Former rugby league player standing for Queensland seat of Herbert in the election says it would be a ‘deal breaker’

Clive Palmer’s star candidate in the crucial marginal seat of Herbert has said he is prepared to walk from the party if Palmer decides to direct preferences towards Labor.

Greg Dowling, a former Queensland rugby league player turned north Queensland business owner, said any Labor preference deal would mean he “was probably out the door”, a decision which could ultimately cost Labor’s Cathy O’Toole the seat.

Dowling followed his cane-farming father’s conservative voting path, rather than that of his two older brothers, who backed the Labor union movement. He said his decision was made more than three decades ago.

“Clive is still looking at it, I will wait for him, but the thing I can honestly tell you, it will be a fight with me, because I have never voted Labor in my life and I don’t intend to start now, because I remember what they did to us, in the late 80s, early 90s,” he said, from his campaign office in Townsville.

“When I was playing football, I was paying 53c in the dollar in tax,” he said.

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“So I was paying more tax then I was earning. And the country was going broke. I was paying 14% interest on my housing loan. Two years later, I bought another house, was paying 18% – locked in, fixed, so your variable was higher. Then we get into negative gearing, where it went from 20% to 28%. You want me to keep going? Credit cards were 30%. The country was in strife. That was the start of what was going on.”

And if Palmer decided to place Labor ahead of the LNP candidate, Phil Thompson?

“We’ll cross that when we come to it, it could be [a problem],” he said.

“In the end it comes down to me, but having said that, I can tell you now, it won’t go to Labor. I can honestly say that.”

A single seat Newspoll of Herbert, published in the Australian on Tuesday, had the two major parties locked at 50%-50% on the two-party preferred measure, showing no shift from the 2016 election, when the seat was decided by just 37 votes. The poll put the United Australia Party vote at 14%, which, along with the Katter Party vote (10% in the poll) and One Nation (9%), could be instrumental in deciding the outcome of the seat.

The LNP has been in discussions with Palmer for a preference deal, with the former Queensland MP having maintained many of his National party links, despite his very public falling out with the state LNP during the Newman government years.

Scott Morrison deflected questions about Palmer at a campaign stop in South Australia on Tuesday morning. Asked how the Liberal party could contemplate a preference deal with someone who had left Queensland Nickel workers in the lurch and had compared him to Heinrich Himmler, Morrison said:

“Look, I’m not going to be held back by that, nor am I here to offer any defences of Mr Palmer. He’s big enough to do that for himself. Parties will have discussions before close of nominations and the preference tickets will be issued next week in the normal course of events.”

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Dowling said a Labor preference deal would be a “deal breaker” for his candidacy in Herbert, but he did not believe he would be forced into having to make that decision.

He also ruled out supporting Labor in any balance of power situation.

“In the end, Clive is the boss. and I don’t challenge the boss, I go with confidence he will make the right decision,” he said.

Palmer’s resurgence in the north comes despite the controversy of the closure of the Queensland Nickel refinery, one of the region’s biggest employers. Palmer blamed the closure on the administrators, and recently committed to paying workers’ their lost entitlements, although any forthcoming funds were unlikely to appear until after the election.

Palmer is the party’s number one Senate candidate, and his multi-million dollar ad spend, which has already topped $30m with 25 days left in the campaign, could take him back to federal parliament at the expense of the One Nation candidate Malcolm Roberts.

The minor parties are vying for the same vote in north Queensland, but Pauline Hanson’s party is vastly outmatched from a resources point of view, despite Hanson’s enduring personal popularity in her home state.

“I think he has a great chance of getting in, I really do,” Dowling said.

“There are people out there saying he has been ostracised, all of this, for the refinery and all that, but they still like him.

And I think they will still vote him in, I really do. And it is starting to turn now, they have seen what he is about. I think he has a great chance of holding power.”

On the ubiquitous ad campaign, Dowling was nonchalant:

“He’s got the money and he’s not afraid to spend it,” he said. “And that’s going to get him across the line.

“All he is doing out there, is telling people what he is going to do. They all spend money in the media, it’s just Clive is ramming it home.”