Campbell Newman, Pauline Hanson and Amanda Stoker (Images: AAP)

In a few months, and after more than a quarter of a century, Pauline Hanson and her divisive brand of politics could be consigned to history. Or that’s what the maths of the Queensland seats in the federal Senate make-up suggests, whatever way you add or subtract votes.

And although former Queensland Liberal premier Campbell Newman has decided to join the race — representing the Liberal Democrats — it’s hard to see him finding a spot in Canberra either. That’ll come as a surprise to him because he made it very clear that the nation needs him: Prime Minister Scott Morrison stood for nothing, he announced at the weekend, and Labor leader Anthony Albanese represented outdated socialism.

“Six years ago I declared my political career over,” he said. “But I simply cannot sit by and watch Australia being so poorly led and this crisis being so poorly managed by our major political parties.”

(A quick correction: it was probably more the voters of Queensland who declared his political career over after he lost both his seat and government in an electoral landslide.)

But back to the Senate race, where the LNP’s Senator James McGrath, who toppled Amanda Stoker for the number one party position, will be elected, along with the Nationals’ Matt Canavan. That relegates Stoker to the third conservative position, which is looking shaky. Certainly not impossible, but shaky.

On Labor’s side, senators Murray Watts and Anthony Chisholm are almost guaranteed another long stint in Canberra.

That leaves the fifth and sixth positions up for grabs in a fight between Stoker, the Greens, Labor, Pauline Hanson’s One Nation and now the Liberal Democrats’ Campbell Newman.

If you can get a ringside ticket, I’d do it now.

Ask the party apparatchiks the likely outcome and even inside the same party room there’s nothing near agreement — which makes this tussle even more interesting.

The most likely two scenarios being raised are that Stoker wins the third conservative position, leaving the final seat up for grabs, and right now that looks as though it will belong to the Greens. Or that the Greens steal the fifth position, leaving that final seat up for an ugly tug of war between those at the back of the pack.

That’s when Newman might come into play. It’s unlikely he’ll win, they all say, but it’s where he sources his votes that might determine who loses their seat. Hanson or Stoker.

If Newman takes votes from One Nation, he almost definitely won’t get elected given the low base of the Liberal Democrats’ presence in Queensland — but neither will Hanson. And if he takes them from the LNP, it’s almost certain Stoker will suffer.

The irony there will be that he kills off the candidate who probably mirrors most closely many of his views.

(There’s another column there on how all the safe seats will be taken up by males… but that’s for another time.)

One thing is certain. Newman’s stance against how Queensland has dealt with the pandemic won’t win him too many votes from Labor. Annastacia Palaszczuk’s historic win late last year showed the support the Labor government has for how it is being handled.

And those Labor voters who might disagree with the lockdowns are more likely to throw their support behind the Liberals than a former Liberal premier turned Liberal Democrat candidate who they tossed out only six years ago.

But hopefully, after a pandemic that has the country craving a common purpose, the divisiveness of Hanson will — next year — be consigned to footnotes of history.