What Happened
One Nation has achieved a historic victory in Western Australia, winning the Secret Harbour by-election and securing its first lower-house seat in the state. Luke Herdegen will become the new MLA for the outer-suburban electorate south of Perth after the ABC called the contest for One Nation a little more than four hours after counting began.
The result marks a dramatic political shift, as Labor candidate Georgia Tree was unable to hold a seat that had entered the by-election with an 11.5% Labor margin. With almost three-quarters of votes counted on election night, Herdegen was leading Tree approximately 57% to 42% after preferences.
The Timeline
The scale of the turnaround is difficult to ignore. At the 2025 state election, One Nation received less than 9% of the vote in Secret Harbour. Long-serving Labor MP Paul Papalia won the seat at that election with an 11.5% margin after representing the area since entering parliament in 2007.
Papalia’s resignation in July triggered the by-election and opened a contest that rapidly became one of the most closely watched political battles in Western Australia. The electorate covers growing communities in Perth’s outer southern suburbs, including Secret Harbour, Port Kennedy, Golden Bay, Singleton, Lakelands and Karnup.
Government-backed candidate Georgia Tree conceded on Sunday, 30 August 2026 after her One Nation opponent Luke Herdegen claimed a state by-election victory the night before. This timeline confirmed Herdegen’s victory before the polls officially closed, ending days of speculation regarding the outcome in the outer southern suburbs of Perth.
Who Said What
Celebrating the result, Herdegen declared there were “no safe Labor seats” and said the Secret Harbour result would reverberate beyond Western Australia. One Nation’s WA leader Rod Caddies went even further, arguing the result showed voters were looking beyond the traditional Labor-Liberal contest.
“If you think ‘oh, these people will just vote for me’, then that’s a sense of arrogance and arrogance will get your political hide delivered to you on a plate,” Caddies said. WA Premier Roger Cook described the by-election as a “fight for our lives”, reflecting Labor’s awareness that One Nation represented a serious threat in the electorate.
Opposition home affairs spokesman Jonathon Duniam said the Liberals should not have admitted the by-election would be a challenge for the party before it even took place. “When we start talking about conceding or coming in second or finding ways to work with other people before we’ve even run the race, then yeah, people are not going to back us,” he said.
Local Luke Pors voted for One Nation, believing the minor party would do a better job than either Labor or the Liberals. Local frustrations drove the shift, with housing pressures, cost-of-living concerns, migration and community services featuring prominently throughout the campaign.
Why This Matters
The result is particularly significant because Secret Harbour was never considered marginal territory in the traditional sense. The defeat will hardly dent the Cook Government’s majority in State Parliament, with Labor holding 46 of the 59 Lower House seats before Paul Papalia’s early retirement triggered the by-election.
Losing a government seat at a by-election does not automatically mean the same result will occur at a general election. Voters can use by-elections to punish governments without risking an immediate change of government, and voting behaviour can shift when an entire state goes to the polls.
However, dismissing Secret Harbour as nothing more than a protest vote would also ignore what happened. A party that received less than 9% in the electorate at the previous state election has now won it. The ABC reported before polling day found voters in the area expressing frustration with both Labor and the Liberals, while political observers were already warning that a substantial One Nation result could send shock waves through the major parties.
What Happens Next
For WA Labor, the uncomfortable question is not simply how it lost Secret Harbour, but whether the forces behind the result exist elsewhere. Secret Harbour contains many young and working families living in rapidly expanding outer suburbs. Housing affordability, mortgages and everyday cost-of-living pressures had featured prominently throughout the campaign.
One Nation federal MP Barnaby Joyce said the party’s success in WA sent another strong message to Canberra. “The world’s changed, hasn’t it, politics has changed,” he told News24. “You’re witnessing a result they said was impossible,” Joyce added, noting that traditional Labor-held seats could no longer be taken for granted.
What is already clear is that a seat Labor entered with an 11.5% margin has fallen, and voters who wanted to punish the government found an alternative outside the traditional two-party contest. The West Australian reported on Wednesday, 2 September 2026 that the by-election secured One Nation’s first lower house seat in WA, sending shockwaves across the nation.