Liberal Andrew Hastie faces mounting pressure from One Nation as party ramps up national expansion

One Nation has launched its campaign against Liberal leadership hopeful Andrew Hastie, just days after the opposition frontbencher acknowledged his own “political mortality” in the face of the resurgent minor party.

The party’s Western Australian leader Rod Caddies and Luke Herdegen, the state candidate for the impending Secret Harbour byelection, opened the Canning branch on Saturday afternoon.

Meanwhile in Victoria, freshly endorsed state leader Warren Pickering has de-emphasised his previous endorsement of conspiracy theories as the Victorian arm of the party also expands and garners fresh scrutiny ahead of the November election.

At the Canning branch launch, One Nation did not announce a candidate or policies, but has vowed to run a strong opponent against Hastie. Party leadership has attacked the Coalition frontbencher for giving evidence in Ben Roberts-Smith’s failed defamation action against this masthead and his role as a potential witness in the accused war criminal’s upcoming trial.

Caddies said One Nation polled well in the area and would campaign hard.

“But it won’t be because it’s [Hastie’s] seat. It’ll be because I’m planning to help target every seat in this state and join my federal colleagues in supporting them in making sure that we win as many seats as possible,” he said ahead of the launch.

“You would be a fool not to be worried with the polling that’s been done and the support we’re getting on the street. One Nation’s momentum is massive. Anyone that says they’re not worried, I guess you can take that for what it is. But if I was the member… I would be concerned that there will be a change of representation.”

A seat-by-seat analysis conducted by Redbridge for The Australian Financial Review in May predicated Hastie would lose his seat in a populist surge. The Liberal frontbencher this week signalled for the first time he could lose, saying he hoped for One Nation’s preferences after previously vowing never to “bend the knee” to Pauline Hanson.

The previous One Nation candidate, Fernando Bove, won 11.4 per cent of first preferences at the 2025 federal election, with a 6.8 per cent swing.

One Nation is mobilising in the region ahead of the Secret Harbour byelection, where long-term Labor minister Paul Papalia has retired.

WA Labor Premier Roger Cook has warned voting for One Nation would bring “the chaos of the eastern states to Western Australia”.

One Nation’s rapid expansion, with a goal to run candidates in every electorate around the country, has opened up fresh scrutiny for the minor party.

Newly endorsed Victorian leader Warren Pickering on Saturday pivoted from his previous support for conspiracy theories after this masthead revealed his history with the state’s “freedom movement”.

Pickering, a self-described conspiracy theorist, has claimed Australian government policy is controlled by a cabal of foreign “globalists”, and endorsed the idea that the world economy was deliberately crashed to trigger a “great reset”.

He has also peddled the debunked “15-minute city” conspiracy, which claims policies aimed at ensuring citizens live near essential services are a plot to confine citizens and strip them of their freedoms.

Pickering on Saturday vowed it “was absolutely not anything we will be campaigning on in this state election”.

“With respect to conspiratorial type conversations, if you go a bit more into the context of those rallies and things I’d said previously, you will find that… it was in the build-up to a federal election, and surrounding things like a lot of these quotas under the pretense of sustainability and net zero. So the Paris Agreement and UN Refugee Convention , which are drafted and administered by UN and WEF [World Economic Forum] organisations. So, look, it’s not conspiratorial, but it’s also not related to a state election,” he told News24.

Asked to explain his opposition to 15-minute cities, he said Victoria was removing community consultation processes on high-rise developments “under the pretense of sustainability”.

“That’s the best way to describe it in the short term,” he said.

Pickering also said it was “inevitable” that One Nation would continue banning news organisations after the minor party barred The Age, ABC and The Guardian from a press conference on Monday where it was announcing a handful of candidates for the upcoming state election.

“It was a good move because within 24 hours, all three of those publications had managed to push out a bit of a hit piece on myself,” he told News24, referring to reporting on his embrace of conspiracy theories.

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