Colleen Harkin tells Rita Panahi why her 20 years of Liberal loyalty ended with One Nation

Colleen Harkin spent more than 20 years inside the Liberal Party, stood for it federally and sat on its state administrative committee, and on 3 August Pauline Hanson named her One Nation's lead upper house candidate for South-Eastern Metropolitan at the Victorian election on 28 November. That same day Rita Panahi put it to her on The Rita Panahi Show on News24, asking why a two decade Liberal is now a One Nation candidate. Harkin, a regular on the programme, said the decision took years.

"I guess I'm like thousands of other Liberals, it was death by a thousand cuts," she said. "It wasn't a quick or immediate decision. It was a long period of being disappointed in a lack of core principles and sticking to what you think a Liberal Party would do."

Harkin says she didn't change, the Liberal Party did

Harkin resigned in June after decades of volunteering, fundraising and campaigning for the party, and was its 2022 federal candidate for Macnamara. Her resignation letter told members that factionalism, expediency and a lack of policy conviction had left the Liberals in an "insipid state".

"I have not changed. The Party has. I no longer believe the party is committed to the same values that inspired my loyalty."

She put the same point to the programme more bluntly. "Eventually I just couldn't do it anymore, to be honest, so I resigned my role at the Liberal Party like lots of other people," she said. "I've decided I want to put my money where my mouth is, where I think I can make a difference."

Harkin led the Supreme Court action over the $1.55 million the Liberals lent John Pesutto

Her break with the party went beyond a resignation letter, because she also led the five state executive members who went to the Supreme Court to block the $1.55 million the Liberal Party lent former leader John Pesutto, through its investment company Vapold, to cover the debt he was left with after losing a defamation case. The plaintiffs argue the money was held in trust for members and wasn't the party's to lend.

The action is still running, and while Harkin has handed the lead plaintiff role to Tony Schneider, she has said she'll stay involved and looks forward "to taking the stand".

That gives her something few defectors carry into a campaign, a live Supreme Court action against the party she has just left.

The teacher and IPA researcher behind the candidate

Harkin is the Director of Education Programs and a Research Fellow at the Institute of Public Affairs, where she runs the think tank's research into the national curriculum. She holds a Master of Education, a Bachelor of Education and a Diploma of Teaching, with postgraduate study in high incidence learning difficulties.

Before that she taught in primary and secondary classrooms across both government and private schools, worked as an education consultant in Australia and in Japan, and spent time in the IT sector in business development and project management. She owned a small business building award winning bespoke databases for international clients, and she has worked for Liberal senator Jane Hume. Outside work she has sat on school and sporting club committees and fundraises for the Royal Children's Hospital.

That background is why education sits at the centre of her candidacy. She wants academic standards raised, activist material out of the curriculum, the administrative load on teachers cut, and a voucher system that lets parents choose the school.

Asked if she was a trophy candidate, Harkin said a trophy is at least good for something

At the press conference announcing the team, Harkin was asked whether she was the trophy candidate, and her answer made plain what she thought of the question.

"What does a trophy do? At least the trophy is good for something, right, looks good, that's it. I'm clearly there to work hard, do what I think needs to be done for the state of Victoria."

The case she made against her old party in the same interview is that it has stopped fighting. "We're in dire straits. Victoria's in so much debt, the crime is out of control," she said, "and I just think that for me and lots of other people around me, the Liberal Party hasn't shown the courage that it has required to land a punch for 11 years."

What she says she wants instead is "integrity being stated, safety in our streets, prosperity, all of those things that are expected of a government that we haven't had".

Four months out, Harkin says it comes down to a ground game

There are under four months until polling day, which Harkin argues is more room than it sounds. "Most the average person on the street's not really taking too much notice at the moment," she said. "Those of us who are politically engaged and interested watch these things much more closely than the average punter does."

Her plan is doors and street corners rather than advertising. "It'll be a ground game, a lot of out on the streets, meeting people, talking to people, talking about what needs to be done," she said. "I think there's an absolute agreement in what needs to be done. It's who's best, has the integrity, to get that job done."

She also pushed back on the idea that Victoria is permanently lost to the right. "If you remember, 40 years ago Victoria was a very centre-right Liberal stalwart kind of place, and it's changed a lot over the last couple of decades," she said, adding that One Nation's Victorian membership is now its largest of any state.

Where One Nation's Victorian vote actually sits right now

Harkin told the programme that some state polling had One Nation leading. That was the picture in July, when RedBridge polled 6,500 Victorians for the Victorian Trades Hall and put One Nation first on 27%, a point clear of Labor and the Coalition on 26 each.

Three Victorian polls published since have moved against it, and our poll tracker carries all of them. Freshwater, in the field 31 July to 3 August, has the Coalition on 30%, Labor on 25 and One Nation third on 22. RedBridge and Accent, polling 28 July to 1 August, have the same Coalition 30 and One Nation 22, with Labor on 23. Roy Morgan, the largest of the three at 2,084 respondents, has One Nation on 23.5%.

RedBridge and Freshwater both closed before or as One Nation unveiled its Victorian team on 2 August, so neither of them asked anybody about a ballot paper with names on it. Roy Morgan was in the field after Warren Pickering was named Victorian leader on 3 August, which was long enough to show up in a survey and nowhere near long enough to campaign. Pickering was on 16% as preferred premier in that poll, against 35.5% for Liberal leader Jess Wilson, four days into the job.

None of that adds up to One Nation leading Victoria today, and not one of the numbers above was taken with a full team on the board. The party has said its policy announcements are still to come, and Harkin and the other seven candidates now have a campaign to run, which none of these polls has measured.

"Four months is a long time, a lot can happen between now and the end of November, but there is most definitely a mood for change," Harkin said, "and who can best do that change I think is the actual real question."

Follow Colleen Harkin

South-Eastern Metropolitan covers Mordialloc, Frankston, Cranbourne, Berwick and Rowville, and like every upper house region it elects five members at once. That means Harkin doesn't have to finish first, she has to finish in the top five, which in practice takes about one vote in six, or roughly 17%. Our upper house preview sets out how the regions and the quota work, and the full team covers the other seven candidates.

Her name appears on the second ballot paper, the white one, and only for voters inside her own region. Victoria is also the last place in the country still using group voting tickets, so a single 1 above the line hands your preferences to a deal you never see. That loophole is the subject of a bill sitting in the Legislative Council right now, and it hasn't passed.