By Jim O’Toole, Townsville Bureau
Pauline Hanson has betrayed the freedom network yet again by running a candidate at the Hinchinbrook by-election, giving the Liberal candidate third preference ahead of Katters Australian Party which ironically, gave the ON candidate its second preference
This is the second time One Nation has let down the vast freedom community by preferencing the Liberals over aligned independents such as KAP which ON did in the state seat of Mirani handing it over to the Liberals at the election last year.
One Nation until now had refused to disclose its Hinchinbrook preference allocation despite Cairns News asking the party twice whom it would choose.
Leader of People First Gerard Rennick has spotted a crooked deal too posting these comments:
A week ago a LNP source told Cairns News the party had asked One Nation to preference LNP in front of KAP.
Should One Nation hold or increase its claimed 18 per cent polling position Australia-wide, it could help the Liberals regain government.
Furthermore Hanson’s Chief of Staff James Ashby, a Liberal at heart, racked up more than $3.6 million in legal fees in the Federal Court when fighting former Speaker of the House Peter Slipper in 2012 over sexual harassment allegations.
Law firm Harmers Workplace Lawyers wrote off one million dollars but what happened to the $2.6 million balance?
https://www.lawyersweekly.com.au/news/16153-harmers-left-holding-the-bill-in-slipper-costs-case
Two attempts in court to have the Commonwealth cover Ashby’s legal fees failed and he was left to pay the bill himself.
Cairns News has asked Harmers lawyers if the bill has been paid and who paid it.
Cairns News also sent a question to billionaire mining magnate Gina Rinehart, a significant Liberal Party donor, asking if she had paid Ashby’s legal bill. A condition of such a deal could be for her close confidante Pauline Hanson to preference the Liberals all the way to the next federal election.
On critical examination $2.6 million would be beyond Ashby, Pauline Hanson or her party’s ability to pay.
There is no doubt Rinehart could afford it.
Ashby is an integral part of the One Nation apparatus and is a close colleague of Pauline Hanson.
Meanwhile Ingham-born Liberal Premier David Crisafulli has taken a close interest in the Hinchinbrook by-election which some say he helped create by enticing former KAP member Nick Dametto to run for the mayoral position in Townsville which he won convincingly.
Crisafulli is the Liberal member for Broadwater on the Gold Coast, which he won in 2017.
Typically the LNP has run a dirty campaign depicting KAP candidate Mark Molachino as a former member of the Labor Party. What the LNP cunningly omitted from their deceptive media campaign was Molachino’s refusal to join their Brisbane-centric party when asked by party officials to run in Hinchinbrook.
Few people were surprised by the dirty dealing of the LNP which stands out at every state and federal election.
One LNP Facebook account had a photo of Molachino wearing a Labor shirt but it spectacularly backfired with 95 per cent of the comments against the LNP.
Saturday will determine the next member for Hinchinbrook but Cairns News election expert Lex Stewart warns that there will be a proportion of voting fraud as there is at every election.
Bogus voters will cast their vote crossing off fictitious names at real addresses on the roll. How many phantom voters the ALP and LNP have managed to muster for this by-election is not yet known.
Ultimately it seems the voters of Hinchinbrook will manage their own preferences and not doggedly follow One Nation’s how to vote card.
