Would-be One Nation voters can still be enticed back to the major parties — if those parties can prove they are helping people in concrete ways.

As Labor wargames strategies to counter the seemingly inexorable rise of Pauline Hanson, the party’s internal research has suggested support for the Queensland Senator is rubbery.

However Labor strategists also concede people like Senator Hanson on a personal level and are willing to overlook misgivings about her policies or attitudes because they feel like she’s honest and hard working.

Anthony Albanese went after that perceived credibility on Wednesday, accusing One Nation of faking a mass donations drive, prompting Senator Hanson to say the Prime Minister is jealous of the minor party’s rising popularity.

In an escalation of personal attacks, Treasurer Jim Chalmers and Angus Taylor also traded barbs — just a day after Mr Albanese urged everyone to turn the temperature down in political debate.

The escalating hostilities between the leaders follows attention to ads Labor and One Nation have run online this week soliciting small donations towards fighting funds to beat the other.

A One Nation webpage showed the party received more than $2 million by Thursday afternoon for its “fire the liar” campaign that started early Wednesday morning.

Asked whether Senator Hanson had “smashed you in the fundraising race”, Mr Albanese questioned its legitimacy.

“Did she though? Did she? What evidence is there?” he asked reporters in Sydney.

“It is an example of slogans being put forward, not substance, and people can say all of these things, they get a run in the media … We’ll continue to actually be interested in making a difference to people’s lives, and that is what we will focus on.”

On the other side of the country, in Perth, Senator Hanson said her fundraising was “very legitimate” and said she’d called in an independent auditor to go over the donations.

A party spokesperson said there were more than 28,000 donors and the average contribution was $59.

“It’s all receipted, it’s all on a spreadsheet,” Senator Hanson said.

“Why would I call out the liar … and go and do something like that myself? It would destroy me.

“He can’t even believe it himself. I heard on the grapevine he’s only received about $20,000 for the Labor Party, so he can’t imagine One Nation getting the support that we have.”

Liberal leader Angus Taylor, also in WA, said questions about donations were for other parties to answer.

“I’m hearing all these stories about this fundraising. I think they’re all questions for others, not for me,” he said.

But he faced his own One Nation-related stoush after a factional ally and frontbencher Tony Pasin floated the idea of the Liberals doing deals with the minor party to not run three-cornered contests in particular seats.

This would be similar to the agreement the Liberals have with Coalition partners the Nationals to not challenge each other’s sitting MPs.

Mr Taylor dismissed the idea out of hand in a breakfast television appearance, and again at a doorstop with one-time leadership rival Andrew Hastie in Mandurah.

“There’ll be no carve-up of seats. What we’re going to be doing is carving up a Labor Party that’s failed this country, that’s what I’ll be carving up,” Mr Taylor said.

“We’ll go to toe to toe in every seat in this country to win every vote we can.”

Veteran election analyst Antony Green pointed out that One Nation won the primary vote in the State seat overlapping with Mr Pasin’s electorate of Barker at the March SA election, saying, “You can understand why (he) thinks a Liberal no-compete deal with One Nation is a good idea”.

Senator Hanson said that “former Liberals are starting to wake up to themselves” and she was offering people something different.

Treasurer Jim Chalmers also turned his sights on One Nation on Thursday, using a speech to Labor Party faithful to tie the minor party with the Coalition in opposing aspiration for all Australians and helping people to get ahead.

“Unlike One Nation, we vote the way workers need us to, not the way Gina Rinehart tells us to,” he said, reprising a line that got a run in Parliament last week and in media appearances as far back as April.

Mr Albanese made a similar reference on Thursday, citing the private jet one of Mrs Rinehart’s companies donated to One Nation earlier in the year.

“That (crowdfunding) pales into insignificance with the size of a single donation which was given, showing, I think, the interests that One Nation represent. It’s not battlers. They vote against battlers each and every time,” he said.

Dr Chalmers used the same speech to double down on personal swipes at Mr Taylor, saying the Opposition Leader was “born already at the top of the ladder” and then “fail(ed) upwards”.

He said the Coalition and One Nation were demanding a change in government so that a broken status quo could stay the same.

“Our opponents who say we’re pulling up the ladder don’t understand there’s not much point in a ladder with the first few rungs missing. Not everybody is born already at the top of the ladder like Angus Taylor was, not everybody fails upwards like he has,” he said.

“The irony of (the Coalition and One Nation) position is they want to change the government in order to leave everything as it is — a truly absurd proposition.

“Too often the story of this Budget is told by the biggest beneficiaries of these current arrangements, not the biggest victims of the broken status quo.

“Of course there are always those who want everything to stay exactly the same. We’re not among them.”

Last week, Anthony Albanese labelled Mr Taylor “Temu Abbott”, a riff on the “Temu Trump” attack Labor borrowed from online influences to use against Peter Dutton last term.

Dr Chalmers has made previous personal jibes about Mr Taylor’s wealth and background — including saying he “was born with a silver foot in his mouth” back in February and an earlier version of the born at the top of the ladder line in the days after the Budget — as has the Prime Minister.

Mr Taylor said the Treasurer “should focus on his job” and that he was proud of his family background.

“My parents worked, as so many farmers and small business people do, seven days a week, weekdays, daytime bled into night-time, weekdays into weekends. Holidays would get interrupted regularly, because that’s what you do when you’re running a small business or a farm,” he said.

“They worked hard, and they did well. And my three brothers and I benefited from their hard work, and I’ve sought to do the same for my four kids.”