Pauline Hanson‘s One Nation has set its sights on multicultural areas in western Sydney after a convincing win at the Farrer election.
One Nation won its first House of Representatives seat on Saturday night with swing over 30 per cent. The federal electorate is one of the most multicultural areas in western NSW. More than 20 per cent of residents in Farrer were born overseas.
New One Nation recruit Barnaby Joyce claimed the party’s critics mainly live in ‘established white areas’.
‘We’ve got one of the most multi-ethnic parts of Australia, and the more multi-ethnic it was, the stronger the vote was for us,’ Joyce said on Sunday, The Australian reported.
‘If One Nation was racist, that would have been our worst booths. Where were our worst booths? To be quite frank, established white areas.’
‘They’re the ones who are more focused on, apparently, One Nation being racist than first-generation Australians,’ he said.
Hanson indicated her party will be focusing on western Sydney in the next NSW state election, set to be held early next year.
‘I’ve been out to Fairfield and other areas in Sydney, and support has grown there over the years, and people do want change there,’ she said.
Pauline Hanson has said she has the support of immigrants who ‘don’t want Australia to become like the country they left’
Liberal leader Angus Taylor’s party took a drubbing at the Farrer by-election
‘A lot of migrants are very supportive of One Nation,’ she said.
‘There’s huge support there, because they say to me, ‘Pauline, we came here, we are Australians, and we don’t want this place to become like the place we left’.’
Specifically, Hanson was gunning for the seats currently held by Climate Change Minister Chris Bowen and Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke.
‘That would be a good start to get this country on track,’ she said.
Speaking to Sky News shortly after the Farrer win, Hanson took aim at political rivals that ‘ridiculed’ her smaller party.
‘It’s the sheer arrogance, like we don’t have any right to be on the political scene,’ she said.
‘Isn’t this a democracy?
‘Don’t you put your policies forward and what you want to do for the people?
Pauline Hanson (left) and Barnaby Joyce (right) have set their sights on western Sydney after winning the multicultural seat of Farrer
‘Or are we a third-world country? We have no right to go out there and express what we want to do for the country? This is why they will lose.’
Joyce also made an appearance on Sky News, focusing on Farrer shortly before his party won the electorate.
He slammed a decision by the Albanese Government to cut funding for the Inland Rail project, which he described as ‘beyond belief’.
The $45billion project would have seen a massive railway built from Melbourne to Brisbane, passing through several key inland towns – including Albury, in the Farrer electorate.
The 1,600-kilometre freight corridor was set to be the biggest rail project undertaken by the Australian Government in the last century.
However, it was announced on Wednesday that the line wouldn’t go further than Parkes in Central West NSW.
Joyce said it was another example of how the government was abandoning rural areas that would have been able to build industries using the inland rail.
‘We we could have done this. We could have shown the world we’re smart,’ Joyce said.
‘Freight rails around the world are the big generators of economic activity.
‘These are real assets that do a job and it’s been canned by a government that has no belief in regional areas whatsoever.’
One Nation’s win in Farrer came just days after the federal government axed funding for a inland railway (above) spanning from Melbourne to Brisbane
