far-right vote is split between UAP, PHON and Newman, and what happens to the Greens vote.

As things stand, the Greens are likely to finish third in the first preference count as a result of the vote split discussed above, if current polling is to be believed. I think it is. Even if the Greens vote remains stagnant at roughly 10%, there will be more than enough surplus votes from the ALP, plus a small amount of preference flows, to almost certainly get them elected to one seat. It might be late in the count, but it will almost certainly happen.

The final seat could go anywhere and there is still a small chance that the LNP will pick it up. Palmer and Newman are both unlikely to, but their preferences may be vital in determining what happens. Below the line voting is not commonplace in Queensland, so the ticket preference flows become vital in the initial stages as candidates start to be excluded.

In saying that, when we’re talking fine margins later in the count below the line preference flow does become important, and that may well come to pass here.

Either way, there is a real chance that Pauline Hanson does not win her current Senate seat this time around. How likely is that? Probably not very, but I’m not going to bet the house on any outcome at this point.

There is a final question that needs answering: how much of the LNP vote fall will translate directly to an ALP vote increase as opposed to simply moving to other candidates on the right of the political spectrum. In Queensland, this is very much an unknown quantity.

What happens to One Nation without Pauline?

Watch this space. But if that was to happen, I actually would not be surprised to see pressure put on Malcolm Robert to resign his seat with Hanson then picking up the casual vacancy this would create. If Roberts would willingly do so is unclear, but without Hanson, PHON will struggle to exist as a party at the Federal level.

So now what?

Get the popcorn ready for what is one of the most fascinating Senate counts for a while, and one that could shape politics for years to come.