Updated ,first published
Pauline Hanson is vowing to come after more seats in federal parliament after One Nation seized the regional NSW electorate of Farrer from the Liberals, removing it from Coalition hands for the first time in its 77-year history.
Saturday night’s byelection result is a major upset for Liberal leader Angus Taylor, whose party recorded a paltry 12 per cent of the primary vote in a seat it had held for 25 years. He conceded that a year of chaos for the Coalition had damaged the Liberals’ chances of retaining the seat, vacated when Sussan Ley was dumped as leader.
Hanson’s candidate, David Farley, surged ahead of community independent Michelle Milthorpe in almost every booth outside the major hubs of Albury and Griffith as the votes were counted, winning with about 60 per cent of the two-candidate preferred vote at 9.30pm.
His victory delivers One Nation its first lower house seat at an election. A triumphant Hanson took to the podium to promise that her minor party, which she founded 30 years ago, would seize on momentum to deliver action on a gas tax and lower immigration.
“We’re going to look forward to the future, and the people out there who may be watching this, we’re coming after those other seats,” Hanson said. “You are not going to be the forgotten people anymore. We are proud Australians. We want our country back. That’s what One Nation is about.”
The Liberals had held the seat since Ley snatched it from the Nationals in 2001, but they have been confronted by a backlash across regional centres and smaller towns. Much of the electorate was this week awash in rival orange campaign signage planted for One Nation and Milthorpe.
The Coalition parties recorded a combined primary vote below Milthorpe’s second-place result, ruling them out of the race within an hour. But both Taylor and Nationals leader Matt Canavan insisted that “we are back” and declared the Coalition would emerge stronger from Saturday.
Taylor said the byelection was always going to be “a mountain to climb for the Liberal Party” as he promised the Liberals would get tougher on immigration and net zero energy policy.
“We have to take away some hard lessons from this and from what we’ve seen since the last election,” he said.
“Over the last year or so, the Coalition hasn’t done what it should do: been united and stable and strong, with two breakups of the coalition over that time. Of course, those days are over.
“We are a strong Coalition. We are back, and this will pay dividends over time. I will guarantee it. Moving forward, we need to take our medicine.”
Canavan said: “This is, in my view, the perfect platform for me and the Nationals party to write a new chapter for our great party, to tell the people of regional Australia, we are back.”
The Farrer byelection had shaped as a test of the Coalition’s electoral relevance and the staying power of One Nation after Hanson enjoyed a period of record-high opinion polling.
In the 2022 election, Ley recorded a 43.4 per cent primary vote for the Liberals, while Milthorpe came in second with almost 20 per cent of the primary vote. At that poll, One Nation only recorded 6.6 per cent of the primary vote.
But this year’s results tell a vastly different story. One Nation’s Farley had received about 42 per cent of first preference votes at 9.30pm, Milthorpe was on 26 per cent, Liberal candidate Raissa Butkowski was third on 12 per cent and Nationals candidate Brad Robertson was fourth on 10 per cent.
One Nation MP Barnaby Joyce, who was jubilant on the stage at the party’s Albury campaign event, said Taylor’s remarks sounded like “a victory speech from the person who came fifth”.
“What you saw tonight was not just a result for Farrer. It’s a result for Australia… And what we see is the Australian people saying: ‘I’m over this. I’m going to change things around’,” Joyce told the ABC.
“Politics has changed. It’s changed tonight.”
For many voters, the chaos that trailed Hanson’s party throughout the campaign was less offensive than what they described as tired and inattentive Coalition and Labor machines.
Voters this masthead spoke to outside Farrer polling booths on Saturday cited water issues, renewable energy, high government spending, poor health services, homelessness, the cost of living and feeling neglected as reasons they wanted change.
“We’ve had enough and it’s time to bring in some new blood,” said one woman. “Pauline’s got the ideas that I think the rest of us are thinking, but a little bit scared to say.”
Farley arrived at the podium to the soundtrack of John Farnham’s You’re The Voice and used his victory speech to rail against immigration, having previously contradicted One Nation’s migration policy during the campaign.
“We’re like a mason with a chisel and a hammer, and we’re carving the letters into the Australian democracy. One Nation has reached the end of its beginning. We’re going through the ceiling,” he said.
The 69-year-old agri-businessman has faced scrutiny over his political history, including his prior attempts to stand as a Labor candidate before the 2022 election and his support for Milthorpe’s 2025 campaign.
But these controversies barely registered with supporters, many of whom dismissed attacks on him as establishment noise. He won several regional booths with more than half the primary vote, and by more than 70 per cent on a two-candidate preferred basis.
Milthorpe, a 47-year-old educator, won every booth against Ley in Albury last year but faced a significantly changed political landscape at this byelection.
The Climate 200-backed independent retained her lead across the Albury booths and boosted her vote in Griffith on Saturday, but failed to make sufficient inroads in the rest of the electorate’s towns and hamlets to prevail against an ascendant One Nation.
“Don’t let this energy dissipate,” Milthorpe said in a tearful concession speech. “Keep having conversations with friends, family and colleagues, keep hoping for a better future for our beautiful children, and keep fighting, and I will fight right alongside of you.”
Helen Haines, the independent MP for the neighbouring seat of Indi, who backed Milthorpe’s campaign, blamed the Coalition for One Nation’s success.
“Let’s be clear here, the Liberal Party and the National Party have smoothed the runway for One Nation by preferencing One Nation. That’s what that’s about,” Haines said as the results came in.
“I think what this says is: ‘watch out’. There’ll be regional independents … putting their hand up right across the nation on the back of this.”
Ley broke her silence since leaving politics to issue a statement late on Saturday night, congratulating Farley and noting that Farrer had been held by the Nationals and Liberals for 30 straight elections, through different and challenging circumstances.
“It would be an error to reduce both the scale and significance of tonight’s defeat to a Coalition split which occurred months ago, or to misattribute it to the date the vote was held,” she said.
“I urge the Liberal leadership to accept this result with humility because the voters never get it wrong.
“On the day the leadership spilled in February, the new leader said the Liberal Party needed to ‘change or die’. Three months later, the result in Farrer demonstrates that statement to be far truer today than it ever was.“
Natassia Chrysanthos is Federal Political Correspondent. She has previously reported on immigration, health, social issues and the NDIS from Parliament House in Canberra.Connect via X or email.
Rob Harris is the national correspondent for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age based in Canberra. He is a former Europe correspondent.Connect via email.
Nick Newling is a federal politics reporter for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.Connect via X or email.