Pauline Hanson ‘just a Liberal puppet’, One Nation candidate says – ABC Online

Updated March 09, 2017 18:24:36

A high-profile One Nation candidate who has spoken out against Pauline Hanson's preference deal with the WA Liberal Party has confirmed she will boycott the party's how-to-vote directive.

Margaret Dodd, who is running in the seat of Scarborough, told 7.30 that when she joined the party four weeks ago, she was assured that she would be able to decide her own preferences.

Now she has a message for Ms Hanson going into the final days of the campaign.

"Pauline, you are supposed to be listening to the people. If you can't listen to your own candidates, what chance have the people got?" she said.

Ms Dodd has unveiled her own banner for Saturday's election instructing voters to put the Liberals last.

Ms Dodd, whose daughter Hayley was murdered in 1999, is running to push for "no body, no parole" laws which Labor has supported.

Her daughter's body has never been found.

Ms Dodd said her own leader was not being straight with the voters or the candidates.

"Don't be so dishonest, don't pretend that you are about something and then go and do deals with the Liberals unless you are going to be upfront and tell your candidates before they join that you are just a Liberal puppet," she said.

"It makes me feel as though I have been lied to.

"[It] makes me feel that the party I have joined is dishonest and their only answer to any criticism is, you are disendorsed, suck it up or leave and you are not working as team.

"It's very hard to work as a team when you are working in a dictatorship."

Ms Dodd's stance adds to the growing dissent in the party over the preference deal with the Liberal Party.

The party's candidate for Kalamunda resigned over the deal last week and another candidate was disendorsed after speaking out publicly against it.

It is not just candidates who are angry.

The preference deal has forced market stallholder Vivian Davies to reconsider how she will vote in the Liberal-held seat of Wanneroo.

Inspired by Donald Trump's rise to power, Ms Davies was determined to vote for Ms Hanson when 7.30 caught up with her at the beginning of the West Australian election campaign.

"He [Trump] is following through with his promises," Ms Davies said.

"A lot of Australians are saying that we need that here and, yes, I do believe a lot of people will vote for Pauline.

"Her policies stand for what most Australians would like to see happen to the country rather than it be over-run by things that are politically correct all the time."

Traditionally a Labor voter, Ms Davies said she was turning to One Nation because of its policies on housing, immigration and helping "the ordinary Australian".

But, when 7.30 revisited her stall going into the final week of the campaign, the 62-year-old was having second thoughts and now does not know who she will vote for.

She said Senator Hanson had misread her supporters by striking a preference deal with the WA Liberals.

"I really believed that Pauline Hanson would have romped it in but there's a lot of people that don't want Barnett back and I can't understand why she's gone that way," Ms Davies said.

"I don't want Barnett to get back in. I was shocked, absolutely shocked."

Senator Hanson has been touring the state this week, trying to reassure her supporters that she is not running candidates in WA to "shore up support" for either the Labor or Liberal parties.

She has repeatedly stressed that voters themselves should take control of their preferences.

However, election analyst William Bowe believes the preference deal has received more attention than One Nation had predicted.

"Even people who are not exactly sure what a preference deal is, they've picked up loud and clear that One Nation has picked a side," he said.

"And once they have done that, they lose that fabulous advantage of being the anti-politics party, of being removed from the whole establishment, of being the kind of Donald Trump-style option that is just going to go in there and tear everything apart.

"If they have a disappointing performance here, I think the important thing is that they are going to think twice about entering a preference deal with the Liberal-National Party in Queensland."

One Nation's pitch to voters does not appeal to 19-year-old first-time Wanneroo voter Shannon Beckett-Smith.

"I think the One Nation party is just a very strong, opinionated group that are trying to force things onto other people," she said.

"Banning Muslims, taking off the burqa, that type of thing.

"We're in Australia, I get that but we've got to respect other peoples' cultures."

Ms Beckett-Smith said she would be voting for Labor because she had been unable to find full-time work and she believes the party has got the best plan for curbing unemployment.

Post the mining construction boom, the state has the highest jobless rate in the nation.

At a pre-polling booth for the seat of Wanneroo and other key northern suburbs electorates, Colin Barnett still appeared to have significant support after more than eight years in office.

Despite the state's record debt, Chris and Jeannie Clarke said they would be voting to give Mr Barnett a third term.

"He's run up a bit of a bill," Mr Clarke said.

"But we ran up a bill about 40 years ago when we bought a house and it is paid off now.

"Everybody forgets what the Barnett Government has done in the last couple of terms.

"He's built that magnificent stadium we've got.

"People have got to look at the big picture, not just what is happening today."

Topics: government-and-politics, elections, state-parliament, one-nation, perth-6000

First posted March 09, 2017 16:06:42

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Pauline Hanson 'just a Liberal puppet', One Nation candidate says - ABC Online