Farrer by-election and federal electoral miscellany (open thread)

A date announced and candidate details starting to emerge for the by-election to be held in Sussan Ley’s seat of Farrer, plus sundry other items of electoral news.

The date of the Farrer by-election has been set for May 9, as announced in parliament on Thursday by the Speaker, Milton Dick. Michelle Grattan in The Conversation relates that Labor is not running, which I have not seen reported elsewhere, and there is no indication yet on who the Liberal candidate might be. One Nation yesterday endorsed David Farley, 69-year-old former head of major beef producer the Australian Agricultural Company and an activist locally on water issues. Farley was chosen by local party members ahead of Albury small business owner Leigh Wolki and agribusiness manager Guy Cooper.

A Nationals preselection vote to be held today will be contested by former Albury mayor Kylie King, former Wodonga mayor Kev Poulton, retired army colonel Brad Robertson and beef farmer Marc Greening. Helen Dalton, the state independent member for Murray, says she will not run, after earlier considering doing so either as an independent or for One Nation.

Before diving into various federal electoral matters that have been accumulating over the past two months, two non-federal matters worth noting: Labor looks to have won the Northern Territory seat of Nightcliff from the Greens at a by-election held yesterday, and a draft state redistribution for Queensland will be published on Tuesday.

• Nine Newspapers reported a fortnight ago that Special Minister of State Don Farrell has been holding “informal talks” with other parties about expanding the federal parliament. This would likely involve 12 new seats for the Senate and twice that many for the House (a requirement of the Constitution’s nexus clause), resulting in around 174 seats for the House and 88 for the Senate, though there are options for adding further seats for the territories. Any such change would take effect after the 2028 election. The Liberals have declared themselves opposed, though the report says “some Liberal MPs and strategists” are privately supportive, but the Greens and the Nationals are thought likely to be favourable.

• A Greens preselection is looming to fill the vacancy created by the retirement of Tasmanian Senator Peter Whish-Wilson, which he announced last October. Among the candidates will be Tabatha Badger, who has held a seat for the party in Lyons since the March 2024 state election. Other prospective nominees identified by the ABC are Vanessa Bleyer, an environmental lawyer who ran in Braddon in last year’s state election; Scott Jordan, an environmental campaigner and frequent election candidate; and Alistair Allan, a former Sea Shepherd captain and the party’s candidate for Lyons at last year’s federal election.

• Barnaby Joyce, who is currently slated to be One Nation’s lead Senate candidate in New South Wales, says he would “consider” running again in his existing seat of New England, presumably reflecting bullishness about the party’s position in the polls.

• The Australian National University’s Centre for Policy Research has released an analysis of survey research conducted immediately after the election showing support for the proposition that democracy was “always preferable to other forms of government” ranging from just 43.8% among those aged 18-to-24 to 89.1% among those 75 and over. Those inclined to disagree were more likely to have low educational attainment, speak a language other than English at home, and live in a rural electorate. Those with religious affiliations and identifying as being on the left were more inclined to agree.

• The Australian’s Feeding the Chooks column reported last month that Luke Howarth, who was unseated in the northern Brisbane seat of Petrie last year, has nominated for top position for the Senate ticket in a preselection to be held at the party’s state convention next month. This places him in opposition to James McGrath, “who is expected to hold his position”. Second spot is reserved for the Nationals and Matt Canavan, notwithstanding suggestions he may run in the lower house seat of Capricornia, and former Senator Joanna Lindgren has nominated for third.

• Antony Green has published an instructive resource in the shape of two-party preferred preference flow data by candidate from non-classic contests at the last three elections, provided to him by the Australian Electoral Commission. The AEC routinely publishes data showing how the preferences of each candidate that didn’t make the final preference count divided between those who did, but this data extends the principle to preference splits between Labor and the Coalition in those seats where an independent or minor party candidate made the final count at the expense of one or the other.

