won a tight race<\/a> against Liberal Rebekah Rosser, who conceded defeat on Monday, more than a week after polls closed. \u00a0<\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/116235ff98649db29f1af8ec0dc6ff6c.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n
Rebekah Rosser conceded defeat on Monday. (ABC South East SA: Eugene Boisvert)<\/p>\n
Since the election, One Nation has declined requests from the ABC to speak to winning candidates, including Mr Virgo, because of a dispute over an interview that happened before the election.\u00a0<\/p>\n
As a result, not much is known about the current City of Mount Gambier councillor’s plans for representing MacKillop for the next four years.\u00a0<\/p>\n
A change of views\u00a0<\/p>\n
March’s election was not the first time Mr Virgo ran for public office.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The now 35-year-old joined the Australian Labor Party when he was 16, and then the Australian Sex Party when he was 19 or 20, after the latter was formed in 2009.<\/p>\n
When he was around 20 years old, Mr Virgo ran as a candidate for the Senate for the Australian Sex Party in 2010.<\/p>\n
Three years later in the 2013 federal election, he again ran for the Australian Sex Party.<\/p>\n
Mr Virgo also went on to become the secretary of the Australian Labor Party’s Mount Gambier branch.<\/p>\n
Speaking at a press conference on Wednesday, which the ABC was also barred from, Mr Virgo said he joined those two parties when he was “16 and 19”.<\/p>\n
![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/03d6c2e79c0a268e6ba4d2c98be74d32.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n
Jason Virgo’s official candidate headshot for the election campaign. (Supplied: Facebook\u00a0)<\/p>\n
“I was a teenager. Every person when they were 16 and 19 were doing crazier things than joining a political party,” he said.<\/p>\n
“I was a kid, basically. We grow up, we learn new things, we change our views as we age and that’s just a reality.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“I’m focused on the things that matter. I’m worried about MacKillop \u2014 it’s been taken for granted for too long.”<\/p>\n
Former Australian Sex Party leader and former Victorian Legislative Council member Fiona Patten said Mr Virgo seemed “like a nice guy” and wished him luck in parliament.\u00a0<\/p>\n
But she was surprised at his move to One Nation.\u00a0<\/p>\n
![\"Fiona](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/997a98fde93d56cc068b22d8bf031494.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n
Fiona Patten campaigned for the decriminalisation of sex work during her time in Victorian parliament. (ABC News: Rachel Clayton)<\/p>\n
“The Australian Sex Party was all for equality,” she said.<\/p>\n
“We were at that time still fighting for marriage equality, we were fighting for drug law reform, we were fighting for medicinal cannabis.<\/p>\n
“We were fighting against censorship and fighting to keep religion out of politics, taxing the church and freedom of religion and freedom of speech.”<\/p>\n
The Australian Sex Party was founded in 2009 to counter conservative Christian minor parties entering the political arena.<\/p>\n
It merged with the Australian Cyclists Party in 2017 to form Reason Australia.<\/p>\n
One Nation ‘staying together’ and ‘completely united’<\/p>\n
The City of Mount Gambier’s elected members register listed Mr Virgo as employed by G4S, the operator of Mount Gambier Prison.\u00a0<\/p>\n
He was also listed as a United Workers Union member.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Mr Virgo clarified on Wednesday he now lived in the electorate and had moved to Kingston South East after living outside MacKillop during the campaign.<\/p>\n
Charles Sturt University political scientist Dominic O’Sullivan has studied One Nation throughout its history.<\/p>\n
He said newly elected candidates would need to start talking publicly soon.\u00a0<\/p>\n
![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/3112bbffb043757494684ba09c9f7f45.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n
Dominic O’Sullivan says maintaining a united party will be One Nation’s first challenge. (Supplied: Charles Sturt University)<\/p>\n
“The nature of the job is a very public one and he’s not going to be able to hide from people and from scrutiny forever,” he said.<\/p>\n
Professor O’Sullivan said the party’s first challenge would be to keep a united front through its first four years.<\/p>\n
“The problem for them \u2026 which is one that’s beset One Nation at every election that it’s enjoyed a little bit of success [in], is holding themselves together as a coherent parliamentary force,” he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/481b868a4ab73a0d91947255e3c5447d.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n
Jason Virgo puts his arm around his much-taller leader, Cory Bernardi, at Wednesday’s press conference. (Supplied)<\/p>\n
At Wednesday’s press conference, Mr Virgo was upbeat when asked about the chance he, or anyone else, would defect from the party.\u00a0<\/p>\n
He laughed and put his arm around leader Cory Bernardi and said they were “great mates”.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“We are staying together. We are a great team, unlike the Liberal Party and the uni-party, we are completely united,” he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"One Nation snaring the South Australian seat of MacKillop was emblematic of the voting shift at March 21’s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":581670,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[64,63,284940,284942,213212,284933,44,60504,284941,284937,284939,284935,284934,284938,284936],"class_list":{"0":"post-581669","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-australia","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-australian-sex-party","11":"tag-how-many-seats-did-one-nation-win-in-sa","12":"tag-mackillop","13":"tag-mount-gambier-state-seat","14":"tag-news","15":"tag-one-nation","16":"tag-one-nation-mps","17":"tag-one-nation-sa-election","18":"tag-one-nation-sa-mp","19":"tag-sa-election-results-2026","20":"tag-sa-votes-2026","21":"tag-who-is-the-mp-for-mackillop","22":"tag-who-is-the-state-mp-for-mount-gambier"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/581669","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=581669"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/581669\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/581670"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=581669"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=581669"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=581669"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}