The little coastal corner of Perth sending shivers through Australian politics

One Nation is no longer just a headache for the conservative side of Australian politics – it poses a clear and present danger to Labor too.

That is the message sent loud and clear at the Secret Harbour byelection on Saturday night from the sleepy little coastal electorate in the mortgage belt about 50 kilometres south of Perth’s CBD.

By 10.30pm, the populist right-wing party candidate, gym owner Luke Herdegen, had sealed his victory as the first-ever lower house One Nation MP in WA parliament with a primary vote swing of 30 per cent, carved from both Labor and the Liberals.

It was a stunning loss for Labor, which has firmly held various iterations of the seat since the 1980s, and confirms suspicions that One Nation has made inroads into outer suburban Australia and can draw votes away from Labor heartlands.

With a caveat that byelections often draw votes away from incumbent governments when the stakes around who will actually govern the state aren’t as high, this result has serious lessons for the state and federal MPs whose electorates straddle Perth’s urban fringes.

One Nation had a primary vote of 8 per cent in Secret Harbour at the 2025 state election.

Any other state MP who saw the same kind of result should be sweating – Armadale, Darling Range and Thornlie are some notable examples.

Federally, the results are an even more pressing lesson. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and federal political issues loomed during the campaign, despite Albanese’s absence from the battleground.

Most fuel stations yesterday in Secret Harbour were selling ULP 91 for more than $2 per litre. Coupled with big mortgages and high grocery prices, it bubbled to the surface during the campaign as discontent with the Albanese government.

This was not a byelection fought on a policy battlefield. One Nation didn’t have any, which Herdegen and party leader Rod Caddies often reminded journalists.

Their argument boiled down to, “We don’t need policies yet, it’s not a state election”. The pitch was: “If you’re fed up, vote for me.”

“Have you ever tried to sleep with a mosquito in your room?” Caddies told this masthead, noting that Herdegen’s main job was to be a thorn in Labor’s side.

On the booths, former state Liberal candidates were now donning the orange, as well as candidates from other fringe parties like Legalise Cannabis who saw One Nation as their great hope of upending the current political status quo.

One Nation volunteer and Secret Harbour voter Trevor Hale said he’d voted mostly Liberal, but in the past few elections he had switched to Hanson’s party because of federal Labor’s performance.