Pauline Hanson has backed Tony Abbott to lead Australia’s Liberal Party, while offering to set aside personal differences and co-operate with the Coalition to remove Labor from government.
The One Nation leader made the comments after appearing at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Brisbane, where the right-wing parties competed for support amid a fractured conservative vote.
Ms Hanson said it would be difficult for either One Nation or the Coalition to govern alone, although she insisted she did not want to be “around the table” with the Liberals.
She also criticised Angus Taylor, who became the first sitting opposition leader to address the Australian CPAC. A day after describing him as a “smarmy management consultant”, she said former prime minister Tony Abbott had the strongest prospects of leading the Liberals.
Ms Hanson dismissed another potential leadership candidate, shadow treasurer Tim Wilson, as “full of himself” and “woke”.
“He put us last in the last election, called us a racist party,” she told News24. “If they’re thinking about Tim Wilson, I think you better think again because I’ve got no time for that man.”
She said she got on “reasonably well” with former Liberal treasurer Josh Frydenberg, who is reportedly considering a return to politics after losing his seat at the 2022 election.
Mr Taylor said he would welcome Mr Frydenberg “playing whatever role he’s able to play”, adding that he needed “every good Liberal with shoulder to the wheel” before the next election.
However, the opposition leader rejected an idea floated by Mr Frydenberg to increase the goods and services tax while reducing income tax.
“We will not be raising the GST in the middle of a cost-of-living crisis … we’ll put Australia and Australians first, but we won’t be raising taxes,” Mr Taylor told ABC’s Insiders programme.
In an extract from his forthcoming memoir, Mr Frydenberg urged the Coalition to focus on the political centre rather than trying to appeal to the extremes. Mr Taylor, speaking at CPAC alongside Nationals leader Matt Canavan, nevertheless described the Coalition under their leadership as “unashamedly on the right”.
The divisions on the right were also evident in the response from Labor energy and climate change minister Chris Bowen, who said the Liberals and One Nation were competing in a “race to the right and the race to the bottom”.
Opposition energy spokesman Dan Tehan told the conference that the Coalition would scrap Labor’s policies aimed at achieving net-zero emissions. He said he was using “every forum available” to explain the Coalition’s energy plans.
Mainstream journalists were issued “fake news” media passes at the conference and were not permitted to question its leaders, while some were refused entry. CPAC was brought to Australia from the United States in 2019.
