Liberals and Nationals grappling with surging support for Pauline Hanson’s party, which threatens to replace them as Australia’s main conservative party

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The new Liberal president, Tony Abbott, has backed preference deals with One Nation as he declared the party wouldn’t win the next election by being “slaves to focus groups” and just a “little less woke than Labor”.

The opposition leader, Angus Taylor, all but confirmed he was open to such deals with Pauline Hanson, declaring the party was prepared to cooperate with “whoever we can to get rid of this rotten Labor government”.

Victorian premier says she will always call out ‘misogynist’ views after One Nation leader says ‘if the shoe fits’

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Jacinta Allan has dismissed leadership speculation and says she will continue to call out “sexist, misogynist, hateful” commentary directed at her, despite the One Nation leader Pauline Hanson’s advice to “suck it up, sweetheart”.

On Sunday, the Victorian premier criticised a truck-mounted billboard, which has been travelling around Melbourne for several weeks, featuring AI-generated images of her wearing a black pointed hat alongside the phrase “ditch the witch”.

Hanson compares former soldier’s prosecution for war crimes to her 2003 jailing for electoral fraud, which was later overturned

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The One Nation leader, Pauline Hanson, told a rally in support of Ben Roberts-Smith that the former soldier accused of war crimes is a person “I respect and I admire”, before its organiser called for “an army of civilians” to support him.

About 100 supporters gathered in Rocks Riverside Park in Seventeen Mile Rocks in southern Brisbane on Sunday.