For 76 years, the electorate of Farrer returned Liberals and Nationals to Canberra without exception. On Saturday, One Nation took it in a landslide — and the Coalition parties, combined, struggled to reach 20 percent of first preferences.

One Nation candidate David Farley, a Narrandera-based agribusiness consultant, won more than 40 percent of the primary vote, according to ABC election analyst Casey Briggs, with independent Michelle Milthorpe trailing on roughly 26 percent. After preferences, Farley led 59.4 to 40.6. The ABC called the seat barely two hours after polls closed.

The result marks One Nation’s first-ever lower house seat won at a federal election — a breakthrough party leader Pauline Hanson has pursued for three decades. “We’re coming after those other seats,” Hanson told supporters in Albury. “We want our country back and that’s what One Nation is about.”

A safe seat, destroyed

Farrer, a vast rural electorate spanning southern New South Wales along the Murray River, had been held by former Liberal leader Sussan Ley for a quarter century. Her resignation in February, after losing the party leadership to Angus Taylor, triggered the byelection. At the 2025 federal election, the Liberals secured more than 43 percent of first-preference votes. One Nation managed 6.6.

Twelve months later, the transformation is dramatic. Both Coalition parties were reduced to also-rans: the Liberal candidate Raissa Butkowski won around 11.5 percent and the Nationals’ Brad Robertson 9.6 percent, according to ABC vote counts. Their decision to direct preferences to One Nation ahead of Milthorpe further smoothed Farley’s path.

Farley campaigned on lowering the cost of living, ending net zero commitments by 2050, and overhauling water policy in the Murray-Darling Basin — issues that resonate in a region where agricultural decline and population loss have eroded faith in mainstream parties. “People just want change, it’s as simple as that,” he told the ABC.

His candidacy was not without turbulence. Farley contradicted his own party’s immigration policy during a campaign forum, and revelations emerged that he had previously been a Nationals branch member and considered running for Labor. Guardian Australia reported that minders shielded Hanson and Farley from media questions on election night, and the party blocked several outlets from its victory event.

A center-right hemorrhage

Taylor, who insisted the preference decision was correct, told supporters the Liberals had been “a party of convenience, not of conviction.” He attacked what he called “mass migration” and Labor’s renewable energy agenda — adopting, rather than countering, the rhetoric fueling One Nation’s surge.

Ley, who had maintained public silence since quitting politics, issued a statement that did not mention Taylor by name but was unmistakable in its implications. “On the day the leadership spilled in February, the new leader said the Liberal party needed to ‘change or die,’” she said. “Three months later, the result in Farrer demonstrates that statement to be far truer today than it ever was then.”

Nationals frontbencher Bridget McKenzie told the ABC she would be “willing to work with anyone” to remove Prime Minister Anthony Albanese from office, including One Nation. The openness to coalition with a populist party that has just cannibalized her own side’s vote will be familiar to center-right parties across Europe and North America facing the same dilemma.

University of Sydney political scientist Luke Mansillo described the result as a redefinition of Australia’s party system. After decades of seeing “the future disappear” through things like agricultural price guarantees disappearing and younger generations leaving the regions, those who “cannot see a future have gone to extremes in a scream of desperation.”

What comes next

One Nation now holds four Senate seats and two lower house positions — Farley’s new seat plus Barnaby Joyce, the former Nationals deputy prime minister who defected to the party. Joyce declared that One Nation was coming for Labor seats next. “Western Sydney, here we come,” he said.

Every seat One Nation takes from the Coalition makes Labor’s hold on government more secure in the short term. But Hanson’s promise to contest seats across the spectrum suggests the disruption will not be confined to one side of politics — and that the fragmentation of mainstream conservative parties is a global phenomenon with local consequences.

Sources