HISTORIC POLITICAL SHOCKWAVE: ONE NATION SENDS SHIVERS THROUGH LABOR
One Nation's stunning WA by-election victory has sent shockwaves through the Australian Labor Party, with Prime Minister Anthony Albanese reportedly holding emergency crisis meetings as Labor scrambles to respond.
One Nation celebrates a historic victory in the Secret Harbour by-election — the party's first lower house seat in Western Australia. (Supplied)
The Australian Labor Party is in full-blown panic mode.
One Nation's thunderous victory in the Secret Harbour by-election has shattered a three-decade Labor stranglehold on the Western Australian seat — and sent a chill through every backroom operator in the Albanese government.
Gym owner turned political powerhouse Luke Herdegen clinched the historic win on Saturday night, becoming the first One Nation candidate ever elected to WA's lower house. The 18.6 percent swing against Labor in what was once impenetrable heartland is being described inside party headquarters as nothing short of a bloodbath.
"There are no safe Labor seats in this state or in this country anymore. The people have spoken today."
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese is understood to have convened emergency crisis talks as the magnitude of the defeat sank in. Labor's candidate, Woodside lobbyist and former political staffer Georgia Tree, was left trailing by more than 3,600 votes after preferences — a humiliation few in the party dared imagine possible just months ago.
'Orange tsunami' sweeps the west
One Nation's WA leader Rod Caddies declared the result a death knell for the two-party system as we know it.
"You're witnessing a result they said was impossible. Labor owned this part of Perth. The working families out here would always vote Labor. But a safe seat does not stay safe if you ignore it long enough."
And ignore it they did. For years, Labor took the coastal strip between Rockingham and Mandurah for granted — a comfortable belt of older West Australians and young families squeezed by housing pressures, migration concerns and the daily grind of getting by. On Saturday, those voters bit back.
Herdegen, who moved west three years ago chasing better business opportunities, ran a campaign built on the unglamorous issues the major parties forgot — red bin collection schedules, local housing affordability and migration. It resonated.
Hanson's warning to the establishment
One Nation leader Pauline Hanson, beamed into the victory party on a big screen, told jubilant supporters that Australians were turning to her party for something the majors had stopped offering: hope.
"They're wanting someone who's really going to listen to them and really go out and fight for them to change the direction this country is going in. I give them my solemn oath I'm trying to get the right people on the floor of parliament to give them back our country that's been stripped away from us every which way."
"The result in Secret Harbour should be a warning to Labor. We're coming for more of your seats."
One Nation supporters celebrate as early results show Luke Herdegen leading the Secret Harbour by-election count. (Supplied)
The result will be dissected in every Labor war room from Perth to Canberra. WA Premier Roger Cook had openly admitted the by-election was a "fight for our lives" — a confession that now reads like a prophecy.
Liberals left watching from the sidelines
If Labor was the night's biggest loser, the Liberals weren't far behind. Opposition Leader Basil Zempilas had bizarrely claimed a One Nation win would be a win for his party — a comment that drew a furious rebuke from federal MP Andrew Hastie, whose seat of Canning overlaps with Secret Harbour and now sits squarely in One Nation's sights.
Hastie knows what's coming. The same voter frustration that flipped Secret Harbour could flip Canning — and a string of seats like it — at the next federal election.
The message is unmistakable
For too long, the political class has treated outer-suburban Australia as a captive audience — votes that would always come home on election day. Secret Harbour just blew that assumption out of the water.
Herdegen's victory speech said it best: "A message that will send shock waves across the entire country and put every MP in this entire country on notice. None of these MPs are safe from the orange tsunami."
The era of the safe seat is over. The era of the angry voter has arrived. And Labor — complacent, out of touch and caught flat-footed — has just been given the wake-up call of its life.
Founder & Editor-in-Chief · Independent News Australia
Nelly J. Yoa is the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of I News Australia and a 2025 Australian of the Year Nominee. A former professional soccer player turned journalist, his reporting spans diplomacy, world affairs, and Australian politics.
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