Source : Perth Now news
One Nation is celebrating that “there is no safe Labor seat” after its stunning by-election win in Western Australia, but Anthony Albanese is stepping up his attack to stop the growing threat of the populist party.
In claiming victory in Saturday’s by-election in the outer Perth state electorate of Secret Harbour, One Nation’s Luke Herdegen said the voters had “sent a message that will send shockwaves around the country”.
“There are no safe Labor seats in this state or in this country anymore,” Mr Herdegen said.
“No seat is safe from the orange tsunami.”
But the Prime Minister is recognising and responding to the threat of One Nation and narrowing his attack in his speech to party faithful in Queensland on Sunday.
“Parties like One Nation have no serious answers to our problems,” the Prime Minister told the Queensland state Labor conference.
“It’s obvious One Nation are not on the side of working people.
“Every time they achieve any success, it leads to chaos and division.”
One Nation’s win in Secret Harbour, that had been held by Labor for decades, served as warning that One Nation was no longer not just a “protest vote”, experts say.
Leader Pauline Hanson said she was “absolutely thrilled” with the win and sent a message to voters across Australia.
“They’re wanting someone who’s really going to listen to them and really go out and fight for them to change the direction this country is going in,” she said.
“And I give them my solemn oath I’m trying to get the right people on the floor of parliament to do that for the Australian people, to give them back our country that’s been stripped away from us every which way.”
Latest opinion poll
Meanwhile, the latest opinion poll shows One Nation’s primary vote has fallen three points to 28 per cent from a month warlier, while Labor’s remains unchanged at 29 per cent.
The Coalition’s vote stayed at 22 per cent.
After asking respondents how they would allocate preferences, the poll shows Labor leading One Nation on a two-party-preferred basis by 52 per cent to 48 per cent.
The Australian Financial Review/Redbridge Group/Accent Research poll of 1006 voters was taken from Monday to Friday last week and has a margin of error of 3.4 per cent.
What’s changd for One Nation
On Sunday, Barnaby Joyce attributed his new party’s win to what he said was a change in how voters perceived One Nation.
Monash University Associate Professor of Politics Zareh Ghazarian agreed, telling NewsWire the win marked a key shift in the One Nation brand.
“Since the 2025 WA election, as a political force, One Nation has morphed into an organisation that voters are happy to support than ever before,” Dr Ghazarian said.
“And that’s I think the real concern for the major parties … It’s no longer just a protest vote.”
ANU Associate Professor in Politics Jill Sheppard said voters had shown the major parties they were “very happy” to defect from the major parties to a new viable alternative”.
“There’s been a really important psychological shift among a lot of voters that they don’t have to vote for Labor or Liberal,” Dr Sheppard said.
Federal Labor MPs have downplayed the results in Secret Harbour, with Defence Industry Minister Pat Conroy saying he was “hesitant about drawing lessons for the federal sphere” while Social Services Minister Tanya Plibersek saying it was a “state election run on state issues”.
But RedBridge Group Director Kos Samaras warned One Nation’s win showed Australians were wholly “rejecting a two-party system”.
“So it doesn’t matter whether it’s local government, whether it’s state or federal. These Australians have a view that the established political order needs to be turned over,” he said.
Problems for Coalition
For the Liberals in particular, the challenge presented by One Nation’s success in WA was to combat public perception of its agenda, Dr Ghazarian added, amid the opposition’s sinking popularity in the polls. “The factional issues that have plagued the Liberal Party, the chopping and changing of leaders, all of that has contributed to the sense that the party is unclear and unsure about its policy agenda,” he said.
Mr Samaras said the Coalition needed to step up its game.
“I think we’ve now seen enough data, polls, election results – be it South Australia, Farrer, or Secret Harbour – to come to the conclusion that the Coalition is facing an existential crisis,” Mr Samaras said.
“They need to win back the trust of these voters, which won’t be done via a policy announcement, or media release.
“They need credible policy that makes a tangible impact on people’s lives.”
He added, Labor, for its part, needed to continue investing the areas in which its are ranked by Australians “as the party responsible for delivery, and that is in health, wages, and so on”.
All three experts warned against extrapolating the results of a state by-election, which are hyper-localised and fought on different issues, though Dr Ghazarian warned Secret Harbour still proved “disastrous” for the major parties.
“The real concern for the major parties is that One Nation is no longer just a blip,” he said.
