Pauline Hanson’s One Nation has clinched two Lower House seats in South Australia’s parliament, with Sky News projecting the populist party could take a further three.
The gains in Hammond and Ngadjuri mark the first time that One Nation has made secured lower house seats at the ballot box outside of Queensland.
Robert Roylance, who had a stint as a primary school teacher in China, is set to become the member for Hammond, while Adelaide Plains Council Deputy Mayor David Paton is poised to take over Ngadjuri from Labor’s Tony Piccolo, with preferences still being finalised by the Electoral Commission of South Australia.
One Nation South Australian leader Cory Bernardi says Premier Peter Malinauskas would prefer to keep the Liberal Party “alive as a controlled opposition” as One Nation eyes six upper house seats.
The former federal Coalition senator, who looks to have won a seat in the state’s upper house for One Nation, struck a defiant tone on Sunday as counting continued across South Australia.
Senator Hanson’s One Nation took home a significant 21 per cent of first preference votes in the lower in a blow to the major parties.
Labor won just shy of 40 per cent of the primary vote in the lower house.
As of Saturday night, the Liberal Party was poised to pick up about eight lower house seats after receiving just 16 per cent of the primary upper house vote, where it was also behind One Nation which racked in about 23 per cent.
Addressing the media, Mr Bernardi said the party was still “in the hunt” in the two-party preferred race in “five or six seats in the upper house”.
“It looks like we’ll get three people elected,” he said.
“That, potentially with what’s left of the Liberal Party, and some independents, it may actually provide the balance of power for the Legislative Council.”
Mr Bernardi said a number of voters had “just put one in the One Nation box” when voting.
Those ballots were deemed informal and will not be counted until Monday, he claimed.
“Now, in some seats, that’s up to 5 per cent of the votes that are deemed informal,” Mr Bernardi said.
“So, I think we will improve our status in some of these seats here going forward. I hope that’s the case. But, you know, if we are denied, representation in the South Australian parliament because of a cozy deal between Liberal and Labor, that says everything, it proves everything that I’ve said about the uni party politics in this state.”
Mr Bernardi said Labor would “prefer to keep the Liberal Party alive as controlled opposition”.
Nonetheless, the result would give One Nation the “strongest voice for South Australia that has ever been in that parliament”.
“One Nation has learned many things from this campaign, and that means that we will be an even more formidable force at the next election,” he said.
