Australia's far-right One Nation party scores first-ever lower house victory

Hind Al Soulia - Riyadh - SYDNEY — Australia’s far-right One Nation party has won a seat in the country’s House of Representatives for the first time.

With almost all the votes counted, One Nation candidate David Farley, a former agribusiness consultant, won over 57% of the tally in the special election for Farrer, a vast regional constituency in New South Wales, with independent candidate Michelle Milthorpe on almost 43%.

The contest was triggered by the resignation of Sussan Ley, who quit when she was ousted as leader of the opposition conservative Liberal Party.

Saturday's poll was the first federal test of One Nation's support after the party recorded the second-highest number of votes out of any political party in the South Australian state election in March.

As news of the party's victory emerged, One Nation leader Pauline Hanson told supporters this was not just a win for Farrer, but a win for Australia, and said the party was "coming after those other seats".

Farley told supporters One Nation had "reached the end of its beginning, we're going through the ceiling".

"What are we doing tonight? We're like a mason, with a chisel, and a hammer and we're re-carving the letters into the Australian democracy."

Australia has a preferential voting system where voters rank candidates from their most to least preferred. The final tally is calculated as a challenge between two candidates after preferences are distributed to ensure that the winner is supported by a majority.

One Nation had never won a federal lower house contest before Saturday's poll. In the late 1990s Hanson initially held her seat as an independent before losing her re-election bid. She has since returned to the parliament as a senator.

During the campaign, Farley said he had "lost a bit of faith" in the major parties. "They say one thing to your face and then go and do something else in parliament," he said.

Farrer spans 127,000 sq km (49,000 sq miles), an area larger than South Korea, and takes in the regional centres of Albury, Griffith and Deniliquin. The seat has always been held by either the Liberal or National parties.

The by-election also marked tests for the new leaders of the Liberal and National parties, respectively Angus Taylor, who ousted Ley in February, and Matt Canavan, who replaced David Littleproud in March.

The Liberal-National coalition suffered its worst ever defeat in last year's federal election, and the two parties have struggled with infighting and poor polling since then.

Farley’s victory does little to affect the balance in the lower house of parliament, where the Labor Party holds 94 of 150 seats.

However, the victory is in line with growing electoral support for far-right populist parties globally. Earlier this week, Britain’s populist right-wing Reform UK party made sweeping gains in local council elections at the expense of Labour.