SYDNEY, May 9 (Reuters) – Australian far-right populist party Pauline Hanson’s One Nation won its first seat in the country’s House of Representatives in a byelection on Saturday, a preliminary vote count showed.
The result is in line with a surge of electoral support for far-right populist parties globally. Britain’s ruling Labour party this week suffered a widespread loss of seats at council elections.
David Farley, a former agribusiness executive, won the rural seat of Farrer, some 550 km (340 miles) south of Sydney and 320 km (200 miles) north of Melbourne, for the anti-immigration party with a projected vote of 59.1%, defeating the incumbent centre-right Liberal Party, according to the Australian Broadcasting Corp.
“It’s very clear, the next member for Farrer is David Farley,” Australian Broadcasting Corp election analyst Casey Briggs said in a broadcast. “It’s not a close result.”
The result is significant in that it marks the first time One Nation has won a lower-house seat since Hanson formed the party 30 years ago.
But it does not affect the parliamentary majority of the ruling Labor Party, which holds 94 of 150 lower-house seats.
The seat was left vacant when Liberals leader Sussan Ley resigned in February.
The Labor Party did not run a candidate in the contest for the seat that has been held by the opposition conservatives since it was formed more than half a century ago.
(Reporting by Byron Kaye; editing by Barbara Lewis)
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