WA Labor lies to Secret Harbour voters about One Nation and Medicare ahead of the by-election

WA Labor is flooding Secret Harbour with a $300,000 campaign that lies to voters about their health care. Ahead of early voting opening on Monday, Labor’s social media ads claim One Nation has "always" opposed Medicare, that state Liberal leader Basil Zempilas and One Nation want to tear down the federal health department, and that both plan to "Americanise" Australian medicine.

There’s one major problem with Labor’s claims, which is that they don’t survive a look at the calendar, the One Nation policy page or the parliamentary record.

The campaign directly targets One Nation candidate Luke Herdegen, a local Rockingham gym owner fighting for a seat Labor holds on an 11.5% margin. With voters going to the polls on Saturday 29 August, here’s how WA Labor’s attack ads stack up against the actual facts.

One Nation was founded in 1997, and Medicare started in the 1980s

The poster running on WA Labor's social media accounts reads: "In 1983 Labor gave Australia Medicare. The Liberals and One Nation have always been against it."

Labor legislated Medicare in 1983 and the scheme began in February 1984, while One Nation was launched by Pauline Hanson at Ipswich on 11 April 1997, according to the party's own website. A party that wouldn't exist for another 13 years can't have opposed Medicare when it was created, and the word carrying that whole sentence is "always".

Basil Zempilas has no power over a federal department, and no quote is produced

A second WA Labor graphic tells voters that "One Nation want to abolish the Health Department," plastering state Liberal leader Basil Zempilas alongside Pauline Hanson and Luke Herdegen.

Labor’s other graphics tell voters to "do your own research" while offering no quote and no source for the claim.

More importantly, the entire premise relies on a fundamental ignorance of basic Australian civics. Basil Zempilas leads the Liberal Opposition in the Western Australian State Parliament. Federal departments are created and abolished by the Commonwealth Government in Canberra, so a state opposition leader in Perth has no jurisdiction over them. He couldn't abolish the federal health department if he wanted to.

Labor’s attack relies on a massive structural lie that most voters will never stop to question. Medicare is not a building or an administrative department. It is a national healthcare scheme written directly into statutory law under the Health Insurance Act 1973.

In fact, the Albanese Federal Government’s own Health Insurance Amendment (Incentive Payments and Other Measures) Bill 2026 renames that precise legislation the Medicare Act 1973. Because the legal right to Medicare is anchored in standalone federal legislation, abolishing a government department would not, and could not, end Medicare.

The rest of Labor’s social media graphic completely misses One Nation and candidate Luke Herdegen. Two out of the three accusations target the Liberal Party instead.

First, Labor resurrects the old line that the Liberals "cut $6 billion from WA hospitals". The Conversation’s FactCheck found this was never a cash cut to hospital funding. It was a reduction to projected future growth figures in forward estimates, while actual dollar funding continued to rise.

Second, Labor claims the Liberals opposed the Rockingham Medicare Urgent Care Clinic. That clinic opened in June 2023 in the neighbouring electorate of Rockingham, not in Secret Harbour.

Luke Herdegen had nothing to do with either decision. Labor is slinging recycled party political attacks at a local candidate who was nowhere near them.

Luke Herdegen Hits Back: One Nation Offers Real Medicare Solutions

One Nation candidate Luke Herdegen has slammed Labor’s smear campaign in a video released directly to voters. Addressing the exact lies being pushed by WA Labor on local doorsteps, Herdegen pulled no punches on claims that his party wants to abolish Medicare.

"Labor is lying to your face. You can read our full plan to save Medicare on One Nation's website right now. Higher Medicare rebates, less fraud, that's our policy. How exactly is that ending Medicare? We are the strongest pro-Medicare party in this country and still Labor are telling you the opposite."

Far from wanting to dismantle public healthcare, One Nation's actual platform is built on strengthening Medicare where state and federal Labor have failed.

• Boost GP Rebates: Increase the direct Medicare rebate paid to local doctors to make healthcare accessible and affordable again.
• Combat Fraud: Introduce photo identification on physical Medicare cards to eliminate an estimated $3 billion a year in Medicare fraud.
• Wipe Doctor HECS Debt: Fully pay off HECS debts for newly qualified doctors who choose to practice in regional and underserved communities.

While Labor dumps hundreds of thousands of dollars into fabrications and negative attack ads, Herdegen and One Nation are offering concrete solutions to fix the healthcare crisis facing local families.

Labor’s Healthcare Lies Shattered by the Senate Hansard

WA Labor's claims that One Nation plans to "Americanise" Australian health care fall apart under the briefest examination of the parliamentary record.

Hansard records show that during the Senate debate on the National Health Amendment (Cheaper Medicines) Bill on 1 September 2025, Pauline Hanson mounted a direct defence of affordable medicine, specifically calling out foreign corporate interference in Australian health policy.

"In 2004 Australia signed a free trade agreement with America, and pharmaceuticals were part of it," Hanson stated to the Senate. "That's why this medicines working group was set up, to allow the Americans to have a say in what medications went onto the PBS scheme."

