Updated ,first published
The Coalition will face a fresh test of how far its public support has fallen when former Liberal leader Sussan Ley’s regional NSW seat of Farrer goes to a byelection, which threatens to become a crowded contest between the Nationals, Liberals, One Nation and independents.
New Liberal leader Angus Taylor and Nationals leader David Littleproud must decide whether they run separate candidates or combine forces given the Coalition’s poor polling, as the independent who clawed into Ley’s margin at the last election announced she will run again.
Community advocate Michelle Milthorpe, who is backed by Climate 200, won every booth in Albury, the electorate’s largest town, to trim Ley’s margin to 6.2 points at the last election. Ley suffered an 8.8 point drop in her primary vote and was pushed to preferences for the first time since winning the seat in 2001.
One Nation leader Pauline Hanson also confirmed her party would enter the race, and claimed the minor party’s branch membership in the electorate was its second-largest in the country. State independent Helen Dalton and Labor are also contemplating a run.
Ley announced her resignation from politics on Friday, once she was deposed as the Liberal leader after nine months.
“I will be spending the next couple of weeks thanking the amazing people of Farrer and expressing my gratitude to them for the honour of representing them for 25 years,” she said. “Shortly thereafter, I will be tendering my resignation to the speaker.”
Ley won nine successive tilts at Farrer since first snatching the seat for the Liberals by 206 votes in 2001 – an upset for the Nationals, whose former leader Tim Fischer had held it for 17 years beforehand.
It is Coalition convention that the Liberals and Nationals do not compete against each other in the seats they hold. But when a seat is vacant – such as after a resignation – both the Liberals and Nationals can run candidates, as was the case when Ley was first elected.
Splitting the Coalition vote at the upcoming byelection could be dangerous for the opposition, given polling shows its support is hovering at record lows.
Asked on Friday whether the Liberals and Nationals would run their own candidates, Taylor confirmed he had spoken to Littleproud but would not divulge how they planned to approach the byelection.
“That’s a private discussion, and David and I will talk much more, I’m sure, in the coming days,” Taylor said. He also declined to say how the Coalition would preference One Nation, saying “that’s a matter for the party”.
Milthorpe made ground on Ley in several key booths at the last election, which included a 12.8 per cent swing to the independent across the Albury booths.
Her campaign on climate action and renewable energy will this time be a stronger point of difference with the Coalition, which dumped its policy of net zero emission reduction targets late last year.
“The Coalition has been consumed by its own internal contests at a time when people are crying out for leadership. Farrer’s future cannot be an afterthought to party politics,” Milthorpe said on Friday.
“The last election proved this seat is no longer ‘safe’… The people of Farrer have already signalled they want genuine representation. This by-election is our opportunity to finish what we started.”
The rise of One Nation will complicate the politics further. The minor party’s candidate, remedial therapist Emma Hicks, won 6.6 per cent of the primary vote in Farrer in May 2025 – a figure roughly equal to its national vote.
Since the election, public support for One Nation has surged to 18 per cent in this masthead’s Resolve poll, and higher in other surveys.
One Nation leader Pauline Hanson said she was confident of the party’s prospects in Farrer – which she accidentally referred to as Fowler throughout a press conference on Friday. “In that seat we only polled just over 6 per cent at the last election. The party has grown since then,” Hanson said.
“We’ve just opened up branches – 150 branches around the country, in each federal electorate. The branch in Fowler [Farrer] is the second largest in the country that we have.”
She said the party had not yet chosen a candidate but there had been “a lot of expressions of interest”.
NSW independent MP Helen Dalton, who represents the state seat of Murray, also said she was open to entering the race. Her state electorate overlaps with parts of Farrer, taking in the town of Griffith.
Dalton was elected as a representative of the Shooters, Fishers and Farmers party in 2019, before leaving to become an independent in March 2022. She was re-elected as an independent at the 2023 state election.
“My mobile has been burning up since Sussan announced she was leaving politics. I understand that the people of my region want their voices to be heard and whatever I decide to do, I will be doing it to make sure their voices are a lot louder,” Dalton said in a statement on Friday.
Dalton said the key message of the moment was that people in rural Australia did not feel represented by their political leaders.
“Rural Australians are the heart and soul of this country and yet we continue to be ignored by state and federal governments. For now, I will continue to talk to the people in my region to get a better gauge of what they want.”
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.
Brittany Busch is a federal politics reporter for The Age and Sydney Morning Herald.Connect via email.