Andrew Hastie has delivered a blunt warning to his own side over the Secret Harbour by-election as One Nation intensifies its campaign in the Liberal heavyweight’s political backyard and begins building an organisation capable of challenging him at the next federal election.
The federal Liberal MP for Canning has publicly questioned his state party’s handling of the crucial August 29 contest, describing the result as an important test for WA Opposition Leader Basil Zempilas.
That intervention comes at an awkward moment for the Liberals.
Their candidate Ryan Robertson is fighting Labor’s Georgia Tree and One Nation’s Luke Herdegen in a seat that should, on paper, offer the opposition an opportunity to capitalise on a massive swing against Labor at last year’s state election.
Instead, One Nation has emerged as a serious force in the contest.
And while the Secret Harbour result will determine a seat in the WA Parliament, the political consequences could travel straight across the electorate boundary into Hastie’s federal future.
Hastie warns his own party
Hastie’s intervention is significant because he is not an outside commentator assessing the Liberals’ performance.
He is one of the party’s most prominent federal MPs in Western Australia.
And Secret Harbour sits substantially within the same southern Perth political territory represented by Hastie federally in Canning.
According to reporting by the Australian Financial Review, Hastie has characterised the by-election as an important test of Zempilas’s leadership as WA Liberal leader.
That puts pressure not only on Robertson but on the state Liberal organisation running the campaign.
The timing could hardly be more sensitive.
Early voting began on August 17.
Polling day is August 29.
And One Nation is simultaneously establishing itself inside Hastie’s own federal electorate.
One Nation has opened a Canning branch
The most consequential development for Hastie may not be what happens in the state parliament at all.
One Nation has launched a new branch in Canning as part of its expansion across Western Australia.
The party’s WA leader Rod Caddies has openly discussed the electoral threat this creates for Hastie.
Caddies said the Liberal MP would be “a fool” not to worry about potentially losing Canning to One Nation.
The language represents an escalation from his position only weeks earlier.
In July, Caddies dismissed Hastie’s declaration that he was at “war” with One Nation, saying the party was primarily interested in fighting Labor rather than Hastie.
“I think he is fighting a ghost war,” Caddies said at the time.
“He is shadow boxing. I have no intention of fighting Andrew Hastie or the Liberals. I have got intentions on going to war with Labor.”
But political organisations matter more than rhetoric.
One Nation now has a branch operating inside Canning.
That gives the party infrastructure from which it can recruit members, organise volunteers, campaign locally and ultimately select a federal candidate.
Secret Harbour gives One Nation a live-fire test
That is why the August 29 by-election matters well beyond the WA Parliament.
Secret Harbour provides One Nation with an opportunity to test its campaign machinery in the same broader communities that will matter in a future federal battle for Canning.
The party has selected 39-year-old Luke Herdegen, a Rockingham-area businessman who operates multiple fitness centres across Perth’s southern suburbs and is a former national weightlifting champion.
One Nation says Herdegen was selected from 88 applicants.
The party has been running a highly visible campaign attacking Labor over crime, homelessness, infrastructure and the long-delayed Karnup railway station.
It is exactly the type of electorate where One Nation believes its current political message can work.
Secret Harbour is prime One Nation territory
The electorate occupies Perth’s outer southern suburban corridor between Rockingham and Mandurah.
It combines many of the political pressures driving One Nation’s national resurgence.
Housing affordability matters.
Mortgage pressure matters.
Cost of living matters.
Transport infrastructure matters.
And voters have already demonstrated a willingness to move away from Labor.
At the 2025 WA election, One Nation received 8.4 per cent of the primary vote in Secret Harbour — more than twice its statewide result.
Election analyst Ben Raue has noted that outer-suburban electorates of this type are precisely the places where One Nation can be expected to perform strongly.
Secret Harbour is, as he put it, “about as outer as you can get in Perth”.
Secret Harbour would ordinarily be regarded as Labor territory.
The by-election was triggered by the retirement of former minister Paul Papalia, who represented the area for almost two decades.
But Labor suffered a 19.8 per cent swing towards the Liberals at the 2025 election.
Premier Roger Cook understood the danger immediately.
When Papalia announced his departure, Cook described the looming contest as a “fight for our lives”.
That language was revealing.
Labor does not regard One Nation’s rise as a theoretical national polling phenomenon.
It is now confronting the party in an actual electorate where voters will deliver a verdict in days.
The Liberals should theoretically be benefiting
The political arithmetic creates an uncomfortable question for Hastie’s party.
If Labor suffered a swing approaching 20 percentage points at the last election and has now lost a long-serving local member, why aren’t the Liberals obviously positioned to take the seat?
They have a candidate with a potentially strong local profile.
