If Pauline Hanson is openly talking about preference deals in Farrer, the Liberals and Nationals should treat that as a giant flashing warning sign — not a negotiating opportunity.
Because if One Nation is asking for your preferences, it is not because they want to help you. It is because they know you are helping them.
And if the Coalition falls for that in Farrer, it won’t be strategy. It will be political stupidity of the highest order.
Let’s be blunt: One Nation is not taking votes off Labor in Farrer. It is taking votes off the Coalition. That is what makes this so ridiculous.
The Liberals and Nationals are not dealing with a friendly little side hustle on the right. They are dealing with a party that is actively trying to rip chunks off their own base and turn conservative voters into permanent defectors. The Farrer by-election is already being framed as a test of a fractured Coalition, with One Nation explicitly in the mix as one of the forces feeding off that division.
And yet somehow, every time One Nation starts circling, sections of the Coalition still convince themselves the answer is to throw it a preference ladder.
Honestly, at that point, you deserve what happens next.
If Hanson wants the deal, ask yourself why This is the simplest political test in the world.
If Pauline Hanson is publicly agitating for preference arrangements in Farrer — and Barnaby Joyce is already out there whingeing that major parties might try to block One Nation through preference flows — then One Nation is telling you, in plain English, what it needs to become competitive.
It needs Coalition help. That should end the conversation immediately.
Because if a party is trying to replace you, undermine you, cannibalise your vote, and present itself as the “real” voice of your own side of politics, the answer is not to preference it.
The answer is to starve it. Anything else is just political self-harm dressed up as tactical cleverness.
One Nation is not the Coalition’s ally. It is the Coalition’s parasite. This is the bit too many Liberals and Nationals still seem unwilling to say out loud.
One Nation does not grow by converting rusted-on Labor voters in large numbers. It grows when Coalition voters get fed up, drift off, and decide they would rather vote for anger than for drift.
That is exactly why Farrer matters.
This seat is not some abstract theory. It is a real-time example of the Coalition’s fragmentation. The Liberals and Nationals are both contesting. Michelle Milthorpe is in the race after polling 20 per cent at the last election and finishing second after preferences. And One Nation is trying to muscle in as the beneficiary of conservative discontent.
So why, in God’s name, would the Liberals or Nationals reward the party that is making their own political problem worse? That is not strategy. That is a death wish with a how-to-vote card.
Labor has shown more backbone on this than the Coalition. Labor’s position on One Nation has been much clearer than the Coalition’s ever has been. Labor puts One Nation last every single time.
Why? Because if you think a party is racist, divisive, unserious and unfit to shape public life, you do not sneak around doing grubby little deals with it the minute a seat gets tight. That is called having a line.
The Coalition, by contrast, keeps trying to play both sides of the fence. It wants to condemn One Nation when it sounds respectable to do so — and cuddle up to it when the electoral arithmetic gets uncomfortable.
That is not principle. That is weakness. And voters can smell weakness a mile off.
Preferences are not just maths — they are political permission This is where the Coalition keeps lying to itself.
Preferences are not some sterile administrative detail. They are not just “how the system works.” They are political endorsements, whether parties like admitting it or not.
If the Liberals or Nationals preference One Nation ahead of other candidates in Farrer, they are sending a very clear message to conservative voters: One Nation is acceptable. One Nation is within the tent. One Nation is part of the same political family.
That is how you normalise a party. That is how you build one.
That is how you train your own supporters to think that if they are cranky enough, angry enough, or reactionary enough, there is a perfectly respectable landing place further to the right — and the Coalition will help them get there.
Then, five minutes later, the same Coalition figures will be on television acting absolutely stunned that One Nation is getting stronger.
Please. If you preference the parasite, don’t act shocked when the host gets weaker.
And in Farrer, this is even more idiotic. Because Farrer is not a simple Liberal-versus-Labor contest where someone can hide behind the usual lazy excuse of “stopping Labor”.
That excuse does not even survive contact with reality here.
This is shaping as a four-way contest between the Liberals, Nationals, One Nation and Michelle Milthorpe. That means preferences are not some side issue — they are the election. ABC has already described Farrer as a test of the Coalition’s ability to hold its own base together amid pressure from both One Nation and an independent challenger.
Which means the logic should be obvious even to the most backroom-brained strategist in Canberra: If the Liberals and Nationals want to contain One Nation, they should both put One Nation last.
That is how you neutralise the threat. Because if both Coalition parties and Labor all put One Nation last, One Nation’s primary vote stays exactly what it is: a protest vote with a ceiling, not a pathway.
But if one or both Coalition parties start getting cute and decide to feed preferences to One Nation, they are not containing the threat. They are manufacturing it. They are turning a nuisance into a contender. And if that happens, they will have nobody to blame but themselves.
The truth is brutally simple. If Pauline Hanson is publicly talking about preference deals in Farrer, it is because she knows preferences are the difference between being noisy and being dangerous.
And if the Liberals or Nationals are dumb enough to give her what she wants, then they should stop pretending they are defending the centre-right and admit what they are actually doing: outsourcing their future to the party eating them alive.
If they think One Nation is a threat, they should act like it. Put it last. No caveats. No “local flexibility”. No preference gymnastics. No cowardice.
Last.
Because if you keep feeding the thing that is destroying you, at some point you are not the victim anymore.
You are just an idiot.
Denise McHugh is an experienced educator in Tamworth. She is Chair of the NSW ALP Education and Skills Committee and Deputy President of the Independent Education Union (IEU).
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