• A note regarding the BludgerTrack poll aggregate: the leadership rating trends are on hold for the moment, as accommodating the new Opposition Leader will require some code re-engineering and enough data points to produce a workable trend result, which I won’t have time to do until after the South Australian election. I have added some new tabs to the “Poll Data” feature recording voting intention by 2025 election vote and the four regional categories used by the Australian Electoral Commission, the former striking me as being of particular interest in the current environment. You can access this by clicking the “more” tab on the far right until it gets you to the relevant set of tabs.

Author: William Bowe

William Bowe is a Perth-based election analyst and occasional teacher of political science. His blog, The Poll Bludger, has existed in one form or another since 2004, and is one of the most heavily trafficked websites on Australian politics.

1,401 thoughts on “Farrer by-election and federal electoral miscellany (open thread)”

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  1. Timmy
    The train that runs between Bacchus March and Melbourne discharges about 600 passengers at peak time, they run every 1/2 hour or less. If you take the car it takes about an hour, normally a bit more. If you work it all out, the train replaces a lane of cars from Melbourne to Bacchus march.
    Which is cheaper, another lane or a train. The answer is the train. Which uses less fuel, answer the train.

  3. Well, if renowned psephologist Paul Murray was the one who broke the news, that’s definitely a poll we can take to the bank.

  5. steve davis says:
    Tuesday, March 10, 2026 at 9:34 pm

    If it wasn’t for stupid panic buyers stoked by media reports then everything would be more normal
    __________________________________

    Too right, apparently of the 3 servos in St Arnud just up the road two are out of fuel and the other one is serving just ‘regulars’ or people they recognise, that is one step up from it being a local shop for local people.

  6. @Timmy at 9:34pm

    Wow, I’m almost speechless from how utterly despicable this post is. But I suppose that’s the point.

    It all comes down to dicks and arseholes in the end.

  9. Ghost Of Whitlam says:
    Tuesday, March 10, 2026 at 9:41 pm

    Melbourne is the (self proclaimed) food capital of the Southern Hemisphere after all.
    —————————

    You misspelled fool. 😀

  10. “The cops should have tasted that loud foreigner and beaten them with nightsticks.
    This is why Pauline will win, because she’ll shoot them instead.”

    There’s no need for hyperbole.
    The train conductor should have removed that loud person (who knows if he’s legally a foreigner, could have been naturalised already under our lenient laws) at the next stopping station and given him a $500 fine. That’s what a reasonable person would consider fair and reasonable. Unfortunately, the train conductor was probably of the same nationality, and therefore did nothing, as expected.

    This is why Pauline will win, because she’ll stop more of these low-quality people from entering Australia in the first place. And we ain’t talking about refugees on boats. These are people who migrate for the sake of migration. Their ancestors did so to Europe and became the Roma, who haven’t achieved integration in a thousand years. It is estimated that over two thirds of migration agencies in their homeland are bogus and simply steal the money of prospective migrants. What we actually see here is the tip of the iceberg.

  12. On the melatonin thing, I just want to make sure I understand correctly.

    For every other illegally imported drug in the known universe, a major health concern is the adulteration by the vendors to a level far below the advertised level, but in this particular case it’s the opposite with the concentration of the active ingredient being too high?

    Somebody needs to explain to these melatonin dealers how drug trafficking is supposed to work.

  14. Steve davis – i think the ‘panic’ has been caused by your useless energy Minister, blackout bowen.

    Perhaps Albo could put someone like Jason Clare in charge of that portfolio. Bowen is a fuckwit.

    Just a suggestion.

  15. Jolly Jumbucksays:
    Tuesday, March 10, 2026 at 9:47 pm
    Ghost Of Whitlam says:
    Tuesday, March 10, 2026 at 9:41 pm

    Melbourne is the (self proclaimed) food capital of the Southern Hemisphere after all.
    —————————

    You misspelled fool.
    =============================

    It is spelt like this “Jolly Jumbuck”.

