Pauline pivots to Farrer and Victoria polls after SA One Nation surge as Liberals refuse to ‘lurch’ right

Pauline Hanson says One Nation’s “earthquake” results from Saturday’s South Australian election will act as a springboard for its forthcoming campaigns in the upcoming Farrer and Victoria polls.

While Labor secured a landslide election win at the SA poll, the minor party drew attention for its record result with a primary vote of above 22 per cent — mostly at the expense of the Liberal Party.

The votes, however, have not translated into even one Lower House seat for the populist party by Sunday afternoon. The final seat count is expected to take days to determine.

Senator Hanson vowed to leave political “landmines” in South Australia on the back of the surge of support experienced by the minor party.

“They’re called One Nation. I suggest you don’t step on them because they will explode,” she said.

“This is the start of it, and I’m going to go after Farrer (former Federal Opposition leader Sussan Ley’s seat) and we’re going to look at the State Victorian elections. People are crying out for One Nation. There is a movement.”

WA Energy Minister Amber-Jade Sanderson said One Nation’s showing said more about the under-siege Liberals, who were beaten for first-preference votes by the minor party but will still have about 10 Lower House seats in the new South Australian parliament.

“The result really demonstrates how far the Liberal Party have moved from common sense and how far they’ve moved from representing everyday Australians,” Ms Sanderson said. South Australia’s One Nation leader Cory Bernardi secured an Upper House seat, with projections showing another from his party might join the former senator.

Federal MP Barnaby Joyce, who defected to One Nation late last year, said the outcome showed One Nation was now mainstream and rejected claims the minor party’s surge was driven by racism.

“We’re not at all, but we are a very strident opposition with a clarity of views that the Australian people respect,” Mr Joyce told Sky News.

After his commanding second-term victory, Premier Peter Malinauskas laid out a vision for a progressive patriotism in an election-night speech where he invoked the bush ethos of Henry Lawson’s poem The Duty of Australians. The Labor leader urged the nation to “work together” and remember “diversity has always been our greatest strength”.

“It’s been a hot summer in Australia, I think we’re all looking forward to the temperature coming down,” he said.

The Liberals sank to their lowest result in SA’s history under State leader Ashton Hurn, who had only been in the top job for 103 days.

It is expected to reduce her shadow ministry, with at least four seats lost and potentially more on the cards when the final votes are tallied. On Sunday Ms Hurn remained optimistic about the Liberal cause and promised to get the party “back to basics”, insisting it could turn around its fate as Queensland’s Premier David Crisafulli did in one term.

“I think we can all agree that we’ve got to get back to basics, and that’s exactly what we’ll be doing,” she said.

She also made clear that the Liberals need to remain a “centre-right party” and not “lurch one way or another” in the face of One Nation’s surging support.

“That’s where the Liberal Party belongs,” she said.

“There’ll be a lot of reflections, a lot of analysis over the weeks ahead, but I wouldn’t be advocating to lurch one way or another. We’ve got to stay the course.”

The sentiment was echoed by senior SA Liberal and Federal frontbencher Anne Ruston, who told Sky News the party historically won from the centre and needed to rebuild in that direction.

“When the Liberal Party or the Coalition has been its strongest is when it’s actually operated from the middle,” she said.

“When we come from the centre-right is when we win government,” she said.

“So I’m very strongly of the view that we have to govern from the centre. I’m also very strongly of the view that we have to heed the very wise words of John Howard and that is we’re a broad church.

“We have to be tolerant of the views that are across the wide spectrum of views that exist within our party.

“I think if we do that and we’re tolerant, then we can rebuild a Liberal Party that will be relevant to Australia.”

The Farrer by-election, triggered by the resignation of Ms Ley, will be held on May 9, while the Victorian election is scheduled to be held in late-November.

Flinders University Associate Professor Rob Manwaring said the result showed that Australian politics was “much more fragmented and fluid than it has ever been”.