The WA Liberal Party has put One Nation's Luke Herdegen third on its Secret Harbour how to vote card and dropped Labor's Georgie Tree to number 10, handing Pauline Hanson her best chance yet of winning her party's first lower house seat in the WA Parliament.
The decision was taken by the Liberal state executive on Saturday, ending weeks of speculation about where the party's preferences would land, The West Australian reports. On the 16 candidate ticket, the number 2 spot on the Liberal card is understood to have gone to the Australian Christians, Herdegen third and Tree at 10.
"Labor put considerable pressure on the Liberals to put One Nation last, so I'm happy with their decision to put us third," Senator Hanson said on Saturday.
"This decision gives One Nation a much stronger chance of winning Secret Harbour and finally providing voters a member who will actively fight for a train station and a better police presence in the electorate. Because it's been a safe Labor seat in the past, voters have been neglected by this Government. One Nation has got Labor worried in Secret Harbour because we have a real chance of winning."
Labor's Georgie Tree starts with a 12% buffer, a retiring MP and a 61km problem
Labor holds Secret Harbour by 12% and the by-election, to be held next month on 29 August 2026, follows the retirement of incumbent Paul Papalia. On paper that's a healthy margin. On the ground the electorate is full of mortgage holders who've absorbed three interest rate hikes on top of ongoing cost of living pressure, which is why the contest is rated far tighter than it was at the 2025 state election.
Liberal state director Simon Morgan also took aim at Labor's choice of candidate.
"It is not the Liberal Party's job to prop up a Labor Government that has failed to deliver for the local community in Secret Harbour for the past 10 years and which has chosen a candidate who lives 61km away from the electorate."
Simon Morgan says there's no deal, just three elections of precedent
Morgan said the call was nothing new. "Consistent with our approach at the last three State elections, One Nation will be placed ahead of the Labor Party in our preference recommendations," he said, pointing out the Liberals preferenced One Nation ahead of Labor in Secret Harbour at the 2025 state election and in its predecessor seat of Warnbro in both 2017 and 2021.
He rejected any suggestion the two parties had traded favours.
"Any claim of a preference 'deal' with other parties is false. There have been no promises made or policy undertakings given to other parties when determining the Liberal Party's preference recommendations for this by-election."
Rod Caddies puts the Liberals fifth and the Greens dead last
One Nation's WA leader Rod Caddies, who picked Herdegen for the seat, revealed his own party's card on Saturday. One Nation has preferenced the Australian Christians second, followed by the Shooters, Fishers and Farmers and the Libertarian candidate, with the Liberals fifth. Labor sits second last and the Greens last.
"There was no preference deal, no agreement," Caddies said. "We tried to look after the minor parties as we have always done, and put the Liberals fifth. And we've put Labor second last and the Australian-hating Greens on the bottom."
How preferences could take the seat off Labor
WA's lower house uses full preferential voting, meaning every voter numbers every box and a how to vote card is only a recommendation. But recommendations matter. One Nation is expected to finish second behind Labor on primary votes, with the Liberals tipped for third. If the Liberal vote follows the card when those ballots are distributed, that flow lands on Herdegen, and Labor's 12% cushion starts to look very thin.
Senator Hanson saw it coming a fortnight ago, telling The Sunday Times she could win Secret Harbour if the Liberals directed preferences her way.
"There are some who will never vote for One Nation, but they might vote for the Libs. Preferences could take the seat away from Labor."
The WA Labor record Georgie Tree is asking Secret Harbour to endorse
A by-election is a verdict on the party in power, and WA Labor's near decade in office is handing voters plenty to judge.
Right now the Cook Government is in the Supreme Court over which prison a male born inmate with a history of violent offending should be held in. The State Administrative Tribunal ordered the government to facilitate the prisoner's transfer to a women's prison while a discrimination complaint runs, and the government launched an emergency bid to stop the move. On Friday Justice Craig Bydder granted a temporary stay, while telling authorities they should begin preparing for a possible transfer.
In nine years running the state, Labor never wrote a placement policy for this, which is how a tribunal came to be ordering a violent male born prisoner toward a women's facility in the first place. Prisons have always had an answer for inmates who aren't safe in the general population: protection units inside men's prisons. The women in WA's female prisons shouldn't have to wait on an appeal to know that's where this lands.
