One Nation Takes Secret Harbour: What Labor's 22-Point Collapse Means
One Nation's Luke Herdegen has defeated Labor's Georgia Tree in the Secret Harbour state byelection, giving Pauline Hanson's party its first lower house seat in the Western Australian parliament. The ABC called the contest with about 74.6% of the vote counted (ABC News).
The numbers are stark. One Nation polled 39.1% of the primary vote — the first-preference share before any preferences from eliminated candidates are distributed — up 30.6 percentage points on the March 2025 state election result. Labor's primary vote collapsed to 24.4%, down 22.1 points. The swing against Labor exceeded 20% in the beachside electorate south of Perth (ABC News; The Conversation).
The byelection, held on Saturday 29 August 2026, drew a field of 16 candidates (WA Electoral Commission). The writ — the formal document triggering the election — was issued at noon on 21 July, with early polling opening from 8am on 17 August. Voting was compulsory for all eligible electors in the district. The Liberal Party ran Ryan Robertson, the Greens ran Rhi Davies, and Matthew Barton stood for the Libertarian Party (WA Electoral Commission).
Labor held Secret Harbour before this byelection. It is now held by One Nation (The Guardian).
One Nation's WA leader, Rod Caddies, did not mince words. "There are no safe Labor seats in this state or in this country any more," he declared. Pauline Hanson read the result as evidence of "deep seated and growing anger" towards Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and the federal Labor government. Nationals defector Barnaby Joyce, now sitting on the crossbench — the grouping of MPs who belong to neither the government nor the official opposition — offered his own verdict: "Politics has changed" (The Guardian).
The broader context here is that those are the kinds of statements politicians make after a result like this. Whether a 20-plus per cent swing in a single state byelection translates to a federal electoral realignment is a different question, and one the next federal election, due in early 2028, will answer. What the result does confirm is that One Nation can win lower house seats in WA when Labor's primary vote is depressed enough, and that the party's organisational and campaigning capacity in the state has matured to the point of contesting and winning rather than merely protesting.
The byelection also exposed strains on the conservative side of politics. Secret Harbour sits almost entirely within the federal electorate of Canning, held by Liberal frontbencher Andrew Hastie. Hastie publicly criticised the WA Liberal campaign under state leader Basil Zempilas. One Nation's support base, meanwhile, has a particular grievance with Hastie personally: Hanson and many One Nation supporters hold a special dislike for him because he gave evidence against Ben Roberts-Smith (The Guardian).
One Nation's own policy machinery had a wobble during the campaign period. Farrer MP David Farley failed on television to explain where cuts to lower net overseas migration would come from. One Nation strategist James Ashby then appeared on News 24 holding a mop, conceding a clean-up job was required over the party's immigration policy explanation (The Guardian).
The practical implication is that a party can win a state byelection while its federal figures fumble policy detail on national television, but that gap between campaigning capacity and policy precision is the kind of thing that tends to catch up with parties as they accumulate seats and scrutiny.
For Labor, the result is a warning shot delivered at the state level with federal implications. A 22-point primary vote collapse in a seat the party held is the sort of number that concentrates minds in caucus. Albanese's government has roughly 18 months before the next federal election is due, and the Secret Harbour swing will be read in every marginal Labor office around the country as a measure of how much ground the party has lost with its base since the last federal poll. Whether that anger is specifically about federal policy settings, state-level factors in WA, or a broader anti-incumbent mood is the question Labor strategists will need to answer quickly.
For the Coalition, the result is double-edged. The Liberals did not win the seat either, and Hastie's public criticism of Zempilas's campaign suggests internal frustration with the state party's performance. The conservative vote is fragmenting rather than consolidating, and One Nation is proving it can outflank the Liberals to Labor's right in the kinds of outer-suburban seats both major parties need.
The WA Electoral Commission will publish the official results on its website as the "2026 Secret Harbour By-election" (WA Electoral Commission).
