Nationals leader Matt Canavan says the Coalition should talk to One Nation about preferences, and that removing the Albanese government matters more to him than who helps do it. The same day, acting Opposition Leader Jane Hume dealt with a question about Pauline Hanson's party by naming the football team she barracks for.
Canavan spoke on Seven's Sunrise on Monday, with One Nation first or second in every recent national poll and the Liberals and Nationals third in all of them.
"I'm willing to co-operate with anyone to get rid of this terrible government," Canavan said, telling News24 he'd encourage voters to put Labor at the bottom of the ballot.
"Put the Labor Party last. They deserve to go last."
Matt Canavan will talk preferences. Angus Taylor has already ruled the whole thing out
Canavan went further than any Coalition leader has so far, saying the parties would discuss a preference arrangement, and that it would have to run in both directions.
"It's got to be a two-way street," he told Sunrise, according to AAP. "I will do everything I can to change and kick out this government."
That is a different sentence to the one his own side keeps producing. Opposition Leader Angus Taylor has ruled out any alliance with One Nation outright. Hume ruled out a formal coalition on the ABC's Insiders on 2 August, telling David Speers "no, no, no, we will not be governing in coalition with One Nation". She then spent the rest of that interview refusing to rule out taking One Nation's support in a hung parliament.
Preferences are the part that actually decides seats. The WA Liberals already worked that out, preferencing One Nation above Labor in Secret Harbour in July while the federal party was still saying the words never and hypothetical.
Jane Hume was asked about One Nation and answered with St Kilda
Hume's contribution that same day came on Chris Taylor, Scott Morrison's former general counsel, leaving the banking lobby to become Hanson's chief of staff.
"But for me you can't change football teams. I barrack for St Kilda."
That's the person currently acting as leader of the opposition, on the subject of who holds the balance of power in the next parliament, reducing it to a jersey.
Voters aren't picking a club. They're picking who runs the country while their power bill, their rent and their grocery bill climb. Hume's own party sits third, and on the DemosAU seat model it wins 13 seats to One Nation's 60. Telling the party in front that you could never barrack for them, from that position, protects a brand nobody is currently buying.
Roy Morgan has the Coalition within half a point of One Nation, and Labor winning anyway
Roy Morgan's weekly survey, published on Wednesday and conducted 27 July to 2 August from a sample of 1,531, has One Nation down 1.5 points to 24%, the Coalition up 1.5 to 23.5% and Labor unchanged on 27.5%. The Greens are up 1 to 15%. It's the closest the Coalition has come to One Nation in months and its best reading since the May budget.
Add those two together and Canavan's argument makes itself. One Nation and the Coalition are carrying 47.5% of the primary vote between them, against Labor's 27.5%. That's 20 points clear of the government.
Labor still leads One Nation 54 to 46 on the count that decides One Nation seats, and it leads because that 47.5% is split almost exactly down the middle. A party on 27.5% is beating a bloc on 47.5% because the bloc won't have the conversation Canavan is trying to start.
The poll Canavan was answering on Monday was RedBridge's, conducted 27 to 30 July, which had One Nation first on 31% and Labor on 29%, its worst of the year. Roy Morgan's own series has swung nine points in six weeks, further than any other pollster records, so its 24% sits at the bottom of the published range rather than the middle of it. The two disagree on how high One Nation is, but both have the Coalition third.
On RedBridge's numbers, Anthony Albanese is still preferred prime minister on 32%, ahead of Hanson on 24% and Angus Taylor on 15%, and his net approval sits at minus 19.
What the argument is actually about: $45 billion for a railway that now stops at Parkes
The reason Canavan's "terrible government" line lands is sitting in the audit reports. These are the projects and programs where the promise and the delivery have come apart, and taxpayers are carrying the difference.
| Project or program | What was promised | Where it landed |
|---|---|---|
| Inland Rail | $8.4 billion over seven years, committed in the 2017 budget, Melbourne to Brisbane | At least $45 billion to finish, on an independent review. Infrastructure Minister Catherine King halted everything north of Parkes in May 2026 and moved $1.75 billion elsewhere |
| Snowy 2.0 | $6.1 billion approved cost | Reset to $12 billion in 2023. Expenditure hit $11.1 billion by 31 March 2026 and the Auditor-General reported in June that the final cost and completion date are still unknown |
| Housing Australia Future Fund | $10 billion fund, 40,000 social and affordable homes by mid 2029 | 1,432 homes as at May 2026, under 4% of the target two years in. The Auditor-General found Treasury hadn't finalised delivery arrangements until May 2026 |
| COP31 presidency and the Fiji pre-COP | A climate diplomacy showcase run out of Chris Bowen's department | More than $150 million budgeted for 2026, including $4.2 million booking foreign officials into five star Fiji resorts, with world leaders set to skip it |
| Net zero programs | $1.7 billion a year in the final Coalition budget of March 2022 | More than $9 billion a year now, on the Institute of Public Affairs' analysis, a more than fivefold rise, separate from $67 billion underwritten through the Capacity Investment Scheme |
| NDIS | A scheme costing $53.8 billion this financial year | The Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission estimates up to $6 billion a year is misused, including by organised crime. The Fraud Fusion Taskforce has stopped just over $60 million since 2022 |
Inland Rail and Snowy 2.0 started under the Coalition. Labor kept signing the cheques
Inland Rail and Snowy 2.0 were both started under the Coalition. The reviews that confirmed how far they'd blown out, and the decision to keep writing the cheques, landed on Labor's desk. The Housing Australia Future Fund, the COP31 presidency and the net zero program spending are Labor's own.
One News has previously set out the fuller spending list. It includes $204.1m in campaign advertising in 2024 to 2025, and $20m on ads asking drivers to take their roof racks off to save fuel. In Victoria, barrister Geoffrey Watson SC put the cost of CFMEU conduct on the state's Big Build at $15 billion, and Labor figures are now split over a royal commission into it.
Canavan hasn't promised One Nation anything either
The gap between Canavan and Hume is posture more than policy. In the same Sunrise interview, Canavan said a coalition with One Nation was unlikely, and for a straightforward reason.
"I believe the Australian people want change, but there's just no real prospect of us having a coalition because One Nation will be competing with us," he said. "They're going to run against us. They're going to run in all of our seats."
Hanson isn't asking for the thing they keep refusing. Her position since March has been that she won't enter a coalition where she's told what she can say and what policies she can put up. She would, though, give a Coalition government supply and confidence. The two sides have spent months ruling out an arrangement neither of them wants.
What's left on the table is preferences, and Canavan is the first of them to say the word out loud.
Hanson is building a machine while the Liberals argue about jerseys
One Nation spent the same week doing the unglamorous work. Chris Taylor started as Hanson's chief of staff and will finalise the party's policy agenda for the next federal election. James Ashby moved up to party director with authority over national operations. In Melbourne, Hanson unveiled a full upper house ticket for the 28 November Victorian election under new state leader Warren Pickering.
Hanson also brushed off the suggestion that a state campaign would cost the party federal momentum. "There's a lot of people from Melbourne who are fed up with the way the state has gone," she said.
The next federal election isn't due until May 2028. On current polling the Coalition goes into it third, and the question put to its senior figures for a month now is whether they'd take help from the party beating them. Canavan attached a condition to his answer. Hume, asked the same thing, talked about St Kilda.
