'It was a mistake': Hanson blames outgoing WA Premier for One Nation's poor showing
One Nation leader Pauline Hanson has compared Liberal leader and now outgoing WA Premier to sour milk, saying "it was a mistake" to make a preference deal his party.
Ms Hanson said she was pleased with the progress One Nation made through the 50-day campaign even though with 67 per cent of the vote counted on Saturday night, her party was polling just 4.7 per cent, much lower than expected.
A Newspoll at the start of February had shown One nation getting 13 per cent of the vote.
But she slammed the Liberals' decision to keep Colin Barnett as leader, blaming him for the party's loss.
"It was a mistake," she said of the preference deal with the Liberal Party.
She said she would carefully consider any future preference deals with the major parties.
"All I heard all day was ‘why are sending your preferences to the Liberal party?'. I think it was more Colin Barnett. The people here did not want Colin Barnett," she said.
"He should have stepped aside.
"It's like when you’ve got milk in your fridge and it starts to go sour, that’s what it was like with Colin Barnett.
"That deal has actually done damage to us."
Ms Hanson said she was proud of the campaign run by her party, despite a number of candidates pulling out in the lead up to the vote.
"For a 50-day campaign, we have done extremely well here," she said.
"The efforts of Colin Ticknell, he's done a fantastic job leading a team of around 50 candidates.
"We didn’t have the resources as we do in the eastern states, so I'm so pleased with the votes we've got.
"I do believe it will translate to seats in the upper house."
Ms Hanson said her party was "not extremists" and had been misrepresented in the media, but not with the voters.
She is still hopeful of winning seats in the WA upper house, but so far the party is polling fourth, behind Labor, the Liberals and the Nationals, but above the Greens.
