Held by Labor since 1989, Pauline Hanson’s One Nation has comfortably won the Western Australian state lower house seat of Secret Harbour in Saturday’s by-election, sending shockwaves across the country.
The winning candidate, Luke Herdegen, is 39 and has no political experience. He was born in Newcastle, on the opposite side of the country. He owns several gyms, and has a colourful history including admissions of cocaine use and involvement with the Albanian underworld.
One Nation put a positive spin on Herdegen’s CV by saying ‘he’s done his fair share of real work over the years’, including traffic control and competitive weightlifting.
Secret Harbour’s by-election was brought on by the resignation of Labor’s Paul Papalia, who quit for family reasons, and had been sitting on a commanding 11.5 per cent margin. This seat in Perth’s outer southern suburbs is predominantly Anglo, dominated by tradies and FIFOs with young families, mortgages and not much education. In other words, people like Luke Herdegen.
Battle of the miners
If you want to get anywhere in the Labor Party in Western Australia, at any level, you have to declare your allegiance to the unofficial state government known as Woodside Energy. True to form, the ALP chose a young candidate for the by-election who had already successfully navigated the revolving door between government and gas in the state.
Labor’s Georgia Tree worked for both Federal Resources Minister Madeleine King and Woodside Energy as a government adviser, but had only a tenuous connection with the local area.
Beneath the surface then, this by-election was a struggle between two resource extraction behemoths, Woodside and Gina Rinehart’s Hancock Prospecting Group, which has its own major gas interests in the area, via subsidiary Hancock Energy.
It won’t be known for some time, if ever, how much money Rinehart spent in Secret Harbour on One Nation’s behalf, but the massive amount of traditional and social media advertising and the appearance of numerous attractive young women in orange shirts suggests it wasn’t cheap.
Sensing the danger, Labor spent at least $400,000, a remarkable amount for a single lower house seat on a comfortable margin, and the Liberals are also thought to have spent $120,000, all for nought, with their support also collapsing.
Votes are still being counted, but it’s clear that Luke Herdegen relied on preferences to get over the line, getting about 39 per cent, which translated into a 57 per cent two candidate preferred vote. On his how-to-vote cards, he put One Nation’s real enemy, The Greens, last.
What about the policies?
Considering the winner in Secret Harbour has no chance to actually influence state government policy (Roger Cook’s Labor government sits on a very comfortable majority) this by-election was fought on an odd combination of hyper-local and national issues.
Rubbish collection and immigration featured prominently, with the usual false claims about migrants being responsible for the cost of housing and crime.
Georgia Tree’s attempt to focus on realities like local services, Medicare and rail investment couldn’t compete with the right wing populist vibe, wrapped in the persona of a smiling friendly-looking bloke without a tie. Anthony Albanese was in Western Australia for part of the campaign, but chose not to get involved, while Pauline Hanson made it all about her.
The moral of the Secret Harbour story, and Farrer before it, appears to be that if One Nation can find people who look like the electorate, simplify complex issues and harness the accompanying grievances, then they can win against established parties, providing Gina can keep coughing up the readies to outspend big party machines.
Their big problem is keeping control of their own MPs, with Farrer’s David Farley rumoured to be on the verge of leaving and going independent less than four months after being elected, the latest in an endless line of One Nation MPs unable to cope with life under the eye of Pauline.
Like all populist nonsense parties, One Nation’s other problem is that as it grows, and approaches real political control, then it will become obvious that its answers don’t deliver actual solutions, but for the people involved that doesn’t seem to be the point. It’s all about the grift.
Unfortunately, it’s not clear that the major parties are much better.
Originally from Canberra, David Lowe is an award-winning filmmaker, writer and photographer with particular interests in the environment and politics. He’s known for his campaigning work with Cloudcatcher Media.
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