Politics with Michelle Grattan: One Nation’s David Farley on the migrants his party wants

One Nation is very much centre stage of the political debate, with Pauline Hanson calling for a harder line on immigration , and for Australia’s superannuation rules to be “ lightened up a bit ” so people could access their retirement savings early.

In November, her party will face a major test when it runs in all seats in Victoria.

Just four months ago, One Nation won its first ever House of Representatives seat since its formation as a party.

The NSW seat of Farrer was previously held by either the Nationals or Liberals, most recently Sussan Ley, who resigned after she was rolled as Liberal leader earlier this year.

In May, David Farley, a former chief executive of the Australia Agricultural Company, won the seat comfortably against a high-profile independent – well ahead of the Liberals and Nationals.

Farley was previously a member of the Nationals, and even sounded out Labor, before standing for election for One Nation.

Farley joined us on the podcast this week to talk about his early impressions of parliament, his interactions with the government on water policy, as well as immigration, data centres, and voluntary assisted dying.

On extra migrants beyond One Nation’s 130,000 target Farley said “immigration is very important” to his local electorate, from workers in aged care through to meat workers and farms, so it’s a topic he’s had “good debates” about within his party.

I read the party’s position as, first of all, extremely sensible.

It’s sensible to the extent that if we’re going to grow the population, we need to grow it with the infrastructure that the population needs.

It needs housing, it needs education, it needs health, and it needs law enforcement […] So that’s why I comfortably agree with the cap that One Nation’s talking about.

Farley said that, as he understood it, One Nation’s immigration policy is more complex than the 130,000 figure Hanson has flagged (which Farley put at 135,000).

He said he had negotiated with Hanson about the importance of migration in a community like his: Pauline’s very respectful of what’s required of migration in agriculture, and […] very respectful of what’s required of migration in Farrer in particular […] So what we’ve arrived at is a position: the net net [immigration] number, we agree 100% on.

And then we’re making sure that we’ve got the rotating migrants in our businesses, especially [the Pacific Australia Labour Mobility scheme] and skilled nurses etc […] That’s now the party’s position as well.