New One Nation MP David Farley opens up on party’s ‘scarce knowledge’ of agriculture, migration needs

One Nation’s newest MP David Farley says the right-wing populist party had “scarce knowledge of agriculture and the requirement of migration” before joining, while ruling out banning the media unless if there was a “breach of trust”.

Mr Farley became One Nation’s second-only lower house MP in May after securing the highly-regional seat of one-time opposition leader Sussan Ley, joining Nationals’ turncoat and New England MP Barnaby Joyce.

Asked about “negotiations” between himself and leader Pauline Hanson on migration, which One Nation is seeking to lower to 130,000 – a figure Mr Farley confirmed applied to net overseas migration – the Farrer MP told News24 he joined One Nation “when they had virtually limited or scarce knowledge of agriculture and the requirement of immigration”.

“I must admit, I had limited personal knowledge on immigration in the metroplex of Australia,” he said, referring to Australia’s big cities.

“Of any political party at the moment who would know most about immigration in Australia, I think it’d have to be One Nation”.

Mr Farley agreed he was conveying the needs of the regions in the effort to lower migration.

Pressed on specific visa types, Mr Farley said Pacific Islander people arriving for seasonal work under the PALM scheme would not be impacted.

He went on to state about temporary visa holders that “models we’ve got working now, we’ve had working for a decade plus, are working well … especially from the processing industry side of it where there’s big capital investment, big high risk on making sure crops move at the right time”.

On working holiday visa holders, Mr Farley said it was important they “get themselves into the labour hire systems that are working”.

“It's probably educating them more on how do you go about getting working jobs in regional Australia if you want seasonal work.”

However, asked whether the system would need to be more prescriptive to get immigration down to 130,000, Mr Farley said “the reality is … people coming for it have set themselves up and this is going to be a part of their lives for a two or three year period”.

“They come here, participate in the workforce, get a chance to see Australia and operate in it. They’re definitely not coming out of the education system”.

Pauline Hanson has stirred controversy in recent months after explicitly banning some media organisations she accused of being unfairly critical, including the ABC and The Guardian.

Asked if he would do the same, Mr Farley said he been “looked after equitably pretty well from media across the board”.