For the first time in its history, the southern New South Wales seat of Farrer will not be held by a Coalition MP. The ABC projected on May 9 that David Farley of One Nation had won the by-election, making him the first One Nation candidate ever elected to the House of Representatives.
The seat came off the Liberal Party. Sussan Ley held it from 2001 until she resigned after being dumped as Liberal leader earlier this year. Farley said he will focus on water buybacks, net zero and immigration when he takes his seat. One Nation leader Pauline Hanson offered her “deepest congratulations” and said Farrer won’t be “forgotten people anymore.”
What the numbers showed
The Liberal primary vote came in at 11.6 per cent. Barnaby Joyce, now a One Nation MP, compared that to “the marijuana party” and said the Liberals were “not even on the paddock.” He said Australians are worried the country is going backwards. “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 said. He expects the same swing to show up in other electorates.
The government did not contest the by-election. ABC analyst Casey Briggs said independent Michelle Milthorpe lifted her primary vote but was swept up in the One Nation wave, and she did not collect all of Labor’s missing support. “There must be some votes that have gone from Labor across to the conservative side and eventually landing with One Nation in this,” he said. Briggs also noted the House now has more crossbenchers than Nationals.
The Liberals take stock
Opposition Leader Angus Taylor said the party needs to “take our medicine.” He said the Coalition had been a party of “convenience” and not “conviction,” pointing to two Coalition splits in the past year. “You breach trust in an instant and it takes time to rebuild it,” he said. He named immigration, energy policy and government spending as areas where the Liberals must return to their core values. Taylor also defended the decision to put One Nation ahead of Milthorpe in preferences, calling it “the right call.” He warned that if the conservative vote keeps splitting, Labor stays in government.
Ley urged her party to accept the result with “humility.” In a statement she said it would be an “error” for the Liberals and Nationals to “reduce both the scale and significance” of the defeat. The ABC reported she also warned against blaming the loss on the Coalition split or on the date of the vote.
Liberal candidate Raissa Butkowski, a community lawyer who quit her job to campaign full time, called Farley to concede. “Voters did decide to send the major parties a message,” she said. “Possibly people just wanted to try something different this time.” Deputy Liberal leader Jane Hume told supporters, “We have fought to the end but today, is unfortunately not our day.”
The Nationals’ Brad Robertson congratulated Farley and said he would hold him to account. Robertson said the party has “re-entered the fight in Farrer” and that his focus now turns to the next federal election. At Milthorpe’s gathering in the west of the electorate, volunteers were disappointed, according to Griffith councillor Shari Blumer.