Ryan Robertson is a City of Rockingham councillor, former Royal Australian Navy submariner and real estate agent.
He served in the Navy between 2009 and 2021 and was named Submariner of the Year during his service.
His campaign is focused on local infrastructure and what he describes as years of promises without delivery.
The Nationals are not contesting the seat and have urged their supporters to back Robertson.
Yet Liberal leader Basil Zempilas has already argued that any Labor defeat would constitute a Liberal victory — even if One Nation rather than the Liberals ultimately won the seat.
That was an extraordinary benchmark to set.
Zempilas’s ‘victory’ argument revealed the problem
When a major opposition party enters a by-election in a seat that has just experienced a massive anti-government swing, the conventional objective is straightforward.
Win it.
Zempilas instead argued that Labor losing would itself represent success for the Liberals.
ABC’s coverage noted that the comment said a great deal about the party’s expectations.
Hastie’s intervention now places further scrutiny on that position.
If the Liberals finish behind One Nation in a strategically important outer-suburban seat, the result will inevitably raise questions about which party is becoming the principal beneficiary of voter dissatisfaction with Labor.
That question has implications far beyond Ryan Robertson.
One Nation and the Liberals are competing for many of the same voters
This is the strategic problem confronting the Liberal Party nationally.
One Nation is no longer merely taking votes from Labor.
It is competing directly for conservative and disaffected Coalition voters.
Hastie knows that better than most.
He has already declared himself politically opposed to One Nation and has attacked what he sees as the party’s populist approach.
One Nation has responded increasingly aggressively.
Hanson has attacked Hastie over his role as a witness in Ben Roberts-Smith’s defamation proceedings, while Hastie has accused the party of running a “dirty and nasty” campaign against him.
The federal MP says the personal attacks have intensified as One Nation establishes itself in Canning.
The Canning fight has already become personal
Hastie is a former Special Air Service Regiment officer who entered Parliament after winning the 2015 Canning by-election.
His military background has always been central to his political identity.
That has made One Nation’s attacks concerning Roberts-Smith particularly combustible.
Hanson has defended Roberts-Smith as a war hero, while Hastie gave evidence in the former soldier’s unsuccessful defamation case.
Hastie has now accused Hanson and her chief of staff James Ashby of driving personal attacks against him as One Nation expands into his electorate.
He has described the emerging campaign as “dirty and nasty”.
That is not the language of two parties merely competing with Labor independently.
It is increasingly the language of direct political rivals.
But ‘sabotaging his own party’ goes beyond the evidence
Hastie’s criticism of the WA Liberals is real.
Describing that criticism as deliberate “sabotage”, however, requires a conclusion about his motives that the available evidence does not establish.
A senior federal MP can publicly criticise a state campaign because he believes its strategy is failing, because he wants to pressure the leadership to change course, because he is protecting his own electorate or because of internal party tensions.
Those possibilities can overlap.
But criticism is not automatically sabotage.
Nor is there sufficient evidence to state as fact that Hastie has “abandoned” Robertson or deliberately attempted to cause a Liberal defeat.
What can be said is politically damaging enough.
A prominent federal Liberal has publicly questioned his state party’s performance while it is engaged in an important by-election campaign.
And the party benefiting from Liberal weakness could eventually challenge Hastie himself.
One Nation’s immediate target is still Labor
There is another important qualification.
Despite the growing hostility between Hastie and One Nation, Rod Caddies has previously been explicit that the party’s immediate Secret Harbour campaign is directed at Labor.
The by-election is for a Labor-held state seat.
Herdegen needs to defeat Georgia Tree and the other candidates on August 29 before the result can be presented as a launch pad for anything else.
One Nation’s local campaign has consequently concentrated heavily on Labor’s record.
The party has attacked the government over crime and homelessness and repeatedly highlighted the failure to deliver Karnup Station.
That station has become one of the defining issues of the campaign.
The Karnup promise is coming back to haunt Labor
Labor first promised a railway station at Karnup as far back as the 2013 election campaign.
The station has still not been delivered.
Instead, Lakelands Station opened in 2023 after receiving federal funding under the Morrison Coalition government.
Labor says it remains committed to Karnup and has continued pursuing funding opportunities.
But a promise stretching across more than a decade provides One Nation and the Liberals with an obvious campaign weapon.
Premier Cook has consequently faced pressure to demonstrate that the project will finally move forward.
For voters spending every day commuting through Perth’s rapidly growing southern corridor, the argument is not abstract.
It concerns whether population and housing growth have been matched by transport infrastructure.
One Nation is running a different kind of campaign
Financially, One Nation is not matching Labor’s campaign machine.
The WA branch recently disclosed a $25,000 donation from Grower Connect Pty Ltd, owned by Manjimup farmer Paul Da Silva, as its only major disclosed donation since the by-election was called.
