Meet the ex-Liberal couple crafting One Nation’s campaign strategy

She was a Young Liberals director. He ran for office as a Liberal. Both worked in senior roles for moderate faction Liberal ministers.

But Mark and Shani Jones have now swapped royal blue for orange.

The married couple’s new political advice firm, Camelot Consulting, is helping to craft One Nation’s campaign strategy for the NSW and Victorian state elections, in which the party looms as the Liberals’ greatest threat.

“It’s a good catch for One Nation,” said former Liberal government whip Shayne Mallard, for whom Shani worked as an advisor. “Both Shani and Mark are highly talented.”

Mark had worked most recently as a tobacco lobbyist, and Shani as a media advisor to the NRMA. No longer members of the Liberal Party, they founded Camelot in January as both a lobby firm and political consultancy.

So far, there’s no plush corporate office. The firm’s address is listed as a studio apartment in inner-city Sydney.

Within weeks of opening, however, Camelot had picked up work for One Nation on its South Australian election campaign, a crucial early test of the party’s rising popularity. Party returns show One Nation incurred debts to Camelot totalling more than $150,000 either side of the poll, in which the party won four lower house seats.

Camelot’s attention now turns to Victoria’s state election in November before the NSW poll next March. In both cases, Liberals are working out how to wrest power from Labor without losing ground on their right.

Two years ago, Shani was still attending Liberal events.“Great night, great people!” she wrote on LinkedIn, posting a picture of herself next to then-federal Liberal leader Peter Dutton.

When she left NSW parliament in 2023, she described her six years on Macquarie Street as an “absolute privilege”.

Her last boss was moderate Natalie Ward, the then-minister for the prevention of domestic violence. Shani said at the time that one of her proudest achievements was working on laws to criminalise coercive control.

“We will never know of the lives saved by this legislation, but if it saves only one life, then it has been a success,” she said.

Now her firm is working for a party leader who describes domestic violence as a “two-way street” and questions why women do not simply leave abusive relationships.

Like his wife, Mark has Liberal roots.

The 38-year-old ran unsuccessfully for the seat of Shellharbour in 2015 before serving as a deputy chief of staff to arts minister Don Harwin, a senior member of the Liberals’ moderate faction.

Mark abruptly quit in 2019 to join a lobbying firm run by the Liberal moderate powerbroker Michael Photios. From there, he left for British American Tobacco where he worked as an in-house lobbyist,“leading the government relations function” and developing policy “designed to combat organised crime”.

One Nation has called for the tobacco excise to be halved, echoing concerns from other politicians, including NSW Premier Chris Minns, that high taxes on legal cigarettes have fuelled a violent black market.

Approached about their new business and professional allegiance, both Mark and Shani Jones declined to comment.

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