Abbott and Hanson's ancient feud is rife with political drama and biblical comeuppance

What is it about Tony Abbott and his main character energy? He's been back in town — politically speaking — for barely a fortnight, and already the air is redolent with garment-rending, ancient feuds, biblical comeuppance and a listening tour. 

In Perth on Thursday, Australia's preferred prime minister (patent pending), Pauline Hanson, wept as she recalled the "witch hunt" Abbott initiated against her nearly 30 years ago, which ultimately landed her in the Brisbane Women's Correctional Centre for 11 weeks under the prisoner number C7009.

Two things.

First: This came approximately two days after Hanson advised Victorian Premier Jacinta Allan to "suck it up, sweetheart" about being called a witch. I mean, I know the new thing is we don't care, but it's worth noting, at the very least.

Second, and much more importantly: The ancient feud between one-time seminarian Tony Abbott and one-time fish and chip shop proprietor Pauline Hanson (is this a new reality format? The Loaves Versus, literally, The Fishes?) could not have resurfaced at a less opportune time.

Because Abbott, as Liberal Party president, is reportedly open to the idea of a cooperative strategic alliance with One Nation. Which would be a lot simpler if he hadn't spent quite so much time in the late 1990s trying to blast Hanson from the face of the Earth. Especially when — as it turns out — she remembers everything.

Seeing as this is essentially a biblical parable, let's tell it like one.

A fateful night

Abbott, when first elected to the federal parliament in 1994, was a fervent and energetic young conservative who joked that he was the ideological love child of John Howard and Bronwyn Bishop. And he was but a parliamentary pup in 1996 when the anti-Keating landslide installed John Howard on a parliamentary majority so incredible that at first the Member for Oxley — Hanson, a former Liberal candidate who'd been disendorsed for her scathing views on welfare for Aboriginal people but was elected by the people of Ipswich anyway as an independent — went kind of unnoticed.

That all changed on September 10, 1996, when Hanson made her first speech to parliament, confiding her fears that Australia was "in danger of being swamped by Asians". The speech rocketed the green, inexperienced Hanson to national and even international fame.

But something fateful happened — I did warn you this would be Biblical — in Canberra later that night. When the parliament rose, Hanson went out for a drink at La Grange, a Manuka nightclub that at the time provided the geographical coordinates for just about every politico-media atrocity.

A gaggle of Liberal staffers started heckling Hanson at the bar. David Oldfield, then a young adviser in Tony Abbott's office, stepped in to defend her. They fell into conversation.

Oldfield — according to Michael Duffy's (in hindsight, rather generously-titled) 2004 book "Latham And Abbott: the lives and rivalry of the two finest politicians of their generation" — found Hanson compelling. He urged Abbott to work with Hanson, and use her momentum to shift the Liberal Party to the right. But Abbott, a student of history who knew very well how the Labor Party's 1955 split had kept it out of office for a generation, told Oldfield to "stay away from her". Hanson, he judged, had the potential to open up a significant fissure on the right of Australian politics.

Oldfield, however, remained intrigued. He began working covertly for Hanson while on Abbott's publicly-funded payroll, designing a new party and bringing in his old diving pal David Ettridge to assist. The two Davids and Hanson became the establishing triumvirate of One Nation. After nearly six months of this clandestine operation, One Nation was launched publicly in April 1997 and Oldfield resigned from Abbott's office.

'Our own personal Judas'

Abbott was devastated. Not by the loss of Oldfield, but by the betrayal.

"Even the best of us get saddled with our own personal Judas," he lamented to the parliament, while enduring taunts about his "earthquake error" from Latham, who 20 years later would himself join One Nation, as if this tale needed any more plot twists.

Abbott was filled with remorse about having nursed this viper in his own office. Also, he was afraid that colleagues would think him credulous or complicit.

And so, having unwittingly sponsored the birth of One Nation, Abbott set out to plough its fields with salt. He pursued Oldfield relentlessly, commissioning investigations into his use of public resources (Oldfield was obliged to reimburse the taxpayer for every call he had made to Hanson from his work phone) and accusing Hanson in parliament of "allowing her party to be taken over by a charismatic psychotic whose activities most resemble those of Rasputin". 

When One Nation in June of 1998 won a significant number of seats in the Queensland state election, Abbott broadened his attack. In particular, he focused on One Nation's unusual structure, in which a company with three directors — Hanson, Oldfield and Ettridge — dictated everything from branding to the use of public electoral funding, which after the Queensland election came to around half a million dollars. 

In the parliament, he argued that One Nation wasn't even a legitimately constituted party. In private, he built a guerilla movement to destroy it, collecting donations to establish a trust called "Australians For Honest Politics", which funded legal challenges to One Nation's party registration initiated by disaffected former members.

Five years later, Hanson and Ettridge were convicted of electoral fraud and Hanson spent 11 weeks in prison before the conviction was overturned by the Supreme Court. Abbott, by then a minister in the Howard government, wrote for the Daily Telegraph that he was "sorry that Pauline Hanson is in gaol. I believe that the sentence she received was too severe. But I'm not sorry for trying to expose the fact that One Nation was never a fair dinkum political party. It was a company with three directors, not a party with 500 members."

OK. Apologies for all that detail, but it's worth understanding that when Abbott muses even broadly about the potential for, if not collaboration, then at least peaceful co-existence with One Nation, it is a new chapter in a long and florid story.

Hold your nose and accept the preferences

On the face of it, 2026 Tony Abbott — who set off a buzz of speculation about a One Nation preference deal when he told the Australian Financial Review that "as a general rule, it makes sense for parties of the right to preference each other just as parties of the left have always done" — might appear to be in serious disagreement with 1998 Tony Abbott.

But he isn't, really. Now, as then, his concern is that a serious split among voters on the right in Australian politics can only benefit the Labor Party. In 1998, his cunning plan was to crush One Nation. In 2026, with Hanson too big to destroy, it's to adopt the same kind of "hold your nose and accept the preferences" approach that Anthony Albanese employs with the Greens.

Would Hanson be open to any level of collaboration with her old oppressor?

"I'm like a bloody old elephant, I don't forget," she told the Perth crowd on Thursday. Not promising.

Adding some snap, crackle and pop to this saga is the fabulous dynamic within the Liberal Party itself around the election of Abbott as party president. In the days since his elevation, the sweaty averrals from Liberal moderates explaining that the presidency was mainly an administrative, fundraising, backroom, form-filling type of role have been heavily interspersed with the explosive sound of Abbott giving yet another interesting interview. 

And now he's going on a national listening tour.

If you were conducting a paper audit of the Liberal Party, you might wonder why they've tapped their most gifted rhetorician to handle the admin, and put the spreadsheet guy in charge of speechifying.

But that's their business, and while the Liberal Party is working out its plan of attack, One Nation is making money. The party says its "Fire The Liar" fundraising drive generated $2 million in its first two days.

"Fire The Liar". That's catchy as hell. Wonder who came up with it?

Hanson's chief of staff, James Ashby, happily confirmed that it was the brainwork of a talented former staffer.

A former Tony Abbott staffer, to be clear: Peta Credlin, who used to run Abbott's prime ministerial office and now works for Sky News.

"I was watching her show, and I stole it off her. Nothing quite like a borrowed line," Ashby told 2GB. Oof.