Pauline Hanson’s One Nation (PHON) party’s victory in the federal seat of Farrer by-election is an advance for racist, anti-immigrant and right-wing politics.

This is the first time PHON has won a seat in the House of Representatives since it formed in 1997, after Hanson won the seat of Oxley in 1996 as an independent.

Since then, the major parties have adopted parts of PHON’s racist anti-immigrant policies, helping “mainstream” these ideas. PHON capitalised on widespread dissatisfaction with the major parties in the March 21 South Australian election, winning seven MPs.

Progressives cannot be complacent. If PHON’s momentum continues on to the November 28 election in Victoria and the March 2027 New South Wales election, it will reshape politics in a dangerous way.

PHON MP David Farley, a corporate farmer, agricultural investor and former National Party member, campaigned on an anti-establishment and explicitly racist platform of “We want the country back. We want our culture back”.

Farley won 39.5% of the vote, receiving a 33% swing. Independent Michelle Milthorpe won 28.4% ( 8.2%), and the incumbent Liberals received just 12.4% — a swing of -31%. Labor did not run a candidate.

Farley tapped into widespread dissatisfaction with the Murray-Darling Basin water buy-back scheme arguing, disingenuously, that water should be a “sovereign asset”, rather than an “environmental asset”. He called for Australia to........

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