Pauline Hanson has declared that One Nation is “here for the long haul” after the party won its first-ever lower house seat at an election and the major parties grapple with the implications of that victory.
David Farley emphatically won the Farrer by-election, instigated after Sussan Ley quit Parliament when the Liberals dumped her as leader.
“I’m telling you now, we’re going to be here for the long haul,” party leader Senator Hanson told Sky News on Sunday.
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“The major political parties have been so arrogant for too long, disregarding, disrespecting, taking the voters out there for granted and knowing that they’ve run this country into the ground.
“I want my country back. I want to bring back prosperity (from) agriculture to the mining industry, I want to give hope for the youth coming through, I want decent education, get rid of this woke agenda.”
One Nation won 39.4 per cent of the primary vote on Saturday night, a massive increase on the 6 per cent it won in the seat in the Federal election a year ago.
It’s the largest post-war swing towards a political party, although some of the “teal” independents achieved stronger swings when they were first elected.
The groundbreaking victory has left Liberals – who have held the seat for 60 of its 77 years of existence – contemplating how to resurrect their party’s standing.
The party polled just 12.4 per cent of the primary vote, with the Nationals garnering another 9.8 per cent, meaning neither came in the top two. Last year, Ms Ley won 43.4 per cent of the primary vote.
Mr Farley’s main competition came from independent candidate Michelle Milthorpe.
The victory could be underscored with another Nationals defection after Queensland MP Colin Boyce was reportedly once again flirting with joining the minor party.
Deputy Liberal leader Jane Hume said there was no hiding that the result was disappointing, despite knowing it would be tough to win.
“Trust has been lost by the Coalition. It was lost with two splits to the Coalition in just 12 months. It was lost when we abandoned all of our policies, and people didn’t know what it was that we stood for,” she said.
“It’s up to Angus Taylor and I now to start rebuilding that trust, because, as Angus said last night, trust can be lost in an instant, but it takes time to rebuild.”
Former Nationals leader Michael McCormack, whose seat abuts Farrer, urged time for the Coalition to rebuild.
Pauline Hanson, Malcolm Roberts, Barnaby Joyce, and David Farley. Credit: Bianca de Marchi/AAPIMAGE
“We are playing Test cricket, not a Twenty20, so we need to be patient, get into the nets more and keep our eye firmly on the ball,” he said.
Ms Ley issued a statement on Saturday night recalling Mr Taylor’s words after he pushed her out of the leadership, that the Liberal Party had to “change or die”.
“Three months later, the result in Farrer demonstrates that statement to be far truer today than it ever was then,” she said.
Shadow treasurer Tim Wilson, the only Liberal to win back a blue ribbon seat from an independent last year, agreed the result in the rural electorate showed there was a lot of work for his party.
“It is a serious situation. But what it reflects is the need for us to be bigger, better, bolder, confident Liberals defining the future of the country,” he said.
Privately, other Liberals told this masthead the result was worse than they had feared.
They were worried the party was continuing to offer the same thing when voters were repeatedly showing – in polling and now at the ballot box – they weren’t interested in that.
What’s needed is a “proper reset button” that shows the party has heard people saying they want something different and is answering that call, one said.
This was echoed by another who said the party had to make sure it gave people reasons to vote for it.
If the Coalition was simply encouraging people to vote against Labor, it was inevitable much of that vote would go to a protest party like One Nation.
Pauline Hanson and David Farley celebrate with supporters in Albury. Credit: Simon Dallinger/Newswire
Senior Labor sources made a similar point in their assessment of what had gone wrong for the Liberals.
The shift hadn’t been so much an endorsement of One Nation as a “violent reaction” to chaos in the Liberals and Nationals, one believed.
Another Nationals source saw the entrenchment of the electorate’s deep divisions and fragmentation as a key lesson for all parties.
If this shift is permanent, it would make it difficult for the Liberals and Nationals to hold government without also teaming up with One Nation or other crossbenchers.
Senator Hume wouldn’t rule out the possibility of a Liberal-National-One Nation coalition, dismissing such questions as “very premature and probably irrelevant” two years out from an election.
Treasurer Jim Chalmers said the event “wasn’t a by-election, that was a bloodbath” for the Liberals.
“Without a Labor opponent, in the middle of a global oil shock, Angus Taylor found a way to shed more than 30 percentage points of primary vote,” he said.
“He bet big on division, and he lost big, and he doesn’t seem to have learned any of the lessons of that.”
But he also acknowledged that the results were a reflection of “very real, very genuine concerns” people held about the economy not working for them, which often pushed them to consider alternatives to the mainstream parties.
“Labor is now the last party standing in the sensible centre of Australian politics, but we’re not standing still,” he said.
Mr Wilson pointed to this week’s budget and Mr Taylor’s chance to deliver a reply speech as a key opportunity for the Opposition.
“We need to outline very clearly a bold and confident vision for the country about where we want to take it,” he said.
“The idea that the pendulum just politically swings between Liberal and Labor is simply no longer right. There are different axes, and it goes in all sorts of directions, including up and down.”
