Victorian Liberal leader Jess Wilson dismisses One Nation threat to split vote at upcoming state election

Victorian Opposition leader Jess Wilson has denied Pauline Hanson’s One Nation party will split voters during this year’s state election. Speaking on 3AW, Ms Wilson was grilled by host Tom Elliott over the necessity of a preference deal with One Nation to ensure a change of government come November. “You cannot ignore the fact that right now One Nation has quite probably got the same level of primary voters as your party does in the polls or might out poll it,” Elliott said. “When are you going to sit down with Pauline Hanson and say look we have to do a preference deal?” Ms Wilson said Victorians “cannot risk” voting for non-government parties at the ballot box. But she was coy about a potential preference deal with One Nation. “Those conversations will happen much closer to the election,” Ms Wilson said. “We need to know who are the candidates? What are the policies? “I think that everyone would understand the importance of having done the due diligence before preference negotiations happen.” Ms Wilson dismissed the results in the South Australian election, where Ms Hanson’s party surged past the Liberals to claim seats, stating it was a “very different scenario ” to the Victorian election. “It’s important to separate South Australia and Victoria,” she said. “In South Australia we had an incredibly popular Premier in Peter Malinauskas, the most popular politician in the country at the moment. “He was always going to be re-elected, and re-elected in a landslide. “Here in Victoria people want to change the government, they know that this state is headed in the wrong direction.” Crime, policing numbers, debt and government corruption were all key factors Ms Wilson stated as points of frustration for Victorians under Jacinta Allan’s state government. “I hear people saying, this Labor government in Victoria has let me down time and again, they are trashing the future of this state,” Ms Wilson said. “The only way to change the government this November is to vote number one for the Liberal and National parties.”