  16. GoW@9.20pm

    “Is this really the most important thing that Border Force can be doing? Surely there are actual drugs they could be trying to stop coming into the country?”

    It’s a prescription drug here and the imported versions have been tested and found to have poor quality control and massively higher amounts of the ingredient in them, which can lead to overdoses.

    I find your posts generally very sensible.

    But on this issue, I think you should probably look at the idea of “Melatonin overdose”. It is akin to a vitamin C overdose. It may have some longterm side effects and eventually bad outcomes, but no-one gets injured or dies of a Melatonin overdose.

    On the other hand, for people who are deficient in melatonin (and I am one of those), and particularly ADHD children (and I was rare in being a girl diagnosed with that at age 10 – hyperactivity) it is a lifesaver.

    For those of us with chronic insomnia, it has been a game changer.

  17. If anyone can be blamed for the petrol shortage, its people like Hastie and various media outlets drumming up public fear on the matter for clicks and political gain.

  20. @Timmy

    I don’t buy it for a moment, never happened, you were never on one of those woke, DEI loving, Green, Gluten Free Net Zero, fairtrade trains.

    You were in your Hilux with the full FU spec, the 3 inch lift kit, oversize tyres, bullbar with Xenon lights and tuned with the DPF and Cat delete option.

  22. Dr Fumbles McStupidsays:
    Tuesday, March 10, 2026 at 9:52 pm
    ————————————–

    I don’t buy Timmy being in a Toyota (Asian) Hilux either. It would have to be a RAM yank tank.

  23. ‘Anthony Albanese isn’t quite ready to admit it, but as of Tuesday, Australia is formally committed to participating in the military campaign targeting the Iranian regime.

    The provision of a high-tech Wedgetail surveillance aircraft and medium-range AMRAAM defensive missiles, following a request from United Arab Emirates President Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan, is highly unlikely to be the intervention that changes the course of the war.

    But the decision to greenlight the request, accompanied by the work done to offer asylum to five members of the Iranian women’s national football team, makes Australia a more likely target in the future if the regime manages to survive.

    This Iranian regime is already no friend of Australia. It was only last August that spy agency ASIO revealed Iran had been behind antisemitic attacks on the Continental Kitchen in Sydney and the Adass Israel Synagogue in Melbourne.

    Offering this limited support to the UAE will also keep Albanese in the good graces of US President Donald Trump, who woke him up in the early hours of Tuesday morning for a 40-minute chat.’

    https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/whether-you-say-it-or-not-we-re-in-this-war-now-prime-minister-20260310-p5o920.html

    I think Massola’s right, and Marles’ appearance on “7.30” tonight was unconvincing. Basically, we’re in the UAE to protect Australians living & working there.

  24. “Yeah, because there’s never any obnoxious white Australians on public transport, are there?”

    I might see a couple a year.

    White people are the only people on the planet who feel ashamed of own people through guilt trips. I never quite worked out why. The Japanese have still shown no contrition over their massacres of POWs during WW2, a treatment they dished out that was far worse than we did to the natives or the American plantation owners did to the slaves. Why should we?

  25. Timmy says:
    Tuesday, March 10, 2026 at 9:47 pm

    The train conductor should have removed that loud person (who knows if he’s legally a foreigner, could have been naturalised already under our lenient laws) at the next stopping station and given him a $500 fine.
    ____________________________

    The laws are very lenient as talking loudly on a phone is not illegal in a ‘Quiet’ carriage, the quiet thing is just a suggestion to commuters.

    You are lucky, being a Karen about it and carrying on causing a scene with the conductor, I expect you would have been shown the next platform to think about what you had done.

  27. Chalmers should be over the moon about those numbers. Most people (outside of this blog) don’t even know who he is, they just think of any budget measures they happen to hear about as coming from ‘the government’. If 16 percent can remember his name, that’s a win.

