Pauline Hanson insists her One Nation party did ‘extremely well’ in the Queensland election despite failing to win a single seat.
The One Nation leader put on a cheerful face as veteran Sixty Minutes interviewer Liz Hayes asked her if the public’s perception of her party as chaotic had cost it votes.
‘No. No. Rubbish. It’s not chaos when we are actually polling the second highest vote in these seats,’ she said. ‘We’ve done extremely well.’
Pauline Hanson insists her party did ‘extremely well’ in Queensland despite winning no seats
One Nation has failed in its bid to win a single seat in the Queensland parliament, despite a Galaxy poll in early November showing Senator Hanson’s party with 18 per cent support across the state.
The party’s primary vote fell to less than 14 per cent on Saturday, only two weeks after new Queensland Senator Fraser Anning, a former friend of Pauline Hanson, quit One Nation to sit as an independent.
He had replaced Malcolm Roberts, a dual British citizen forced out of federal parliament only to lose his bid for the state Labor seat of Ipswich.
When she launched her Battler Bus to kick off her campaign in early November, Senator Hanson appeared to suggest her party was on track to win more than 11 seats.
Pauline Hanson appeared to suggest on November 6 One Nation would win at least 11 seats
Pauline Hanson’s face was a study of disappointment as One Nation failed to win a single seat
‘Honestly I think this is going to be bigger than it was in 1998,’ she said three weeks ago.
On Sunday, Senator Hanson insisted she had never put a number of the seats she expected to win in her home state.
‘What I said was the feeling was stronger than what it was in 1998,’ she told Sixty Minutes.
One Nation failed to win a seat in Townsville, where a Newspoll showed the nationalist party was on track to win the north Queensland electorate of Thuringowa off Labor.
Pauline Hanson’s look of disappointment after state leader Steve Dickson lost his seat
The campaign suffered a setback when a 7News reporter ambushed candidate Mark Thornton with questions about his wife’s adult shop.
In neighbouring Mundingburra, One Nation’s Malcolm Charlwood denied posting sexist Facebook memes mocking married and overweight women.
One Nation also failed in the farming seat of Lockyer, west of Ipswich, which Pauline Hanson came within 200 votes of winning at the 2015 Queensland election.
Her party’s state leader Steve Dickson, a former Liberal National Party minister, also lost his seat of Buderim on the Sunshine Coast.
One Nation’s candidate for Thuringowa Mark Thornton was asked about his wife’s sex shop
The party’s hopes were also dashed in Maryborough and Gympie, which the party had hoped to pick up.
One Nation’s only realistic hope lies in the central Queensland seat of Mirani, where Stephen Andrew could defeat sitting Labor MP Jim Pearce with Liberal National Party preferences.
With Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk’s Labor Party yet reach a majority of 47 seats in the expanded 93-seat parliament, Senator Hanson insisted One Nation could still be kingmakers.
‘If we win two or three seats or even one seat, whatever, it may come down to our seat to decide who is going to govern,’ Senator Hanson said.
However, ABC election analyst Antony Green predicts Labor will have 48 seats, negating the need for the government to rely on One Nation or any crossbench MP to retain power.