Labor ramps up Hanson attacks, as Taylor rebukes ally in phone call

Labor is ramping up its economic argument against Pauline Hanson as it prepares to fight an election within the next two years against both One Nation and the Coalition, as Opposition Leader Angus Taylor scrambles to kill off talk of a partnership with Hanson.

As the Coalition attacked Hanson’s admission on the Inside Politics podcast last week that her party was “infiltrated by extremists”, former prime minister John Howard told this masthead he “totally agreed” with Taylor’s stance on One Nation.

Employment and Workplace Relations Minister Amanda Rishworth will kick off a fresh push from Labor to paint Hanson as anti-worker, using a speech to coal miners on Friday to say Hanson would “support the Liberals and Nationals when they deliberately try to keep wages low”.

In a tour through Perth on Thursday, Hanson named Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke, a western Sydney MP, and a group of other ministers as her targets at the next election.

Taylor was forced to shut down the alarm triggered after his ally and frontbencher Tony Pasin called for a seat-sharing arrangement with One Nation that would make it difficult for the Coalition to govern in its own right and would allow Labor to argue the parties would work as a united force.

Senior party sources said Taylor was infuriated by Pasin’s intervention and phoned the South Australian on Thursday to make this clear.

Asked about Pasin’s future, Taylor said the spokesman on government waste would remain in shadow cabinet, before cutting his sentence short and moving on to a point about Labor.

Earlier in the week, new party president Tony Abbott made a general remark about preferencing right-wing parties ahead of left-wing ones. The statement reflected preferencing decisions at recent elections, but was interpreted by some as opening the door to a more formal deal with Hanson.

The same party sources said that Taylor had this week asked Abbott to be more circumspect, as the Coalition’s polling dip and One Nation’s continuing rise prompted panicked statements from opposition figures.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese on Thursday seized on Pasin’s “extraordinary statement”.

“Saying that the Liberal Party should give up on trying to win seats, should step aside, so … One Nation wouldn’t run in some seats where the Liberal Party wants to contest. That says it all about the way that the once-mainstream Liberal Party … is almost giving up, two years before an election,” Albanese said in Sydney.

Treasurer Jim Chalmers took swipes at both parties at Labor’s national policy forum in Sydney on Thursday, saying the C