Barnaby Joyce has declared “politics has changed” after One Nation claimed victory in the Secret Harbour state byelection in Western Australia.
The One Nation MP celebrated the win on Sunday and said the results showed his party could convert high polling into on-the-ground votes.
“I think one of the takeaways from that is our actual poll is always higher than our online polls … They want a more dynamic political market. They want more competition. We’re not going to get hubristic, but we’re playing a good game,” Joyce told News24.
“What we’ve seen there is quite a number of people who basically would have been former Labor party voters; they find – let’s be frank – they find it easy to make the jump to One Nation.”
One Nation’s Luke Herdegen leads Labor’s Georgia Tree 57-42 after preferences with 74.5% of the vote counted.
One Nation’s WA leader Rod Caddies claimed victory at 9:30pm local time and said the result showed there were “no safe Labor seats in this state or in this country any more” and that it would send “shock waves across the entire country”.
The byelection was triggered after senior Labor minister Paul Papalia retired midterm.
The party’s leader, Pauline Hanson, also warned on social media that One Nation would continue targeting Labor-held seats, and said voters were choosing the party as a serious alternative.
“The result in Secret Harbour should be a warning to Labor, we’re coming for more of your seats,” Hanson wrote on X.
“Australians are choosing One Nation as a serious alternative to the tired old uni-party who have destroyed our nations economic prowess.”
On Sunday, federal cabinet minister Pat Conroy tried to distance federal Labor from the result, calling it a “tough day for WA Labor”.
“I’d be hesitant to draw lessons from a single state byelection and try and apply that to national politics,” he told News24.
Herdegen was buoyed up by a sea of orange across polling booths in the beachside electorate, south of Perth.
“The vibe has been really strong for the last six weeks,” he said.
WA Premier Roger Cook wasn’t throwing in the towel on Saturday but conceded it would be a battle to hold the outer-suburban mortgage-belt electorate.
“It would break my heart,” he said when asked about defeat. “Byelections bring up all kinds of opportunities for a whole range of issues to impact on the seat.”
The Liberal party ran a distant third in the byelection, clocking a primary vote of 17%. Federal Liberal frontbencher Jonno Duniam conceded it was a poor outcome and that his party had work to do to claw the votes back.
“That is not a good outcome for my party, and it’s one that we need to look hard at and rectify,” he told News24.
“We’re going to give people a reason to vote for us. I don’t know much about what was said and done on the ground over there, but that is not a good result. And so again, there’s a lot to focus on here to claw back those votes we’ve lost and restore trust from to those who’ve lost it in us.”
Shadow cabinet minister Andrew Hastie, who has been targeted by One Nation, last week accused the WA Liberal leader, Basil Zempilas, of waving the white flag to Hanson, after he said a One Nation win would still be a victory for the Liberals.
Duniam said on Sunday that the Liberal party should focus on winning its own votes.
“We shouldn’t be talking about being open-minded to work with particular other parties or anything like that,” he said. We should be asking people to vote for us … And when we start talking about conceding or coming in 2nd or finding ways to work with other people before we’ve even run the race, then, yeah, people are not going to back us.”
On the ground in Secret Harbour, cost-of-living pressures, housing and a perceived lack of community amenities topped the list of voter concerns.
Local Luke Pors, who voted for One Nation, said it would do a better job than either Labor or Liberal.
“We know what their true goal is, and I think just in One Nation we trust,” he said.
The Qantas flight attendant was also impressed by Herdegen’s campaign.
“He’s like a home buddy and as obviously a youngie; we can really connect with him.”
