Why alarm bells will be ringing for Labor after ‘disastrous’ byelection defeat

One Nation’s rapid ascent has slowed in the federal polls, but its crushing win in a state byelection will have Labor on notice.

Luke Herdegen won the seat of Secret Harbour for One Nation at Saturday’s Western Australian byelection in a canter, taking the Labor seat on an 18.6 per cent swing as voters fired a warning shot across the bow of the federal government.

After picking up the federal seat of Farrer in southern NSW from the Liberals and winning four more at the South Australian state election, the minor party has shown it could potentially feast on a slew of outer suburban seats that make up the backbone of Labor’s traditional supporter base.

Experts say the ramifications will be felt on both sides of Parliament House, as the establishment grapples with how to deal with the rise of Pauline Hanson and her party.

“The result is potentially disastrous for the major parties,” associate professor of politics at Monash University Zareh Ghazarian told nine.com.au.

He said it solidified the evidence One Nation was no longer on the fringes of Australian politics.

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“This is signalling that One Nation’s message and their approach is resonating with a broad audience, with a broad electorate, and they are not in any way hesitant about supporting this party,” Ghazarian added.

The seat of Secret Harbour, on Perth’s southern fringes, is made up of mortgage holders and young families, with workers more likely to hold trade qualifications than university education.

Its demographics are similar to dozens of seats across Australia and former journalist and professor at ANU, Mark Kenny, said voters had delivered a damning indictment.

“Labor has been thrashed in its heartland,” he told nine.com.au. 

“There are always local factors in single seat elections, but Labor spent somewhere close to $400,000 to go backwards against a novice candidate in a novice party offering nothing much more than the satisfaction of kicking the Labor Party out.”

One Nation repeatedly tied Labor’s candidate Georgia Tree to the prime minister, with Kenny saying voters disillusioned with the current economic landscape weren’t interested in One Nation’s lack of policy.

Professor Rosalind Dixon from UNSW told nine.com.au the Albanese government’s task is made harder because cost-of-living issues do not have easy fixes. 

“Problems that have taken a while to really register really require a response and people are impatient,” she said.

“There’s a very real sense nationally that housing, groceries, petrol, the kind of basic cost-of-living stuff, is really not under control… even though all sides of politics have really heard the message, it takes a while to make the change that can deliver on it.

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“I think One Nation is promising fixes which, if they worked, would have a lot of appeal to voters, the problem is that they are unlikely to, but is often hard for voters to know that.”

Byelections, which offer voters a chance to send a message to multiple levels of government, can throw up unpredictable results.

“This is an opportunity for people who are not really happy with how things are travelling with the major parties, with policy settings, to fire a warning shot without actually impacting who is [in] government,” Ghazarian said.

The fact One Nation took its primary vote in Secret Harbour from eight per cent last year to around 39 per cent at the by-election should be cause for concern for both major parties.

Kenny suggested voters in large sections of the electorate viewed Labor as “clever, slippery [and] beholden to sectional interests” and the party quickly needed to shift gears.

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“Labor should pull some big levers – the tenor of the times suggests incrementalism is dead,” he said.

“Labor must start talking the language of the working poor while drawing up policy solutions rooted in the idea of government becoming more central to peoples’ lives.”

Labor is trying to lead the country through turbulent economic times, though voters are sending a message that it needs to act quickly.

Ghazarian said the major parties shouldn’t look to replicate One Nation, but instead become clearer and simplify their messaging to press the case they are the answer to the cost-of-living pressures impacting millions.

“It is about explaining, in an accessible way, what [their] policies are, and what potential benefits of those policies are,” he said.

“In other words, why are parties doing things the way that they are doing?”