Corrections policy cuts the other way too. Premier Roger Cook is eyeing the Bullsbrook quarantine centre, a site with around 500 beds that has sat almost entirely unused since it was finished, as a prison, while families fleeing domestic violence wait for crisis accommodation. The Government's explanation is that the location is "too isolated" for people experiencing homelessness or family violence. "I wonder if families in tents think that's a good excuse," Caddies said, arguing shuttles to the city or nearby train stations would solve it.
"What a slap in the face to women and children escaping abuse and to every family waiting for real help while Cook puts crooks first."
The health system tells the same story of drift. WA emergency departments recorded 4,892 hours of ambulance ramping in February, the worst February on record, then 5,383 hours in May, the worst May on record, against 466 hours in May 2017, the year Labor came to office. As shadow health minister, Roger Cook called 1,000 hours of ramping a horror story. His government now clocks five times that in a month, and the Opposition points out Labor hasn't built a new hospital in ten years while cycling through five health ministers.
Then there's the million dollars that appeared in the middle of a by-election. Caddies has publicly questioned how Labor's unelected candidate came to be claiming credit for "securing" $1 million in park funding for the electorate, saying the only public record of the commitment his party could find is a campaign video featuring the Deputy Premier posted to Tree's own social media, with no minister or department confirming it on any official channel.
He points to Auditor General Caroline Spencer's March 2024 report on community sport and recreation funding, which found that of $298 million allocated by the WA Government between 2020-21 and 2022-23, only $36 million went through the department's transparent, merit based assessment process.
"This is very fishy. We have no problem with the additional funding itself. But Secret Harbour voters deserve the assurance that this is not a taxpayer-funded in-kind contribution to a Labor election campaign."
Caddies is now calling on the Premier and his Deputy to be "radically transparent" on the matter.
Voters in the seat have their own history with WA Labor's priorities. Caddies notes Secret Harbour and its surrounding suburbs of Port Kennedy, Golden Bay, Singleton, Karnup, Madora Bay and Lakelands voted overwhelmingly against the Voice referendum that WA Labor MPs were among the loudest advocates for. And on housing, the Albanese Government promised its Budget tax changes would add less than $2 a week to rents. Rents have since risen 12% in a single year, with some homes tipped for $10 a week rises in three months.
And in Secret Harbour itself, the charge sheet is local. Crime and homelessness are up in the electorate's suburbs and commuter traffic is getting worse, Caddies says, while billions spent on Metronet still haven't delivered the train station Labor promised years ago, the same station Senator Hanson says a One Nation member would actively fight for, along with a better police presence. As for the candidate asking to inherit all this, The West Australian reported Labor seriously considered only one: a West Perth based corporate lobbyist and long time political staffer who, in the Liberal state director's words, lives 61km from the electorate. That's the record sitting behind the 12% margin, and it's why a seat that hasn't been seriously contested in a decade suddenly is.
Basil Zempilas says One Nation "cannot be ignored"
Liberal leader Basil Zempilas, who took part in Saturday's state executive phone hookup, had been hinting at the call for weeks. "One Nation cannot be ignored," he said recently.
"To ignore them would be to ignore the will of the people. Right now, as a political movement, One Nation deserves respect."
The numbers back him. One Nation won four lower house seats in the South Australian Parliament earlier in 2026 and has overtaken Labor on primaries in Queensland, while Senator Hanson has been drawing crowds from her European tour to Perth, where she joined Caddies and Herdegen on the ground in Secret Harbour last week.
One News Australia's own polling points the same way. A DemosAU statewide survey of 1,015 West Australians taken between 29 May and 11 June, before the campaign began, had One Nation's primary vote at 18%, up a point since February, with Labor down 3 points to 33% and its two party preferred lead cut by 4 points to 53%.
In the same poll's rural and regional breakdown, One Nation is outright in front on 29% to Labor's 23%, with the Liberals at 14% and the Nationals at 13%. The headline figures are statewide, but Secret Harbour's mortgage belt is exactly where that swing bites hardest.
The seat sits inside Andrew Hastie's federal electorate of Canning, and One Nation has already flagged the by-election as a dry run for taking the fight to him. A win next month would give Pauline Hanson's party its first ever seat in WA's Legislative Assembly, taken from Labor, in a seat Labor has held without a fight for a decade.
