Pauline Hanson is elated that her party will double its representation in the Senate. Photo: Wiki.
Pauline Hanson’s One Nation has picked two extra senators in the federal election, doubling its total to four.
The Australian Electoral Commission finalised the count for most states this week and announced surprise results in New South Wales and Western Australia, where it was largely expected Labor would add to its total to secure the last Senate seats in each state.
But in NSW, One Nation’s Stacey Warwick picked up the last spot and in WA the party’s Tyron Whitten got home.
Malcolm Roberts was returned in Queensland, while Senator Hanson herself was not up for re-election in the half-Senate election.
When the new Senate terms kick in from July, Pauline Hanson’s One Nation will be four-strong in the Federal Parliament.
But that’s not enough for official parliamentary party status, which requires five elected representatives and brings extra resources.
Her Senate candidate in Victoria just missed out on being elected.
Nevertheless, Senator Hanson has expressed her delight over her party’s success at the recent poll, saying she was “elated” to have doubled the representation.
“It would be lovely to have that fifth one to get the party status in the Senate by all means,” Senator Hanson told Sky News.
“[But] I’m buoyed by that confidence that people are giving One Nation now and will hopefully move forward with it.”
She said she would like to see the parliament bind anyone to either stay with a party or leave the parliament if they have been elected under a party banner but subsequently cut ties once elected.
But she wouldn’t rule out trying to coax some of the now “independent” crossbenchers to join One Nation in order to gain party status.
“If the parliament is not prepared to do anything about it and bind these people … well, then I have no obligations to anyone,” she said.
One Nation’s representation in the Senate will equal that of the Nationals following the election.
Senator Hanson suggested the Liberals and Nationals had dropped the ball during the election, while her party had put out “commonsense” policies.
“The thing is, they’re not going to pick up those Greens or Labor voters at all with their policies,” she said.
“The trouble with the Coalition was they never pushed back. They couldn’t state their case.
“They couldn’t debate the issues with the Labor Party and their lies.”
At the 2016 double dissolution election, One Nation won four Senate seats, which was a record high for the party.
But infighting, defections and citizenship technicalities – plus mixed fortunes at subsequent elections – saw the numbers reduced to just two (Senators Hanson and Roberts) in the last term.
This result now returns One Nation to its highest-ever levels of federal parliamentary representation.
But even though Labor did not pick up the expected three Senate seats in NSW and WA, its total across the nation still places it in a position where it won’t necessarily have to rely on One Nation votes.
The Greens have the balance of power in the Senate and if the government can reach agreement with them over difficult legislation, the One Nation vote won’t matter.
In the ACT, independent David Pocock and Labor’s Katy Gallagher were both re-elected to the Senate.
Meanwhile, the AEC has confirmed it is investigating the circumstances of an extraordinarily high percentage of informal votes cast at a small NSW polling site in the electorate of Cowper.
In the town of Missabotti, near Coffs Harbour, 50 of the 111 ballots cast for the House of Representatives were declared informal and rejected.
Voters there have reported being given misinformation from AEC staff about how to number their ballot papers.