  28. Entropy says:
    Tuesday, March 10, 2026 at 9:54 pm

    Dr Fumbles McStupidsays:
    Tuesday, March 10, 2026 at 9:52 pm
    ————————————–

    I don’t buy Timmy being in a Toyota (Asian) Hilux either. It would have to be a RAM yank tank.
    ___________________________

    He wants one, has the poster on the ceiling above his bed, but can’t afford the payments on his trainee manager at McDonalds salary.

  29. “@Timmy at 9:34pm
    Wow, I’m almost speechless from how utterly despicable this post is. But I suppose that’s the point.”

    What’s so despicable about it? Would it be less despicable by your standards if that loud person was white? I guess it’s a moot point, because I’ve never seen a white person act like that in a quiet carriage.
    Sanctimonious left wing nuts. Why did I have to be born and raised in Melbourne of all places? If Albo wins the next election I’m selling up and moving to Alabama.

    “You are lucky, being a Karen about it and carrying on causing a scene with the conductor, I expect you would have been shown the next platform to think about what you had done.”

    How DARE you call me a name corresponding to a woman. You are lucky this is an online forum and you could be far away. If someone did that to me in person I’d show them the consequences of insulting my masculinity!!

  30. I’m not ashamed of being white. I’m not proud of it either.

    I reserve my pride and my shame for things that I have personally achieved or not achieved, not the amount of melanin in my skin. Why would I be ashamed or proud of the circumstances of my birth? My forebearers were responsible for that, not me.

  31. It is funny how in the later 1990’s Hanson changed politics in Australia as howard saw what a threat she was and changed tact to take on some of her policies.

    Now here we have albanese, a prime minister with no rudder or spine, stands for nothing other then popularity, who in the past has been at free palestine rallies and been a strong left winger putting on the act he now liking policies he hated but a couple of months ago.

    The good ship labor continues to float here and there totally rudderless. Staying popular is the #1 priority. Good leaders have to make unpopular decisions. Albanesewill go down as just another also ran PM.

  32. If Albo wins the next election I’m selling up and moving to Alabama.

    Yeah, have fun with that.

    Make sure you’ve saved up enough for any healthcare you may need in future.

  33. Well, the great jelly bean melatonin debate here tonight has shown just how far we are from getting “illicit” drugs treated as a medical problem in Australia, rather than a criminal problem.

    Melatonin is a natural hormone produced by the brain’s pineal gland that regulates the body’s sleep-wake cycle (circadian rhythm). Health direct

    So when is the great magnesium crackdown coming!! Many people take magnesium to help them sleep, and it is effective. But, it has quite nasty side effects (nerve pain) if taken in large quantities for too long.

    Perhaps it is better that I don’t ask. Soon I will be reduced to doing what my witch antecedents did – find willow bark for aspirin, some poppies for a love potent …

  34. And interest rates spiking in Australia in 1973 was because of Whitlam – as Murdoch repeated and repeated

    No mention of the First Global Oil Crisis spiking inflation GLOBALLY forcing interest rates up GLOBALLY

    It was Whitlam

    The reason I submit this is because of what certain are contributing to this site currently, so just more abject nonsense thru political bias

    Mind you, with Howard as treasurer in 1980, Commercial Bills were discounting at 25% BEFORE Line and Acceptance Fees, “Grandfathered” Mortgage rates were 13.5% and new borrowers were paying 17.5% – and unemployment was well above double digits as was inflation

    And what did Howard do?

    He froze salary and wages increases – so it was all the fault of workers

    Then we had the same “divisive dwarf” as pm saying that no one was complaining to him about the value of their homes rising (on the back of negative gearing and the reduction in CGT) and that before we got to “Workchoices” screwing workers and the privatisation of child care (Groves, a donor to the LNP) and aged care (Moran and others also donors to the Liberal Party)

    And Malcolm Fraser resigned from the Liberal Party

    But you never hear this tawdry impact of government on citizens lives from those so keen to attack the current government, do you?

