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A 69-year-old irrigation specialist and former chief executive will represent One Nation at the Farrer byelection, facing off against a popular independent and both the Liberal and National parties.
David Farley was selected by local party members on Saturday morning ahead of the May 9 poll, which was triggered when former opposition leader Sussan Ley announced her resignation last month.
Labor is unlikely to contest the first byelection of the parliamentary term, a move One Nation leader Pauline Hanson said Prime Minister Anthony Albanese was making out of fear.
“Of course he’s not going to put up a candidate because he knows damn well that he’s going to get a lower vote than last time … the fact is, he doesn’t want to be shown up to be on the downward slope,” she said after the vote.
“The whole of Australia is going to be watching this electorate and who wins this seat, and if we actually win the seat of Farrer for One Nation, we’re going to put a bomb under the whole damn lot of them because they’re going to get a hell of a shock.”
A grandfather of seven and holder of a certificate in agribusiness operations from Harvard University, Farley said his selection as candidate was “a great step forward for Farrer, a big step forward for One Nation, and a bigger step forward for Australia”.
“For Farrer to succeed, it needs political courage and political tenacity. One Nation’s got that, and I believe I can deliver that,” he said.
Farley was selected from three candidates and 81 nominations.
One Nation’s primary vote has been rapidly rising in polls, with this masthead’s Resolve Political Monitor finding the minor-party drawing level with the Coalition at 23 per cent of the primary vote. The byelection will be the second major test of the party’s ability to transfer polling into votes, after the South Australia state election later this month.
Addressing party members after the preselection vote, Hanson declared that she was not against immigration but that Australia was “full”, recalling a message she gave to recent arrivals when she first entered parliament in the late 1990s.
“I used to stand there in front of the new migrants who were getting their citizenship, and I’d say to them, ‘Welcome. Give this country your undivided loyalty, and if you don’t, I’ll be the first one to take you to the airport and put you on a plane and wave you away’,” Hanson said.
Former deputy prime minister and Nationals defector Barnaby Joyce told the crowd he would not be shamed for wearing an akubra, practising his Christian faith or loving Australia.
“If we get in, the climate change department is gone. [Climate Change and Energy Minister] Chris Bowen is gone. The power we got from the cheapest energy we used to have, the coal-fired power stations, are back. Nuclear energy starts,” he said to loud applause.
Farley will face off against returned independent challenger Michelle Milthorpe, and uncommon rivals in the Liberals and Nationals. The Liberal Party held Farrer from the seat’s founding in 1949 until 1984, when it was won for the Nationals by Tim Fischer, who went on to become the deputy prime minister.
Ley launched a daring campaign at Fischer’s retirement in 2001, and held the seat until she retired last month.
A preselection vote for the Liberals has yet to be scheduled as potential candidates undergo vetting by the party.
Addressing the NSW Liberal Party state council on Saturday, Opposition Leader Angus Taylor said the byelection was going to be “a tough fight”.
“With your help, we are going to be putting up a hell of a fight,” Taylor said.
Nationals members will vote on Sunday morning to preselect their candidate from four nominees, including former mayors of Albury and Wodonga, a cattle farmer and a retired army colonel.
Nationals leader David Littleproud said the party would “go hard” in the campaign, but faced an uphill battle having not had a presence in the electorate for 25 years.
“What our role can be is to erode that One Nation vote and to give those people that are thinking of voting One Nation, but can’t bring themselves to vote Liberal, an off-ramp,” he said.
“If a Coalition candidate isn’t elected, we are one step away from getting rid of Albanese at the next election. Voting for One Nation might give them a warm fuzzy feeling, but it won’t get them further away from Anthony Albanese.”
The Greens, who have never received more than 9.1 per cent of the primary vote in Farrer, are expected to announce their candidate next week. Family First’s Rebecca Scriven, who received 2.2 per cent of the vote in 2025, will run again.
Popular independent MP Helen Dalton has confirmed she will not run, saying she would remain in NSW parliament and endorse a candidate in coming weeks.
“I’ll give my endorsement to a candidate that runs strongly on water issues. If they are weak as water, I won’t endorse them,” Dalton said.
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Nick Newling is a federal politics reporter for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.Connect via X or email.From our partners
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