Australia's far-right party wins first lower house seat

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SYDNEY: Australian far-right populist party Pauline Hanson's One Nation won its first seat in the country's House of Representatives in a by-election on Saturday (May 9), 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 south of Sydney and 320 km north of Melbourne, for the anti-immigration party with 59.3 percent of the vote, defeating the incumbent centre-right Liberal Party, according to the Australian Broadcasting Corp.

One Nation's first preference vote in the by-election was 42 percent, the ABC said, compared to the 6.6 percent first-preference vote it got at a federal election last May.

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"We're like a mason with a chisel and we're carving letters into Australia's democracy," Farley said at a televised election event. "One Nation has reached the end of its beginning."

FIRST LOWER-HOUSE SEAT SINCE PARTY FORMED

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.

Party leader Pauline Hanson, a senator, standing beside Farley, said the result was "a win for Farrer but a bigger win for the nation".

She knew her party was favoured to win but when the first television station projected victory "I actually got a tear in my eye", she said.

"You really don't understand the journey I've been on," she added.

Liberal leader Angus Taylor said at another televised event that the by-election was "always going to be a mountain to climb ... and we have to take away some hard lessons from this".

Taylor said his party would focus on immigration rates. "For too long we have been a party of convenience, not of conviction, and that must change," he added.

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