    Instead they are back to blaming Whitlam for high interest rates

    And using foul language to describe those they oppose

    It is easy to describe someone as a “fuckwit” but I would suggest those using such description look in a mirror because then they will view a real fuckwit

    And on my morning walk this morning there were 2 cars at the local Shell servo – the price $2.13 a litre (before the 4 cents off)

  35. steve davis says:
    Tuesday, March 10, 2026 at 9:34 pm
    If it wasn’t for stupid panic buyers stoked by media reports then everything would be more normal.
    ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
    Is anyone looking for petrol blaming the perceived shortage on the invasion of Iran by two
    nuclear powers ?

  36. Yeah Young Angus needs to go more feral comes across as a nice guy and we know where they finish.
    SA libs have zero cut through with war going on and prepolls open.
    Need to hammer cost of living all week as interest rate rise coming next week a few days before election.High petrol prices combined with two interest rate rises in two months will damage labor.
    No res bank meeting in April btw.

  38. Howard never took on any of Hanson’s policies. He only hoodwinked enough people, including Hanson herself, into believing he did.

    Actually, that’s not true. Howard wasn’t smart enough to hoodwink anybody. The commercial media did it for him.

  39. I’m most concerned that one of our esteemed contributors “was on E” while driving around Geelong – is that a Geelong specific issues or a Victoria habit generally?

  41. Timmy, a real man:

    How DARE you call me a name corresponding to a woman. You are lucky this is an online forum and you could be far away. If someone did that to me in person I’d show them the consequences of insulting my masculinity!!!

    I would be willing to bet good money that this guy has a Grindr account hidden somewhere on his phone.

  44. ‘Despite the strong indicators that people remain dissatisfied with Mr Chalmers’ economic performance, his opponents have not emerged as a strong alternative.

    The Coalition’s poll results slumped in the latest Sky News Pulse, with the full results to be published at 5am on Wednesday.’

    Well, almost enough said. The main interest will be One Nation’s vote.

  46. Timmy says:
    Tuesday, March 10, 2026 at 10:02 pm

    How DARE you call me a name corresponding to a woman. You are lucky this is an online forum and you could be far away. If someone did that to me in person I’d show them the consequences of insulting my masculinity!!
    _______________________________

    Well you are being a bit of a Karen, admit it. Anyhow what are you going to do, drop your trousers to show off you masculinity – believe me petal, it never works.

  47. While I don’t think that sending a plane to the UAE is getting us caught up in the Iran war in a way we can’t easily get out, I do hope the Government got something out of the deal. Specifically, it should only be done with guarantees that the UAE cease any material support for the RSF in Sudan. I mean, the UAE keep denying they ever did so a written guarantee should be a no brainer.

  48. Timmysays:
    Tuesday, March 10, 2026 at 9:55 pm
    “Yeah, because there’s never any obnoxious white Australians on public transport, are there?”

    I might see a couple a year.

    White people are the only people on the planet who feel ashamed of own people through guilt trips. I never quite worked out why. The Japanese have still shown no contrition over their massacres of POWs during WW2, a treatment they dished out that was far worse than we did to the natives or the American plantation owners did to the slaves. Why should we?

    I’ve just sat next to a fine fellow sipping a vintage brown paper bag delight at the local abandoned shop front..
    This fellow said to me,
    “you look like you need a swig”.
    “Have you been reading the scriptures from timmy on PB again?”, he asked
    “I warned ya” he added.
    Then the gentleman finished with,
    “If that ALABAMA was around ya’d better get your own brownie”.
    And so explains the twenty something % that pourleen receives.

  49. Timmy at 9:34pm
    Why did I have to be born and raised in Melbourne of all places? If Albo wins the next election I’m selling up and moving to Alabama.
    ________________________

    Ah i knew it, you didn’t need to hide your true feelings, moving in with ALABAMA will set you both right, have lots to talk about and make a nice couple too.

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