David Farley has captured the seat of Farrer for One Nation on a projected 58 to 42 two-candidate-preferred margin, delivering Pauline Hanson’s party its first-ever House of Representatives seat and ending a Liberal hold on the southern Riverina electorate that has run unbroken since 2001. That is according to election analyst Antony Green, with Farley’s 42.3 per cent primary vote up 35.1 points on One Nation’s 2025 result and the Liberal primary down 32.2 points to 11.2 per cent.
Farley, the Narrandera-based agricultural businessman and chair of the irrigator lobby group Speak Up 4 Water, defeated Climate 200-backed independent Michelle Milthorpe on a primary vote of 42.3 per cent to 25.6 per cent. The Nationals, contesting Farrer for the first time since 2001, finished on 9.7 per cent against the Liberals’ 11.2 per cent, with the combined Coalition primary vote trailing One Nation by more than 21 points.
Speaking exclusively to Wood Central, Timber NSW chief executive Maree McCaskill said the result reflected support for a candidate able to be a strong voice for rural Australia rather than support for any particular party, with Farley’s red gum and Murray-Darling Basin credentials resonating directly with an electorate that the major parties had stopped contesting on substance. “We need more candidates with lived business experience and common sense,” McCaskill said.
Last week, Wood Central revealed that Farley was the only candidate to publicly commit to the native hardwood supply chain, with red gum operators across the southern Riverina backing him after earlier outreach to the Liberal and National parties went unanswered. That campaign saw him travel to Barham for a private meeting with Gelletly Red Gum Firewood, Arbuthnot Saw Mill, O’Brien’s Red Gum and Timber NSW, which was arranged within 24 hours of the industry approaching the One Nation campaign.
The seat had been held continuously since 2001 by former Liberal leader Sussan Ley, whose February leadership spill loss to Angus Taylor triggered her resignation from parliament and the subsequent by-election. Ley sat as Environment Minister in 2021 when she ‘shot down’ an amendment (backed by influential Labor Senator Raff Ciccone) that would have inserted a Corporations Act-style business judgment rule into the Regional Forest Agreements framework.
Antony Green wrote on the night that the Farrer result was “so bad it could rule out any possibility of a Coalition majority” at the next federal election without One Nation support in the lower house, with national YouGov polling on 28 April to 5 May placing One Nation second on the primary at 24 per cent, ahead of the Coalition on 21 per cent.