Labor, by contrast, has disclosed substantially greater fundraising.
Caddies has portrayed One Nation’s effort as a low-cost grassroots operation rather than a campaign dependent on major donors.
The party has also leaned heavily on social media, including AI-generated campaign material attacking Labor’s record in Secret Harbour.
That makes volunteers and local organisational infrastructure particularly important.
The new Canning branch therefore serves two purposes.
It helps the immediate state campaign.
And it builds an organisation that remains after August 29.
That is the part Hastie cannot ignore
A state by-election campaign disappears after polling day.
A federal party branch does not.
Branches recruit members.
They organise volunteers.
They collect local intelligence.
They identify potential candidates.
They build voter databases and campaign networks.
And they give a political party a permanent physical presence in an electorate.
That is why One Nation opening a Canning branch is more strategically significant for Hastie than any single photograph of Hanson campaigning in Secret Harbour.
The party is constructing the machinery required to contest his seat.
Hastie has survived difficult contests before
Canning is not unfamiliar with politically significant by-elections.
Hastie himself entered Parliament through one.
He won the 2015 Canning by-election after the death of Liberal MP Don Randall, in a contest watched nationally because of the pressure then facing prime minister Tony Abbott.
Hastie subsequently consolidated his position and became one of the most prominent conservative figures in the federal Liberal Party.
But Australia’s political environment has changed sharply.
The threat on the Liberal Party’s right is considerably stronger than it was when Hastie entered Parliament.
One Nation is expanding organisationally and targeting outer-suburban electorates where voters are under pressure from housing costs, mortgages and infrastructure constraints.
Canning contains precisely those communities.
Secret Harbour is therefore a test run
One Nation does not need to defeat Hastie this month to create a problem for him.
He is not on the Secret Harbour ballot.
What the party needs is evidence that its message works in the communities surrounding his federal base.
A strong Herdegen result would give it that evidence.
A victory would be considerably more significant.
It would give One Nation a state MP in an area overlapping substantially with Canning while demonstrating that the party can convert favourable national polling into actual votes in suburban Western Australia.
Even a competitive second-place performance could strengthen recruitment, fundraising and volunteer enthusiasm ahead of the next federal campaign.
The Liberals face an uncomfortable three-way fight
The electoral problem is particularly difficult because the Liberals cannot treat One Nation exactly as they would Labor.
They compete with One Nation for voters.
But they can also depend heavily on One Nation preferences.
ABC’s analysis of Secret Harbour identified that dilemma before campaigning reached its current intensity.
A Liberal candidate may need One Nation voters to preference him ahead of Labor.
But aggressively associating with One Nation risks alienating moderate voters who reject Hanson’s positions on immigration, multiculturalism and other cultural issues.
Attack One Nation too hard and the Liberals risk preference hostility.
Move too close and they risk losing voters elsewhere.
Hastie’s increasingly hostile relationship with Hanson makes that balancing act even more difficult.
August 29 will answer the first question
Sixteen candidates are contesting the Secret Harbour by-election.
Ryan Robertson appears first on the ballot for the Liberals.
Georgia Tree is sixth for Labor.
Luke Herdegen is fourteenth for One Nation.
Voting is compulsory, and early voting is already under way ahead of polling day on Saturday, August 29.
The result will first determine who represents Secret Harbour in the WA Legislative Assembly.
But every major party will be reading considerably more into the numbers.
Labor will learn whether its outer-suburban vote has stabilised after the enormous swing it suffered in 2025.
Zempilas will learn whether the WA Liberals can convert dissatisfaction with the government into votes for themselves rather than One Nation.
Caddies will discover whether One Nation’s national momentum can survive the transition from polling to an actual ballot box.
And Hastie will get an unusually detailed look at what One Nation can do on territory very close to home.
The bigger battle could come after the by-election
That may ultimately be the most consequential part of the Secret Harbour contest.
One Nation has already established the Canning branch.
Caddies has already warned Hastie not to dismiss the threat.
Hanson and Hastie are already engaged in an increasingly personal political fight.
And Hastie is now publicly challenging the performance of his own party while One Nation tries to prove it can dominate the anti-Labor vote in an outer-suburban WA electorate.
None of that establishes that Hastie is intentionally sabotaging Ryan Robertson or trying to engineer a Liberal defeat.
But it does expose the strategic crisis confronting the Liberal Party.
If voters leave Labor but move to One Nation instead of the Liberals, defeating Labor is no longer the Coalition’s only problem.
The Liberals must also defend their own territory.
Secret Harbour is the immediate battlefield.
Canning could be the next one.
And unlike the state by-election campaign, One Nation’s new organisation inside Hastie’s electorate will still be there on August 30.
