{"id":621815,"date":"2026-04-21T17:22:09","date_gmt":"2026-04-21T17:22:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/621815\/"},"modified":"2026-04-21T17:22:09","modified_gmt":"2026-04-21T17:22:09","slug":"liberals-and-nationals-to-preference-one-nation-in-blow-to-michelle-milthorpe-in-farrer-byelection-farrer-byelection-2026","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/621815\/","title":{"rendered":"Liberals and Nationals to preference One Nation in blow to Michelle Milthorpe in Farrer byelection | Farrer byelection 2026"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Liberals and Nationals will preference One Nation<\/a> ahead of Michelle Milthorpe in the Farrer byelection in a potential blow to the independent\u2019s hopes of winning the 9 May race.<\/p>\n

Milthorpe and One Nation\u2019s David Farley<\/a> are viewed as the frontrunners in the four cornered-contest, meaning the flow of preferences from the Liberals and Nationals could be crucial in deciding the final outcome in the southern New South Wales seat.<\/p>\n

Despite launching a blitz of negative ads targeting One Nation, the two Coalition<\/a> parties will instruct supporters to number Farley ahead of Milthorpe in their respective how-to-vote cards.<\/p>\n

The Liberals will preference the Nationals\u2019 Brad Robertson second, ahead of Farley in fourth position and Milthorpe in ninth, according to a mock how-to-vote card published on candidate Raissa Butkowski<\/a>\u2019s campaign website.<\/p>\n

The Greens\u2019 Richard Hendrie is numbered 12 and last on the Liberals\u2019 ticket.<\/p>\n

The Nationals will return the favour to the Liberals before encouraging supporters to number Farley ahead of Milthorpe.<\/p>\n

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In a post to Facebook, the Nationals leader, Matt Canavan, said the party would preference One Nation ahead of the \u201cteal-backed candidate because she is backed by people that support net zero and water buybacks\u201d.<\/p>\n

Milthorpe\u2019s campaign is supported by the Climate 200 fundraising vehicle but she has sought to distance herself from the city-based teal independent movement.<\/p>\n

The Farrer byelection was triggered by the retirement of long-serving MP Sussan Ley, who quit the parliament after losing the Liberal party leadership to Angus Taylor in February<\/a>.<\/p>\n

After an historic result at last month\u2019s South Australian state election, the Farrer contest is the federal electoral test for Pauline Hanson since One Nation\u2019s started rising in the polls in the middle of last year.<\/p>\n

The Coalition has intensified the political attacks on One Nation in the past fortnight, including drawing attention to the decision to re-hire convicted rapist Sean Black<\/a> as a campaign manager.<\/p>\n

Hanson said she sacked Black<\/a> following the Coalition\u2019s renewed scrutiny of his appointment, which she described as \u201cgutter politics\u201d.<\/p>\n

Milthorpe is re-contesting Farrer after cutting Ley\u2019s margin to 6.2% at the 2025 election.<\/p>\n

Speaking to Guardian Australia before the Liberal how-to-vote card was released, Milthorpe questioned the logic of preferencing One Nation ahead of her.<\/p>\n

\u201cI find it fascinating that the Liberal party would choose to preference a party that seemingly wants to take them out,\u201d Milthorpe said. \u201cIf that\u2019s what they think they need to do, they\u2019ve got to think about what that means for their future.\u201d<\/p>\n

Support for One Nation has fallen slightly according to the latest Newspoll and Resolve poll, prompting speculation the right-wing party\u2019s rise might have peaked.<\/p>\n

Speaking on Sky News on Tuesday, Canavan wasn\u2019t celebrating the results.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m not popping any champagne corks about that,\u201d he said. \u201cThis is a long road, and these are pretty minor changes, so, we\u2019ve just got to keep at it. There\u2019s no magic bullet here.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve got to rebuild the trust with the Australian people that we lost, when we lost our convictions, lost our way a little bit in the last few years. So I\u2019m focused on doing that.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Liberals and Nationals will preference One Nation ahead of Michelle Milthorpe in the Farrer byelection in a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":621816,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[64,63,44],"class_list":["post-621815","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/621815","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=621815"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/621815\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/621816"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=621815"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=621815"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=621815"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}