One Nation’s victories in WA and NSW tell us that Australia’s electoral landscape is shifting fast. Relying on One Nation to implode is not enough to stem the populist tide.

Last Saturday’s Western Australian by-election in the state seat of Secret Harbour was worse than diabolical for Labor.

A couple of weeks ago I wrote that Labor’s rating in opinion polls at 28 per cent made its position diabolical. But now we see that in a real vote in a real seat Labor’s position is even worse. On Saturday, it got just 24.5 per cent of the vote and turned a safe seat with an 11.5 per cent margin into a 43–57 loss.

Yes it was a by-election. Yes it was a state seat, but . . . .

One Nation candidate Luke Herdegen’s assertion that no Labor seat is safe, portends badly. Worse for Labor, Labor does not seem to recognise what a dangerous position it is in, at least until now. It seems to assume that its massive House of Representatives majority will be big enough to withstand any swing to One Nation or the Coalition.

Forget the polling, we now have two real elections (Farrer and Secret Harbour) in which One Nation has topped the primary vote and then won on preferences. More significantly, one of the seats was a Coalition one and the other was Labor. One Nation is taking from both sides. Moreover, in both seats, One Nation got around 50 per cent of the preference flow.

And given the Coalition gave One Nation preference over Labor on its how-to-vote cards in both by-elections, we can conclude definitively that the Coalition has inadvisedly given these two seats to One Nation over Labor and an independent respectively.

Preferences are critical. Last........

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