The warning for the Liberals was in plain sight the day after the Budget at the end of last month. After New South Wales Senator Concetta Fierravanti-Wells launched a full-throated attack on her leader Scott Morrison she had swift, unprompted support from a Senate colleague.

One Nation leader Pauline Hanson surprised many in her quick and unequivocal agreement with her conservative Upper House colleague.

“(Morrison) is a bully and I back the Senator (Fierravanti-Wells) up completely with that. He is a bully because I have experienced it myself,” said Hanson.

“He is a man (who says) you do it ‘my way, or there’s no way’.”

As has happened so often in the complex relationship between Morrison and Hanson, nothing happened. The prime minister sought to mop up the fallout from Fierravanti-Wells’s initial verbal blast and took the One Nation leader for granted.

Those with longer and more substantial relationships with the Queensland senator would have known better. Hanson might vote with Morrison but she has never liked him – quite the opposite. They have a polite, functional relationship at best. She hates the way he treats her.

Now the One Nation chickens look like coming home to roost for the Liberals and the Morrison Government and it couldn’t be worse for a Coalition scrambling to protect its tenuous one-seat majority in the House of Representatives.

The new element is an otherwise obscure senate battle at the end of the Upper House election in Tasmania. The ramifications could spread through a slew of must-hold Liberal seats from Far North Queensland to metropolitan Melbourne.

Hanson is white hot with anger about a decision by Tasmanian Liberals to do a senate preference swap with independent Jacqui Lambie in the race for the last of six spots up for grabs on May 21.

Lambie isn’t up for re-election but her candidate Tammy Tyrrell is running and has been given a fair chance. The uber popular senator is campaigning hard for her friend and work-mate and, with some left over Liberal votes, could be successful.

Meanwhile, One Nation thought its lead Tasmanian candidate Steve Mav was a good show but if he’s starved of preferences that calculation looks grim.

One Nation thinks the Tasmanian Liberals are dealing with Lambie in a bid to shore up the vote of Bridget Archer in the northern seat of Bass and the neighbouring electorate of Braddon held by Gavin Pearce.

However, the party reckons this will be outweighed by a conservative backlash in rural Tasmanian communities.

Hanson shot back on Wednesday in a fierce and possibly deadly style. She is drawing up a hit list of Liberal moderates who will be denied any One Nation preferences, with Hanson’s party giving support to Labor ahead of Morrison’s team.

Some of these might not matter much. But at least two could be pivotal in Anthony Albanese’s advance to the prime ministership.
The Cairns-based seat of Leichhardt in Queensland is high on Labor’s target list as is the northern Tasmanian seat of Bass. These are held by moderate Liberals Warren Entsch and Bridget Archer who had a chance of surviving any Labor wave because of their strong local popularity.

Hanson’s party will also give preferences to Labor ahead of the Liberals in leafy metropolitan seats like Brisbane in Queensland, North Sydney in New South Wales and Melbourne’s Goldstein – moves which might not be critical in isolation but won’t help Morrison’s efforts to hang on to these inner city enclaves.

Hanson is not going to abandon conservative Nationals and Liberals who will still get preferences from One Nation, something that will reassure the LNP fighting to hold Flynn and Longman in Queensland among other essential “must hold” Coalition seats.

Hanson’s fury can be heard in her initial reaction to the Tasmanian Liberals’ preference gambit.

“Tasmanian voters won’t be fooled and will very likely kick the Liberals out anyway. The Liberals stand for nothing,” she said.

“Labor is rotten to the core but the Liberals are just as bad because they only pretend to fight for conservative Australian values.”

The horse trading (and back-stabbing) for the preferences is in full swing ahead of how-to-vote cards being settled in time for early voting to begin on Monday, May 9. Hanson has again shown she can make her presence felt and, after 26 years, she can continue to surprise.