Far from attempting to dismantle public health care, Hanson reminded Parliament that One Nation had campaigned before the 2019 election to cut the price of a prescription from more than $40 to $19. Closing the debate for the party, Senator Malcolm Roberts reaffirmed their total commitment to the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme:

"I reiterate what Senator Hanson said... as to how important the PBS is to the Australian people, and One Nation supports it."

Labor's claim that One Nation voted against health measures rests on a complete distortion of procedural Senate votes.

One Nation voted against two minor Greens amendments that attempted to tack a Senior Dental Benefits Scheme onto completely unrelated legislation. One was introduced by WA Greens Senator Jordon Steele-John on 28 July 2025, and the other came on the cheaper medicines bill itself.

Voting down a procedural Greens tactic on an unrelated bill is not a vote against Medicare, nor is it a vote against cheaper medicine. Labor knows this, yet they continue to weaponise standard parliamentary procedure to misinform voters in Secret Harbour.

The Real Health Crisis: WA Labor’s Record Under Scrutiny

While WA Labor burns a record $300,000 telling Secret Harbour that One Nation is the threat to local healthcare, the actual state performance figures paint a starkly different picture. Western Australia has the second worst GP bulk billing rate in the country.

Only the ACT sits lower, after nine years of state Labor government in Western Australia and a federal Labor government in Canberra.

At the same time, WA public hospitals are under sustained pressure. Ambulance ramping hit 5,924 hours in July 2026, the worst month of the year. When Labor took office in May 2017, ramping was 466 hours.

An Attack Strategy Backfiring on Voters

Labor’s obsession with smearing other parties has become the central strategy of its campaign. Media tracking by The West Australian revealed that 93% of WA Labor’s social media posts since Luke Herdegen was preselected focus almost exclusively on attacking Pauline Hanson or One Nation. Meanwhile, Labor’s own local candidate, Georgia Tree, was mentioned just five times.

One Nation WA Leader Rod Caddies confirmed the negative campaign is backfiring on doorstep voters.

"They're singularly focused on attacking us, but the best part for us is that the audience hates it," Caddies said. "If you go through WA Labor's comment sections, the feedback is universally negative."

Early Voting Opens Monday: How and Where to Vote

Voters do not need a special reason to cast an early ballot. The WA Electoral Commission has established a primary early voting centre at 7 Sunlight Drive, Port Kennedy (the old Bunnings building), running Monday to Saturday from 17 to 28 August, between 8am and 6pm.

For those in the CBD, the Commission’s Perth office on Level 2, 66 St Georges Terrace, is also open for early voting weekdays from 8:30am to 4:30pm.

Luke Herdegen said in his campaign video that he’ll be at the Port Kennedy centre every day of early voting.

A Packed Ballot and Labor's Accountability Vacuum

Sixteen candidates are contesting the Secret Harbour by-election, requiring voters to number every single box for their vote to count. While Labor pours resources into splashy late funding announcements, local voters are left weighing serious questions about government accountability:

• A Station Promised 13 Years Ago: Labor first promised Karnup station in 2013. Of the $156 million announced four weeks out from this by-election, only $10 million has actually been allocated, $78 million depends on a federal government that hasn’t agreed to pay it, and works aren’t due to start until 2028. Cook told 7NEWS that Labor "would probably have made this announcement over the next six to eight months, but, of course, we’ve brought that announcement early".
• Pork Barrelling Blitz: Alongside the station, Labor announced roughly $9 million in and around the electorate in a single week, including $5 million for a Rockingham TAFE workshop that One News could not find in any of the six 2026-27 State Budget papers. Rod Caddies called it "pork-barrelling on steroids", saying "the line between official government work and campaign activity is being blurred, and that should trouble anyone who cares about fair elections".
• A Housing Waitlist That Keeps Growing: The Bankwest Curtin Economics Centre found WA’s social housing waitlist had reached about 20,700, a rise of 38% in five years, with the priority list climbing from 1,462 in 2018 to 6,300 in 2024.
• The Auditor General On How The Money Goes Out: Caroline Spencer’s March 2024 audit found the State Government approved $136 million of one off funding for 458 election commitment projects after the 2021 election without requiring them to be assessed against published criteria, and concluded there is "no public transparency on why some projects were funded and others were not". Six of those commitments still had no funding agreement in place three years after the money was approved, with more than $19 million of infrastructure not started.
• The Candidate’s Own Verdict On Labor: In a 2021 podcast interview that One News has transcribed in full, Georgia Tree said her own party dealt with harassment the way the Catholic Church did, because "we don’t want to taint the brand, so let’s deal with everything in house and everyone just shut up". She said staffers were made to "stay silent", that "the NRL had a better sexual assault policy than we did", and that older men in Labor circles told her to "look over there, look at the Liberal Party, don’t bring light to us", and she stands by all of it today.
• Hiding the Candidate: Labor’s candidate Georgia Tree lives in Inglewood, more than 60 kilometres from the seat, and was not made available to answer a question from 7NEWS at Labor’s own Karnup announcement, for the second day running.

Secret Harbour voters officially head to the polls on Saturday 29 August.