A booth-by-booth analysis of Saturday’s by-election won by One Nation spells major trouble for prominent Labor and Liberal MPs, and points to Labor potentially losing a host of seats in the Western Australian parliament.
Booths inside the electorate held by federal Resources Minister Madeleine King – the most senior WA MP inside the Albanese government – showed massive swings away from Labor to One Nation, while booths inside leading Liberal Andrew Hastie’s Canning electorate similarly showed huge movements in support away from his party towards One Nation.
Those shifts, if replicated at a federal election, would almost certainly cost each of them their seats, although election analysts have cautioned against extrapolating from the by-election result.
One Nation’s Luke Herdegen on Saturday defeated Labor candidate Georgia Tree to win the seat of Secret Harbour on Perth’s southern fringe. Labor suffered a 22 per cent swing against it, just five years after the party won with more than 83 per cent of the two-party-preferred vote.
At the two Secret Harbour voting booths inside Ms King’s seat of Brand, Labor’s share of the vote fell from between 40 per cent and 44.6 per cent at last year’s federal election to between 24.9 per cent and 28 per cent.
One Nation’s share of the vote more than doubled.
Similarly, the Liberal vote at the six Secret Harbour booths in Mr Hastie’s Canning electorate more than halved. The biggest drop came in Lakelands, where the Liberals went from 38.5 per cent of primaries at the federal election to just 14.8 per cent on Saturday.
On Monday, Ms King described the Secret Harbour by-election campaign as “difficult” and said the result was a reminder of the need for Labor MPs to meet the community where they are.
“Times are tough and people are struggling, but federal Labor has put in a lot of policies that have helped people in the southern suburbs that I’m really proud of, like more bulk-billing places for healthcare, better funding of schools,” she said.
“But I get it … that that is sometimes taken as read and not always acknowledged and there is always more work to do.”
Mr Hastie, meanwhile, in an email to his supporters on Sunday seeking donations warned them that the division in his support base had created a “real risk” that he could lose Canning to Labor.
The booth-by-booth breakdown from Secret Harbour showed that One Nation support was at its highest in the southern two-thirds of the electorate, suggesting that Labor-held seats to the south of Secret Harbour could be most at risk.
Mr Herdegen has named the seats of Baldivis, Rockingham and Kwinana to the north of Secret Harbour as part of a new “One Nation heartland”, although One Nation’s support was noticeably weaker at the booths closest to those electorates.
Voters at Rockingham Lakes Primary School, a few hundred metres from the boundary with Baldivis and 2km from Mark McGowan’s former electorate of Rockingham, recorded a vote for One Nation of just above 30 per cent, far lower than the 39 per cent first-preference vote for Mr Herdegen.
University of Notre Dame executive dean and professor of politics and international relations Martin Drum told The Australian that the higher One Nation vote towards the southern end of the electorate, plus the support for One Nation at last year’s state election, suggested Labor seats to the south of Secret Harbour could be particularly vulnerable.
Secret Harbour had one of the highest One Nation votes of any seat at last year’s state election with 8.43 per cent.
The seat of Mandurah to the south was one of the few with a higher One Nation vote, at 8.84 per cent, suggesting that Mandurah MP Rhys Williams could be in jeopardy.
Other Labor-held seats with higher than average One Nation votes last year tended to fit the outer metro and regional profile generally considered the most vulnerable to One Nation.
Pilbara (8.7 per cent), Thornlie (8.3 per cent), Baldivis (8.2 per cent), Armadale (8.2 per cent), Darling Range (8.1 per cent), Butler (7.8 per cent), Swan Hill (7.9 per cent) and Dawesville (6.97 per cent) all had elevated levels of support for One Nation last year and could be vulnerable if its current support holds.
Professor Drum said the Secret Harbour result broadly aligned with what would be expected from public polling data, which showed a five-fold increase in support for the party in WA in the past year.
“Mandurah and Secret Harbour were the top two (for One Nation) at the last election, and there were still some decent votes in outer metro areas,” he said. “Labor MPs there should be on notice.”
WA Premier Roger Cook, whose seat of Kwinana is among those on One Nation’s radar, on Monday said there was no complacency within his team in the face of the threat from One Nation. “All my team are working hard, making sure they stay in deep connection with their community … Always working to make sure they spend time in their community, understand their concerns, their aspirations, and respond to that,” he said.
“Obviously the by-election on the weekend fed into a lot of issues, some within our control, some outside our control. Those things that we will control, we can continue to work to make sure that everyone has a job, that we are investing in health and that people do have a roof over their heads.”
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Paul GarveySenior Reporter