After holding the seat of Farrer in regional NSW for a quarter of a century, former Liberal Leader Sussan Ley has vowed to donate $250,000 to support the next Liberal candidate, after One Nation’s David Farley won the federal NSW seat off the Liberal Party in the by-election over the weekend. With his comfortable win over independent Michelle Milthorpe, Farley becomes the first One National candidate ever elected to the House of Representatives.
In her media statement, Ley congratulated the 69-year old Riverina agribusiness businessman before thanking her supporters and volunteers for their hard work, adding; “I share your immense disappointment about this loss.”
Media Statement on Farrer By-election pic.twitter.com/BkcrnfzvPG
— Sussan Ley (@sussanley) May 9, 2026
The former Liberal leader urged the party’s leadership to accept the result “with humility because the voters never get it wrong”, noting that the result underscored the truth of Opposition Leader Angus Taylor’s February statement that the Liberals needed to “change or die.” She also warned the party against attributing the historic loss to the Coalition split or the timing of the vote.
Farley, who was preselected as the One Nation candidate back in March, used his first speech on Saturday night to outline his plans when he takes his seat in federal parliament, which include cutting migration, scrapping net zero, and building more coal fire power stations — among other agendas.
“We want to get the cost of living down and our first target is on this damn net zero program,” he said. “It’s going to be pulled down, ripped down and kicked out. It’s not what Australia wants.”
“Australia should be for Australians,” he continued. “We will not have housing supply, we will not get education right, we will not get health right until we address this. We don’t want to be dependent on other countries for our energy. And we definitely don’t want to be dependent on other countries bringing their culture into ours.”
“One Nation has reached the end of its beginning,” he added. “We’re going through the ceiling from here.”
One Nation Leader Pauline Hanson told the crowd in Albury that “it’s not only a win for Farrer, it’s a win for the rest of Australia.”
“Millions are watching on their TVs now and I believe it’s giving them hope,” she said. “[We will] represent you, the people to get our country back.”
Congratulating Farley’s win, the 71-year old Queensland senator said, “You have no idea how proud I feel.”
“David has outlined some of the issues [we want] to address…the first one we are going to start tackling is the agricultural sector in this electorate.”
She used her speech to announce the party’s intention to host an agricultural Roundtable in the region and pledged to release a gas plan next week.
“What I want to do is put money back in our pockets from the gas industry – they are our resources and it’s been given away,” she said. “I want a system where we will own part of that equity share in the exploration of gas. I’m not just going allow them to take it.”
Responding to the loss, Angus Taylor said the Liberals “need to take our medicine” and “get back to the politics of conviction.”
“The Coalition hasn’t done what it should do, being united and stable and strong,” he said, adding that the party must strive “to be honest in our discussions with Australians” regarding “mass migration” and “net-zero ideology”.
“Mass migration has not worked for this country,” he said. “The standards have been too low and the numbers have been too high and both must change.”
“Being honest, the net-zero ideology is driving up energy bills and sending industry offshore and has driven up the price of electricity for businesses and for households.”
With their historic win in Farrer, One Nation looks set to gain momentum in other regional electorates as they present themselves as a viable alternative in areas long considered safe Liberal strongholds. Indeed, one ABC political correspondent declared: “Anti-major party sentiment is essentially the most bankable phenomenon in Australian politics right now.”
Media academic Professor Julianne Schultz described One Nation’s Farrer win as yet another example of regional voters “putting a stick in the eye of major parties for decades.”
“Whether One Nation is able to actually hold on to its newly elected representative or develop policies that have any chance of being implemented will also take a while to play out,” she surmised. “The challenges for the Liberal Party are huge, but so too is the challenge for the government to truly hear the grievances and do something about them.”
The Guardian’s Tom McIlroy described the by-election results as a “thumping victory” for Hanson’s populist movement, adding that it indicated the party is now “an indiscriminate threat, and that the foundations of the two party system are growing weaker by the day.”
He also hinted that Farley “might not last the distance” with One Nation, noting that he had previously “flirted with the Nationals, Labor [and] the community independent movement” and that “Hanson almost always falls out with the strong willed men of One Nation.”
In any case, the latest win for the party will likely give them a stronger platform to push their policy agendas in parliament, redirecting attention and resources into regional investment and reshaping the political landscape in rural Australia.