One Nation’s newest lower house MP might not be far enough to the right for the far-right.
David Farley became One Nation’s second-only lower house MP in May after securing the highly-regional seat of one-time opposition leader Sussan Ley, joining Nationals’ turncoat and New England MP Barnaby Joyce.
But a picture of Farley wearing an orange turban at a Sikh festival and comments he made about Australia’s immigration intake have far-right former One Nation supporters turning on the party, declaring it a “rug pull”, calling him “a turban wearing leftest (sic) moderate” and urging a full-scale boycott.
That’s a lot to unpack, but here goes.
Farley — who critics say represents big business because of his history at the highest echelons of corporate agribusiness — has a far less hardline approach on immigration than the rest of his party.
Speaking on the ABC’s Insiders program on Sunday, he told viewers Australia could allow net overseas migration of around 230,000 a year.
That figure is close to Labor’s target, but a fair way off One Nation’s figure of 130,000, which is available on One Nation’s website.
One Nation leader Pauline Hanson has attempted to correct the record. On Thursday, she told News Corp’s Bush Summit panel that the 130,000 figure for net overseas migration did not include Pacific labour workers.
“Because your Palm workers, rural and regional Australia would die if they didn’t have the workers coming in, and especially the abattoirs and the farmers,” she said.
“So that’s a different program. These people are given accommodation by the farming sector and the businesses that employ them. So that is not the big impact here.
“But with immigration, you can’t just tie it to your housing, because infrastructure is another big thing and hospitals and schools and the nursing homes — that has to be all accounted for so it’s just not about houses.”
She said Farley “didn’t understand” and “got confused” when discussing the matter over the weekend.
Mr Joyce also called it a “rookie mistake”, but former Nationals MP George Christensen — who helped Farley win Farrer — appears to have turned on Farley, too.
“A rookie mistake is getting a figure wrong in your first interview,” Christensen wrote on his Nation First Substack.
“Farley had already caused trouble over immigration during the campaign and been spoken to about it. This was the same mistake, only bigger, made on national television after he’d been elected.”
Christensen said he gave Farley “a single piece of advice” during campaigning: “David, shut up about immigration”.
Farley, who is recognised as one of the wealthiest politicians in the country, told The Sydney Morning Herald that “George will be George” and “I will look after the constituency of Farrer and their critical immigration needs”.
But it has caused a ripple effect that could be hugely damaging to a surging One Nation as its critical base of “patriots” turn against it.
“The signs were there, David Farley is a turban wearing leftest (sic) moderate. One Nation gotta go harder on immigration and sack (him),” wrote right-wing influencer Sam Bamford.
Controversial independent news website The Noticer, which regularly promotes white supremacist and neo-Nazi views, took aim at Farley in a comment piece published at the beginning of the week.
“The great One Nation rug pull of August 2026 is a tragedy for the ages,” the author wrote.
“After telling us for months that it wants to cut immigration to 130,000 gross (as it still says on its website as I write this), One Nation is now gaslighting us that its policy is, and was always, 130,000 net, effectively tripling its proposed immigration intake if as many people leave Australia as they did in 2024-25.
“How the hell Farley thinks the people of Farrer elected him in a landslide as Pauline Hanson’s guy without supporting her stance (at the time) against mass immigration, God only knows. I guess Farley doesn’t particularly care why the people of Farrer elected him.”
The author went on to demand its “radical patriot base … must now turn against this joke of a party as vociferously as we can”.
Hugo Lennon, the far-right social media influencer and anti-immigration activist who helped organise the controversial March for Australia rallies last year, was fuming on social media this week.
“This got me fired up and you should be just as angry, especially if you support One Nation,” he said.
“You have been lied to. Big business has come to drown out your voice and ramp up the replacement of Australians to line their pockets.
“They’ve deleted policies we all thought were set it in stone, policies that would wrestle control of our country’s future back into our hands.
“Now the question is do we sit down and take it, or do we speak up and make Pauline listen us and not David Farley’s wallet. Our support has to be conditional, otherwise we get walked over like this.”
In a video, he went directly at Hanson.
“This isn’t mainstream media attacking Pauline. Pauline f**king lied to you. They’re putting big business first and if you’re going to just sit there and take it because it’s Aunty Pauline, this is why we’re in the state we’re in,” he said.
“You should be angry, and if you’re not, you’re a dog.”
News.com.au last week wrote that One Nation is on the cusp of a one-in-100-year feat by ensuring the Victorian election in November bucks a two-party trend that has been constant since Federation.
According to academics and pollsters, Labor, the Coalition and One Nation are all hovering around 25 per cent of primary voting intention.
A poll of Victorians found almost half of respondents who voted Labor in the 2022 Victorian election — which Labor won in a landslide — will vote differently in November.
But Dr Emily Foley, a postdoctoral research fellow at Flinders University and the University of Canberra, said supporters of One Nation aren’t looking to her for policy.
“Yes, there’s no Victorian-specific policies, they’re slowly drip-feeding candidates, but I don’t think that necessarily matters,” she said.
“There an element of ‘it’s time’ (that Labor is ousted), compounded by cost of living issues, the scandals around corruption. I don’t think it matters whether One Nation has Victoria-specific policies because people are sort of over it.”
One Nation is riding a popularity surge, but Dr Foley is cautious about how far that will take them.
“Do I think it is a temperature check for the nation? I’m not sure. But I wonder if this election will be the peak. Is 30 per cent the ceiling for One Nation? I think they will have significant electoral success (but) there are key questions around One Nation’s capacity to sustain organisationally (and) all the conflicts that they’ve had with candidates.”
In South Australia, One Nation nominated Bruce Preece, a man accused of domestic abuse, according to the ABC.
They hired convicted rapist Sean Black to run the federal election campaign, a man who a sentencing judge said used violence to dominate his wife, including an instance where he dragged her by the hair from a shower to rape her.
“You told her it wasn’t rape, because she was your wife,” District Court Judge Glen Cash told Black before he was jailed in 2018.
A One Nation candidate who ran for the upper house in Western Australia in 2025, Parminder Singh, said gay people were mentally ill.
“No-one born anything … I blame on the parents because parents are too busy,” he said in a video interview with a Perth comedian.
A huge number of One Nation supporters will vote for the party regardless of its policies.
But for the so-called “patriots” on the far-right, the immigration number appears to matter most.
Read related topics:Pauline Hanson