Pauline Hanson’s right-hand man, who once quit politics amid controversy, is now hoping the party can seize power in the state

James Ashby lays out One Nation's agenda for Queensland: 'We’re not mucking around here'

Less than three years ago the one-time Liberal party staffer James Ashby was, by his own account, done with politics and running a small printing business from his parents’ property in the Sunshine Coast hinterland.

His clients included a local vet, a realty agency and in time, another political party that was at least 18 months away from an extraordinary resurgence.

Today, Ashby stands at the heart of One Nation as Pauline Hanson’s chief of staff, and touting the unthinkable as the party takes a tilt at not just a slew of seats but control of government in a Queensland election due over the next year.

He says the Liberal National opposition, which he warns should brace for more defections to One Nation after being left red-faced by the departure of the sitting MP Steve Dickson, “might be looking at forming a coalition of government with Labor”.

Queensland MP Steve Dickson defects from LNP to join One Nation Read more

“That’s scary,” Ashby says.

The One Nation machine continues to invite intrigue with rumours about a pair of wildcard candidates in the Queensland campaign: namely Ashby and Hanson, the latter in a move that would leave her federal Senate spot open to someone else from the party.

Ashby continues to insist that suggestions he will run are “pure speculation”, dismissing accounts by party sources, including former executive member Ian Nelson, that he has repeatedly shown interest in standing for office.

Of the Hanson rumour, Ashby says: “I can’t make comment on that.”

Hanson and her federal Senate sidekicks Malcolm Roberts and Brian Burston continue to draw daily national media attention, their share of voice undiminished despite continuing mishaps.

They range from the debacle surrounding their former colleague Rod Culleton, to Hanson’s contested account of being invited to Donald Trump’s US presidential inauguration, to social media controversies that have triggered the loss of some state candidates and sharp criticism of others.

One Nation’s short-lived candidate for Currumbin, Andy Semple, who quit after being told to delete a joke on Twitter about an LGBT T-shirt, panned the party following revelations it had lobbied for tickets to Trump’s inauguration.

“1 nation prone to hype and over exaggeration. When will the penny drop with the public?” Semple said on Twitter on Wednesday.

He also told Guardian Australia that Hanson’s call for a national identity card to avert welfare fraud, including by non-citizens, showed she was “rather good at creating a headline – pity the substance of the policy is a terrible idea”.

“So today One Nation wants to target Australians on welfare. We’re constantly told not to infer all Muslims are jihadists but it seems fine for the senator to infer all Australians who receive welfare are ripping off the system.”

Hanson has had no trouble finding a media platform for the policy pronouncements there have been so far for Queensland. They include a call for the revival of Queensland’s upper house and a ban on burqas in public buildings (which was part of One Nation’s previous federal platform).

One Nation candidates push anti-gay messages and Port Arthur conspiracy theory Read more

Both have found favour with the independent Queensland parliamentary Speaker, Peter Wellington, though the former has been slammed by Katter’s Australia party as a disaster for the bush as Hanson’s plan involves halving the number of lower house MPs to represent constituents.

Hanson has also called for an amnesty on prosecutions of people who source black market cannabis oil to treat medical conditions amid delays in local supplies. Dickson says the LNP and the Labor government have dragged their feet on the legalisation of medical cannabis, and the medical supply regime is not due to come into effect until the end of the year.

The prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, has branded an amnesty in the meantime as irresponsible.

The details of the rest of One Nation’s agenda in its Queensland birthplace and stronghold are yet to be spelt out.

The party opposes coal seam gas for its unproven effects on the land as well as rural residents. The implications for the state’s multibillion-dollar gas export industry, which both major parties have credited as the single most important factor driving near-term economic growth, are uncertain.

Ashby says that by the end of this month One Nation may release a plan to stimulate industries in regional and northern communities, which he accuses both major parties of neglecting.

One Nation recognises the strength of its support base – which a poll late last year put at a a 16% primary vote statewide – as being outside the urban south-east of the state.

“We’re reinvigorating the regions. The goal is to give them back the voice that’s been drowned out by the oversaturation of politicians in that south-east corner,” Ashby says. “They’ve been weak, there’s been no foresight for Queensland as a whole.”

A former senior LNP powerbroker has told Guardian Australia One Nation would be a dangerous prospect in power. Other LNP figures have noted with disquiet One Nation’s continuing support for candidates from the fundamentalist Christian right, such as Tracey Bell-Henselin, who has drawn criticism for her comments about the LGBTI community.

Bell-Henselin is a former candidate for Rise Up Australia, whose links to the Catch A Fire Christian ministries resulted in the latter’s charity status being revoked this week. The Rise Up national secretary, Yvonne Gentle, says that in the absence of its own campaign in Queensland, there is every chance its supporters will lend a hand to One Nation on the ground.

We’re interested in going to this next election to win government James Ashby

Ashby says the party has held no discussion with the LNP about sharing power, “and we’re not interested in forming government with the Liberal National party”, he adds.

“We’re interested in going to this next election to win government and Pauline’s made that very clear.”

In the next state parliament, which will be expanded to 94 seats and will involve a fixed four-year term, One Nation would need to command at least 48 seats to win government outright.

Its last high watermark in Queensland politics was 11 seats in 1998.

The party has announced 36 candidates, lost two, and gained the sitting MP in Dickson.

