David Farley, the One Nation MP who won the Farrer by-election in May, is “poised to quit One Nation” according to the Saturday Paper. It wouldn’t be the first time a One Nation MP has quit the party soon after being elected. In fact, that’s been the fate of 25 of the 52 MPs that have ever represented the party in Australian parliaments.
Thu 3 Sep 2026 01.00 AEST
Photo: AAP Image/Lukas Coch
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In recent years, the far Right One Nation party has transitioned from the political margins to the electoral mainstream. One notable explanation for their growing popularity seems to be a perception that they represent the concerns of less affluent Australians adversely affected by cost-of-living pressures.
David Farley, the One Nation MP who won the Farrer by-election in May, is “poised to quit One Nation” according to the Saturday Paper. This comes after his relationship with party leadership has reportedly “broken down to the point of near-irreconcilable differences” over immigration to rural areas.
It wouldn’t be the first time a One Nation MP has quit the party soon after being elected. In fact, that’s been the fate of 25 of the 52 MPs that have ever represented the party in Australian parliaments.
When Pauline Hanson founded One Nation in 1997, it seemed poised to shake up Australian politics. Indeed, the party won almost a quarter of the vote and 11 seats in Queensland’s state election the next year.
But that breakthrough was short-lived, and by the next state election in 2001, all 11 had either resigned from the party or quit parliament.
The defectors blamed the centralised control that Pauline Hanson, alongside fellow party directors David Oldfield and David Ettridge, exercised over the party, and attempted to register their own “One Nation Queensland” alternative.
David Oldfield was elected to NSW’s state parliament in his own right in 1999, but expelled the next year and, like the Queenslanders before him, registered “One Nation NSW” as a separate party.
By 2005, One Nation had just one elected representative anywhere in the country, and by 2009 they had none.
When One Nation elected four senators in 2016, returning to federal parliament for the first time in a decade, they once again seemed poised for a breakthrough. They did elect more MPs, but most defected – including former Labor leader Mark Latham and his fellow One Nation state MPs in NSW.
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Latham had once been a star recruit for the party and its NSW leader, but clashed with Pauline Hanson after he defamed Independent MP Alex Greenwich with a homophobic tweet and comments to the Daily Telegraph. Hanson, who has few limits on her power within the party, removed Latham as NSW leader and he resigned a week later.
And in 2024, Hanson disendorsed One Nation’s one Queensland MP, Stephen Andrew, reportedly because he’d been in talks to defect to Katter’s Australian Party (which he then did) and that he was “distracted by his side hustle of taking to the bush – armed to the teeth – to shoot feral pigs.”
One Nation did not win any seats in that year’s state election.
By the end of 2024, the party was back down to four state and federal parliamentarians.
The most recent defection was in 2025, when the party’s sole South Australian MP Sarah Game left to become an independent.
But after a strong showing in that year’s Senate election, and the arrival of Barnaby Joyce in December (himself defecting from the Nationals), One Nation’s poll numbers have flourished.
A series of election victories in 2026 have added eight MPs to the party’s representation across federal and state parliaments. While there are rumours about David Farley’s future, none of those new MPs have defected as of this article’s publication.
With One Nation back on the rise, and whispers of a coming “orange tsunami” echoing the halls of parliament, the party seems poised for a breakthrough. Perhaps this time it will stick.
