If you’ve been following politics long enough, you might remember John Howard insisting that the Liberal Party will always put One Nation last on its how-to-vote cards.

It seems always doesn’t last forever, with the Liberals announcing that they are preferencing One Nation in the March 21 South Australian election.

Howard confirmed in late 2001 that he didn’t think people should be defined according to their race and that’s why he “argued that One Nation should be put last”.

He added that he had succeeded through the constitution of the Liberal Party that One Nation would be recommended last.

One Nation has a history of racism dating back to, and even preceding, its formation in 1997. Its founder, Pauline Hanson, was preselected as the Liberal candidate for the Queensland seat of Oxley for the 1996 federal election and quickly went about vilifying First Nations people.

The Howard-led Liberals disendorsed Hanson. But it was too late to change official Australian Electoral Commission ballot papers, and she won as an independent.

In her maiden speech, Hanson further declared that Australia was “in danger of being swamped by Asians”.

In April 1997, Hanson established the One Nation party, which won 11 seats at the 1998 Queensland state election.

And Howard eventually changed his view, supporting the Western Australian Liberals’ move to preference One Nation at the 2017 state election, describing it as a “sensible, pragmatic decision”.

Which brings us to coming South Australian election.

The state Liberal Party has announced that it will recommend a second preference vote to One Nation on its how-to-vote cards.

Perhaps One Nation has recanted its racist and homophobic positions?

Well, no. Hanson declared last month that there are “there are no good Muslims”. Not one.

And One Nation’s lead candidate in the South Australian election, Cory Bernardi, is “100 per cent” sticking to his statement of almost 14 years ago linking gay marriage to the social acceptance of bestiality.

It turns out that the Liberal Party’s position on One Nation is not moral but purely transactional – if it’s in the party’s political interest to recommend preferences for One Nation, it will do so.

Even then, it’s hard to work out how this decision is in Liberals’ best interests. Reportedly, after all, One Nation has not agreed to preference the Liberals.

But it will come at a political cost. Traditional Liberal voters in urban seats are likely to be unimpressed with the Liberals’ decision to preference One Nation, driving them towards voting for the Malinauskas-led Labor government.

Whatever the political reason, the Liberals’ decision to preference a racist and homophobic One Nation is taking them further to the extremes when Australia’s effort should be to bring our diverse and multicultural nation together, not pull it apart.

Craig Emerson is a former Labor minister and adviser to prime minister Bob Hawke