“We’re not mucking around here, it’s not just about the balance of power,” Ashby insists.

“We want to go out there and change the way in which Queensland is run. It’s clear the other two parties just haven’t had any foresight or longevity plan.”

It’s an extraordinary position for a former Liberal party aide, who quit politics amid controversy surrounding his role in the downfall of Peter Slipper, his one-time employer and the federal Liberal MP turned Labor-appointed parliamentary speaker.

In a scandal dubbed “Ashbygate”, Ashby and the former federal Liberal minister Mal Brough were investigated by the Australian federal police over claims Ashby had illegally copied Slipper’s diary and leaked it to Brough.

The AFP dropped its investigation last October after what Ashby described as “nothing more than a political campaign by Labor”.

Ashby had taken up the printing trade and called the then One Nation executive member Nelson to offer his services for the party’s 2015 Queensland election campaign material.

Nelson says he had offered the services “at cost, but on one condition, that he got to meet Pauline”.

Ashby remained the party’s printing supplier until he volunteered to use his camera to take footage of Hanson on election day, when she narrowly lost the seat of Lockyer.

A licensed pilot with a decade’s experience, Ashby came to spend long hours in the air with Hanson during One Nation’s watershed federal campaign, winning her ear, her trust and a role as her right-hand man.

“I only became involved in the party through request,” Ashby says. “At that moment I had always indicated I had no interest in returning to politics. Slowly the party was in need of people to assist, keep it afloat, they were looking for executive members that would help drive the party forward, not backwards, they were looking for some fresh younger blood. My skill set was completely different to everybody else.”

Pauline Hanson denies using taxpayer money for One Nation's Queensland campaign Read more

Another younger recruit to play a key role in Hanson’s return to prominence after years in the political wilderness was the musician and social media business consultant Saraya Beric.

Beric, 32, says she was asked by Hanson to operate her Facebook page during her run at the New South Wales Senate in 2013. Hanson’s son Adam, a carer, had seen Beric give a social media marketing talk to a business on the Gold Coast.

Beric ran Hanson’s social media strategy until the One Nation leader was elected to the federal Senate. Beric had already become One Nation’s Queensland and national secretary, as well as the administrator of its inner Brisbane office, which had its rent paid for through a donation by a Melbourne property developer.

She says the dynamics behind the growth in popular support that propelled Hanson and three other One Nation candidates to the federal Senate last July became obvious through the social media engagement.

“There were outside forces boosting it,” Beric says.

The more party figures attacked Hanson – who routinely attracts withering derision from members of the broader public opposed to her right-leaning agenda – the more supporters rallied around her, Beric says.

When the government under Tony Abbott said they’d let in 12,000 Syrians, the phones were ringing non-stop Saraya Beric, former One Nation national secretary

Other events that were seen as linked to One Nation’s agenda of limiting immigration, especially of Muslims, and a program that amounts to a cultural purge of Islam in Australia, had a similar effect.

“When the government under Tony Abbott said they’d let in 12,000 Syrians, the phones were ringing non-stop,” Beric says. “We even had refugees ringing – a guy who’s in Port Pirie now, a refugee from the Middle East, even he was saying we can’t have them here.”

Turnbull’s vanquishing of Abbott as prime minister led to a “whole heap” of conservative Liberal party supporters “jumping ship”, she says.

“Then there were a couple of terrorist attacks overseas, and I think the final one was when Turnbull said Pauline was not welcome in politics.

“That really got up people’s noses because parliament’s supposed to be for everyone, really, not just lawyers or political staffers who move up the ranks. When Turnbull said that, I just went, ‘Yes!’ Whenever they attacked, the support grew.”

Beric’s departure from the party has left one apparent skills void in the One Nation office.

On its website, the party lists the full profiles of only eight of its 35 current state election candidates, though it promises “more info” to come.

Beric declined to elaborate on previous reported comments that her exit was linked to her disappointment “at the treatment of some people in the party”.

But it’s clear the controversy that surrounded Ashby during the Slipper affair has also accompanied his rise in One Nation, notably in his falling out with Nelson, a longtime party figure.

Nelson says: “Everyone’s saying I’m bitter, I’m not. I did it for 20 years mate, so all I want is for Pauline to succeed and not have [Ashby] around her.”

Shan Ju Lin, the former One Nation Bundamba candidate who was dumped over Facebook comments that “gays should be treated as patients”, says “Ashby is the person that wanted to disendorse me and Pauline listened to him”.

Shan Ju Lin dumped as One Nation loses another Queensland candidate Read more

“From his communication I can see that,” Lin says.

“If he does run, Pauline will lose 50% of her supporters for sure. That will just make the party look very bad, also because he has a history.

“Pauline really has to wake up very soon before Ashby drags down the party.”

Hanson remains a staunch supporter of her chief of staff.

While laying out One Nation’s bold agenda in Queensland, Ashby borrows a metaphor from one of his pilot instructors to spell out the risks for a party that has once before collapsed in disarray after unheralded electoral success.

“Taking off and flying along is all well and good but you’ve got to realise it doesn’t take much to stall a plane or put it in a spin,” he says.

“You gotta remember you gotta fly that thing from takeoff to landing.

“There’s plenty of things that could go wrong; we could put this thing into a spin if we wanted. We’ve still gotta be careful.”