{"id":873282,"date":"2026-08-30T01:28:12","date_gmt":"2026-08-30T01:28:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/873282\/"},"modified":"2026-08-30T01:28:12","modified_gmt":"2026-08-30T01:28:12","slug":"one-nation-claims-victory-in-secret-harbour-byelection-in-western-australia-australia-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/873282\/","title":{"rendered":"One Nation claims victory in Secret Harbour byelection in Western Australia | Australia news"},"content":{"rendered":"

Barnaby Joyce has declared \u201cpolitics has changed\u201d after One Nation claimed victory in the Secret Harbour state byelection in Western Australia<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The One Nation<\/a> MP celebrated the win on Sunday and said the results showed his party could convert high polling into on-the-ground votes.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think one of the takeaways from that is our actual poll is always higher than our online polls \u2026 They want a more dynamic political market. They want more competition. We\u2019re not going to get hubristic, but we\u2019re playing a good game,\u201d Joyce told News24.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat we\u2019ve seen there is quite a number of people who basically would have been former Labor party voters; they find \u2013 let\u2019s be frank \u2013 they find it easy to make the jump to One Nation.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sign up for the Breaking News Australia email<\/a><\/p>\n

One Nation\u2019s Luke Herdegen leads Labor\u2019s Georgia Tree 57-42 after preferences with 74.5% of the vote counted.<\/p>\n

One Nation\u2019s WA leader Rod Caddies claimed victory at 9:30pm local time and said the result showed there were \u201cno safe Labor seats in this state or in this country any more\u201d and that it would send \u201cshock waves across the entire country\u201d.<\/p>\n

The byelection was triggered after senior Labor minister Paul Papalia retired midterm.<\/p>\n

The party\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe result in Secret Harbour should be a warning to Labor, we\u2019re coming for more of your seats,\u201d Hanson wrote on X.<\/p>\n

\u201cAustralians are choosing One Nation as a serious alternative to the tired old uni-party who have destroyed our nations economic prowess.\u201d<\/p>\n

On Sunday, federal cabinet minister Pat Conroy tried to distance federal Labor from the result, calling it a \u201ctough day for WA Labor\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019d be hesitant to draw lessons from a single state byelection and try and apply that to national politics,\u201d he told News24.<\/p>\n

Herdegen was buoyed up by a sea of orange across polling booths in the beachside electorate, south of Perth.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe vibe has been really strong for the last six weeks,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

WA Premier Roger Cook wasn\u2019t throwing in the towel on Saturday but conceded it would be a battle to hold the outer-suburban mortgage-belt electorate.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt would break my heart,\u201d he said when asked about defeat. \u201cByelections bring up all kinds of opportunities for a whole range of issues to impact on the seat.\u201d<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat is not a good outcome for my party, and it\u2019s one that we need to look hard at and rectify,\u201d he told News24.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re going to give people a reason to vote for us. I don\u2019t know much about what was said and done on the ground over there, but that is not a good result. And so again, there\u2019s a lot to focus on here to claw back those votes we\u2019ve lost and restore trust from to those who\u2019ve lost it in us.\u201d<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Duniam said on Sunday that the Liberal party should focus on winning its own votes.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe shouldn\u2019t be talking about being open-minded to work with particular other parties or anything like that,\u201d he said. We should be asking people to vote for us \u2026 And when we start talking about conceding or coming in 2nd or finding ways to work with other people before we\u2019ve even run the race, then, yeah, people are not going to back us.\u201d<\/p>\n

On the ground in Secret Harbour, cost-of-living pressures, housing and a perceived lack of community amenities topped the list of voter concerns.<\/p>\n

Local Luke Pors, who voted for One Nation, said it would do a better job than either Labor or Liberal.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe know what their true goal is, and I think just in One Nation we trust,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The Qantas flight attendant was also impressed by Herdegen\u2019s campaign.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s like a home buddy and as obviously a youngie; we can really connect with him.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Barnaby Joyce has declared \u201cpolitics has changed\u201d after One Nation claimed victory in the Secret Harbour state byelection…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":873283,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[43,44,41,39,42,40],"class_list":["post-873282","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/873282","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=873282"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/873282\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/873283"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=873282"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=873282"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=873282"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}