One Nation leader Pauline Hanson has urged Opposition leader Angus Taylor to refrain from undermining her party, following his assertion that their policies would “bankrupt us” and inflict “endless suffering.”
Over the past day, Hanson and Taylor have exchanged a series of criticisms, although the Liberal party head has not completely dismissed the possibility of a preference deal with One Nation in future elections.
On Thursday evening, Hanson expressed her displeasure through a video statement on social media, responding to Taylor’s earlier remarks at the Sydney Institute that day.
“Feeling quite let down,” Hanson commented in a video shared from her travels in the UK, emphasizing, “Angus, you should know I’m not your adversary.”
Taylor, on the other hand, seemed to reinforce his stance, describing One Nation’s policies as “lacking coherence.”
Taylor called One Nation ‘a column of smoke’
Speaking to Sky on Friday, Taylor responded to a question on whether he would make a preference deal with One Nation by saying that preference deals would be sorted closer to the election.
Taylor said that he’s open to “work with anyone to get rid of this Labor government”.
“But what I am saying is that One Nation doesn’t have the answers.”
“If you pick a small subset of their policy, they will add a trillion dollars of spending over 10 years — about a hundred billion dollars a year. That would drive up inflation and interest rates,” he said.
Hanson had accused Taylor of picking up policies from One Nation, including on immigration, net zero and the fuel excise.
“So on the policies that you say won’t work, it’s not the truth at all,” she said.
Hanson also called for the Opposition to work with One Nation. “The people of Australia are crying out for change,” she said.
“Listen to the people, Angus, and work with me.”
During his speech at the Sydney Institute on Thursday night, Taylor called One Nation’s team “a one-person show”.
“One Nation claims to offer a way out of our national malaise,” he said. “In reality, they would only make things worse.”
He then criticised One Nation for frequently switching positions, saying the party was “a column of smoke”.
He also said One Nation lacked government experience, while its economic policies could increase the size of the government, which Taylor claimed to be the “root cause of our economic crisis”.
“If they found their way into government, they’d learn the lesson the hard way.”
While One Nation has been rising in the polls to at one point be the most popular party by primary vote, support has slipped since Senator Hanson’s address to the National Press Club in June, where she called for Australia to be a monoculture.
Since taking over as opposition leader in February, Taylor has presided over the coalition falling to 17 per cent support in Newspoll, a historic low.
Deputy Opposition leader Jane Hume said there was still uncertainty about One Nation’s policies.
“The reason why One Nation don’t cost their policies is because they don’t want to know what the answer is. The reason why One Nation doesn’t have a plan is because they have a slogan written on the back of a napkin,” she told Seven’s Sunrise.
– With additional reporting from the Australian Associated Press.