By Jack Arnold
What will the 9 May 2026 Farrer by-election deliver? A strong push is coming from Community Independent Michelle Milthorpe, who is campaigning on the electorate’s urgent needs: a new hospital, affordable housing, and better incentives to attract and retain experienced teachers, nurses, and emergency services personnel. She also wants meaningful reform of the Murray-Darling Basin water policy.
Voters in Farrer might look across the river to Indi, where Community Independents Cathy McGowan and Dr Helen Haines have delivered tangible results for their communities over the past decade-plus – in contrast to the longstanding Liberal representation in Farrer.
Suddenly the Coalition parties have recognised that strict vetting of all standing candidates is probably as essential as strictly vetting their own, which has not happened for PHONey (Pauline Hanson’s One Nation) in the Farrer by-election.
A controversy has forced the Coalition to confront an uncomfortable reality: rigorous vetting of candidates is just as important when dealing with their own preferences as it is for their own pre-selections. This issue has surfaced sharply with the PHONey candidate in Farrer.
Earlier this week, doubts were raised about David Farley “lasting the distance” with the party – a move that echoes the experience of roughly half of previous PHONey pre-selected candidates who have walked away. Many reportedly find the party’s one-person management style clashes with expectations of genuine collegial decision-making.
Farley’s questions about PHONey’s immigration policy appear to have triggered the tensions. In a regional electorate that relies heavily on migrant and backpacker labour to fill essential low-wage roles, such policies are seen as out of touch with local economic realities.
The Coalition, seeking to strengthen its parliamentary position, has been directing first-preference support toward the PHONey candidate – a retired agricultural manager from the cotton industry – despite his party’s involvement in the very Murray-Darling Basin water challenges the Coalition has helped shape, often to benefit political donors.
Liberal leader Angus Taylor has since appeared to walk back the strategy, simply suggesting that if you want to get rid of a bad Labor government, you have to vote for the Coalition. Notably, there was no mention of PHONey.
Nationals leader Matt Canavan was more pointed: Farley is doing a pretty good impression of The Fugitive, but he cannot hide from questions about his commitment to conservative causes.
Meanwhile, PHONey’s leadership has been in its own turmoil. The party reportedly offered the Coalition supply-and-confidence support in exchange for scrapping environmental policies favoured by its influential mining backers – an overture that was quickly rejected. This leaves them once again eyeing distant hopes of success in the 2028 federal election.
New England voters could offer a cautionary tale after 13 years under Barnaby Joyce, where many felt local interests often took a back seat to personal or donor priorities – not to mention the infamous “Canberra planter box” incident. “Never again” remains a common sentiment in parts of regional Australia.
REGIONAL INDEPENDENTS GET THINGS DONE FOR THEIR COMMUNITIES.
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Jack Arnold is a retired academic polymath who commenced his professional career as a research scientist and ended as a lawyer, with too many decades of education between. To stay busy he has taken an active interest in all levels of local New England politics for the past 50 years, assisting in the election of three progressive candidates, the latter two being very busy Independent representatives for their communities.
Since the retirement of these politicians in 2013, New England has stagnated economically and socially with pre-selected Nationals being elected to Parliaments in the strange local belief that voting for 19th century ideals would yield the new government infrastructure projects that our kids will need to live in the electorates in this 21st century.
Regional Independents get things done for their communities.
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Gutless (except arguing, tantrums and childish stunts)stumbling, with success among shitty types, brainless, heartless, unfit, untrained, incoherent, P Hanson goes on, a nomadic whiner needing justification. If her rubbishy wrongish candidate who bounces beliefs, gets up in Farrer, what will it prove.., that Caligula was wronged? Adolf was a sweety?