One Nation candidate launches broadside on NSW Liberal leader

The chances of any electoral agreement between One Nation and the NSW Coalition are on shaky ground after a One Nation candidate accused Opposition Leader Kellie Sloane of weakness on the day Pauline Hanson announced her state leadership team.One Nation upper house candidate Stuart Bonds likened Sloane to former Liberal prime minister Scott Morrison, and cited her previous support of gun reform as evidence she would not take strong political positions.One Nation’s Barnaby Joyce, NSW leader Mike Newman and federal leader Pauline Hanson in Singleton on Friday.James BrickwoodBonds’ candidacy was announced alongside the elevation of Mike Newman, an investment banker who served as a trade commissioner to Japan until 2024, as the party’s leader and as the pick to run in the lower house seat of Cessnock for next year’s state election. Newman is the son of former ABC chair Maurice Newman.The announcement, held at a drilling company’s industrial estate on the outskirts of Singleton with Hanson and Barnaby Joyce, underlined the party’s intentions in the Hunter Valley, a region that has historically elected Labor and Coalition MPs.In an interview with the Herald in Branxton on Friday afternoon, Bonds said that, if elected, his priorities would be removing the state’s legislated net zero targets and protecting the mining industry from legislation he said was bankrupting profitable companies.Asked whether he could foresee One Nation cutting a deal with the Coalition, Bonds said Sloane needed to move back towards a libertarian-style free market, before likening her to Morrison, “where they got nothing done for a decade”.Stuart Bonds, One Nation’s candidate for the NSW upper house.James Brickwood“I think she’s a weak leader and she sits on the fence, and this is the issue. They’re trying to be all things to all people all the time, and they just will not take a position.”Sloane’s office declined to comment.With One Nation potentially holding a significant bloc of power in the upper house, Bonds said he would be willing to negotiate with the government but he needed to know what their “red line” was when it came to clean energy targets.Newman announced that if One Nation took power, the party’s cornerstone policy would mean regional businesses would pay zero payroll tax, and the tax would be halved for those in the city.“So all this rubbish about how somehow people think we’re going to be closing down businesses or restricting or cutting – it’s absolute rubbish,” he said.“What we’re trying to do is make NSW like Florida and Texas; make NSW so competitive that we have companies move here.”To pay for these tax cuts, which he said would cost about 5 per cent of the state’s budget, Newman said $9.2 billion would be saved by freezing the number of public servants for four years, except for frontline services.He will contest the seat of Cessnock, one of the safest seats in NSW, held by MP Clayton Barr on a 23.4 per cent margin. But a rising One Nation vote in the mining heartland has encouraged the party’s operatives about the seat’s vulnerability.However, Newman declined to answer several questions about whether he would be relocating to Cessnock if he won the election, only saying he was living “in the regions”.“I’m not working just for the seat of Cessnock. I’m working for the whole of NSW and, rest assured, these people we are going to bring prosperity to these regions by rational, sensible economics,” he said.After the press conference, One Nation advisers clarified Newman was living just outside the electorate, “in the Lake Macquarie region”, but they did not confirm which suburb he resided in.The March vote will be Bonds’ fourth attempt to enter parliament. He has contested three elections in the federal seat of Hunter since 2019.Hanson, Joyce and senator Sean Bell were all on hand to announce Newman as One Nation’s leader and its candidate for Cessnock, and Bonds at the top of the party’s upper house ticket.At one point during the press conference, Newman answered a question in Japanese about business investment conditions from a Japanese media outlet. It prompted a rebuke from Hanson, who declared the rest of the attendees would like to know what he was saying.Newman responded by saying he would finish his answer in Japanese before translating for everyone else.Hanson, Joyce, Bonds and Newman each took swipes at renewable energy during the press conference. The party’s new NSW leader said net zero was contributing to the state’s housing crisis.“We want the [Renewable Energy Zones] dead and buried in the swamps with the mammoths,” Joyce said.Later on Friday, Bonds said renewable projects and operational transmission lines that were already in place would not be torn down. He said he would look to have a quote for a new coal-fired power station within a year of being elected.Start the day with a summary of the day’s most important and interesting stories, analysis and insights. Sign up for our Morning Edition newsletter.From our partners