Senator pitches himself as honest advocate against governments that he says rode the good times and neglected the industries left over when things changed

Glenn Lazarus, as good as his political slogan, is doing the hard yards.

The former rugby league prop, known as the Brick with Eyes, is locked in a grassroots battle to hold on to his federal Senate seat for Queensland ahead of Pauline Hanson.

Having cut ties with the party of Clive Palmer – which was bankrolled to the tune of $21.5m by the ill-fated nickel business that accounted for 27% of all Australian political donations in the past two years – there is no TV advertising, private jet or morning television interviews for Lazarus now.

He has already clocked up more than 5,000 km in his vehicle, the Brick with Wheels, across regional Queensland in what he says is a “very ugly itinerary” for the rest of June.

“I won’t be at home for a while. I’ll have to get the machete out to cut through the overgrown trees and God knows what else,” he says.

Lazarus has ventured into central Queensland’s mining job heartlands – Emerald, Gladstone, Maryborough, Mackay – to emerge with a message: the boom is bust. Jobs are the dominant concern – especially to halt an exodus of young people to capital cities. Housing markets and small business trade are smashed. But hopes don’t hang on a mining revival, Lazarus says.

He is pitching himself as the honest advocate against major party governments that rode the boom and neglected the industries left over when it petered out.

Many regional councils and chambers of commerce have “shovel ready” alternative projects and infrastructure that could be kicked off with $5m to $10m in government investment, he says.

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In Gladstone, there are plans and feasibility studies for a healthcare hub.

In Emerald, which lost 20,000 jobs through the mining slump, there is a proposal for a meat works to create 250 jobs. It needs about $7m.

In Mackay, which has lost 30,000 people, there is talk of rebuilding old economic pillars.

“Before mining came into it, Mackay was built on agriculture and tourism, they’ve got access to the Great Barrier Reef just as much as Cairns does,” Lazarus says.

“They’re very serious about lobbying governments and trying to convince them that the mining boom certainly is over and they need to look at other industries.”

He blames “all governments of the day” and the sway of the mining lobby for a lack of foresight.

“All we seem to have got from this government is a promise of a couple of dams … I don’t think they’re in touch with the communities and local governments on what is absolutely needed.

“I know for a fact that unfortunately this government reduced our renewable energy target, which had the flow-on effect of billion-dollar projects being taken overseas.

“I know the mining companies don’t like renewable energy, but this state is basking in sunlight 350 days a year [and] we’ve got plenty of wind up here, not just from politicians.”

Glenn Lazarus Team politics is mostly from what the Griffith university political professor Duncan McDonnell calls “no fixed ideological abode”, but it has shades of economic nationalism and protectionism.

Lazarus opposes the sale of large agricultural assets to overseas investors and decries the failure to protect local jobs in the shipping industry.

He has received donations and campaign assistance from the Maritime Union of Australia.

In a narrow sense, he is coming from a similar place to Hanson, says McDonnell, in that “both of them are obviously mobilising on an anti-party type of platform, for people who are supposed to be dissatisfied with the major parties, with politics as we know it”.

“They’re presenting themselves as the voice of the people, Glenn Lazarus is an ordinary bloke and so on,” he says.

The academic, who has studied the Palmer United party in depth, says he is slightly surprised that Lazarus has not been more tarnished by his “dalliance” with Palmer.

“Sure, he left the party but he was there for a considerable amount of time and he benefited from Palmer’s money and a lot of that money came from Queensland Nickel,” McDonnell says.

Lazarus has also avoided paying much of a price for copying his party constitution from Nick Xenophon Team, an echo of PUP earlier lifting its constitution “word for word” from the Liberal party in the ACT.

“I must say if you’d done that in most European countries you’d be dead in the water, you’d just be treated as ridiculous,’ McDonnell says.

But the last of Queensland’s 12 Senate berths is likely to come down to Lazarus or Hanson, he says (adding that the Greens’ Andrew Bartlett is more likely in play for the 11th seat).

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Lazarus and Hanson are both populist candidates with name recognition but a key difference makes him unlikely to take votes directly from her, McDonnell says.



“Lazarus doesn’t play the race card,” he says.

Instead it will be Hanson, having stolen the Australian Liberty Alliance’s main policy of anti-Islam, that will be wiping the floor with the ALA, who could “only dream of her media coverage”.

“I think Hanson’s got a pretty good chance for that seat, which is obviously quite striking in the context of her comeback from 20 years ago,” McDonnell says.

Lazarus will be vying for the more moderate votes that would otherwise be up for grabs by the Xenophon team candidate Suzanne Grant, who is yet to gain media traction, he says.

Lazarus says the feedback he receives is that “overall people are very appreciative” of the role of the Senate crossbench in blocking government moves such as deregulating university fees, GP co-payments and privatisation of Medicare.

“These are things people don’t want and I’ve been overwhelmed with support as far as being part of the crossbench that’s been able to oppose a lot of these ideas and bills,” he says.

“We’re going to hear both sides of politics make a hell of a lot of promises in the next couple of weeks and it’ll be the crossbench that will keep them accountable for the decisions they’re making.”

Anti-major party sentiment is such that the prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, on whose watch Senate voting rules were changed to the disadvantage of the micro-parties, is “in for the shock of his life” once the results roll in, Lazarus says.

That much seems assured, whether it’s in the form of Lazarus, or Hanson, the Australian far right’s own would-be “Lazarus”.