Pauline Hanson’s One Nation has won its second lower house seat in South Australia’s parliament days after the state election, the ABC is projecting.
Party candidate Robert Roylance will be the next member for the seat of Hammond in the state’s Murraylands.
Two-candidate preferred counts in the first few booths reported today have seen One Nation pick up more than half of preferences from excluded candidates.
The trend is highly unlikely to turn around in the remaining polling places, and Mr Roylance leads on the first preference count, so he is expected to remain ahead of Labor’s Simone Bailey.
The result means One Nation has won at least two seats in parliament, and the party remains ahead in Narungga and MacKillop, which are yet to be resolved.
On Sunday, the ABC called the seat of Ngadjuri for One Nation, with the party’s candidate — Adelaide Plains Council Deputy Mayor David Paton — set to become the new member.
According to the One Nation South Australia website, Mr Roylance is a craft distiller and the operator of a ferry at Walker Flat, between Swan Reach and Mannum on the River Murray.
It says he has also worked as a wood machinist and spent time in the Australian Army Reserve, and has a “strong background in the education sector”.
“One Nation strongly supports a back-to-basics approach with education, with a focus on reversing the decline in literacy and numeracy outcomes,” the website quotes him as saying.
Premier Peter Malinauskas was asked earlier today about the prospect of having two One Nation parliamentary colleagues in the lower house.
He said he was willing to “work with anyone in the parliament who’s willing to put the state’s interests first, regardless of what their political hue is”.
“There will be points of difference and disagreement, absolutely,” he said.
“[But] it’s a significant achievement, and I wish them every success in representing their electorate well. And, you know, over the journey, we’ll hopefully find things that we can agree on and work on together.”
Mr Malinauskas described Labor’s candidate Simone Bailey as an “amazing woman and a really strong candidate”.
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