Every so often a single result tells you the ground has shifted. On this Garage edition of the Court of Public Opinion, Jeremy Cordeaux held one up: the Secret Harbour by-election in Western Australia, where One Nation’s Luke Herdegen, a candidate almost nobody had heard of, tore into a seat Labor had held for forty years.
The Numbers
The figures did the talking. Herdegen, Jeremy reported, scored 39.8 per cent of the primary vote, nearly 40 per cent, and 57 per cent two-party-preferred. For a first-time candidate with, as Jeremy put it, no personal popularity or following, against a party that had owned the seat for four decades, the swing was extraordinary.
Not only significant, Jeremy said, but strategic, and psychological. This was no protest nudge; it was a seat changing hands, and doing so emphatically.
Everything Went Labor’s Way, And It Still Lost
What made the result so striking, Jeremy argued, is that Labor had every advantage. It had held the seat for forty years. It had the enormous personal popularity of Premier Roger Cook. It had the undeniable prosperity of Western Australia behind it. The Prime Minister had even flown in the week before to announce the state’s GST share would not change.
Against a little-known One Nation candidate, with all of that going for it, Labor was still, in Jeremy’s word, slaughtered. When a party loses from that position, the problem is not the candidate or the campaign; it is the brand.
A Shot Across The Bows
For Jeremy, the by-election was a warning to both major parties. Labor is on notice, he said, and so are the Liberals, who barely registered in the seat. No seat, he argued, is now safe.
He framed it as a litmus test and a shot across the bows, the first real sign of what he called the orange wave, the orange onslaught. The major parties, he suggested, will now have to moderate their policies and adapt to community feeling, something they are not used to doing, and something they struggle with because, in his phrase, they have trouble reading the room.
The People Want To Teach Them A Lesson
Beneath the numbers, Jeremy saw a mood. Democracy is about the people, he said, and he has the feeling that the people want to teach these political egos a thing or two. He reached for Bruce Woodley’s line: we are few, but we are many, but we are one.
The result, he stressed, is far more serious for Labor than anyone imagines. He noted the government’s own environment minister conceding the party takes One Nation seriously and sees it as a threat. For Jeremy, that admission, forced out by a by-election in a seat once thought unlosable, is the clearest sign yet that the ground really has moved.
Listen To The Full Episode
Catch the complete Garage edition of The Court of Public Opinion, recorded live around the dining room table.
Watch The Full Episode
The Court of Public Opinion streams live every Friday from 9 a.m. to 12 p.m. (ACST), right here at jeremycordeaux.com. Download the podcast anytime on your favourite podcast app, and join the conversation with your calls and comments.
