There is something sobering about a party leader publicly admitting his own candidate could finish last. But that is precisely where David Littleproud finds himself, speaking to the Sydney Morning Herald's Inside Politics podcast this week, conceding that the Nationals may not place well in the coming byelection for the NSW seat of Farrer. For a leader still nursing bruises from a leadership challenge just weeks ago, it was a moment of unusual candour, and a window into the scale of the problem facing Australia's centre-right.
The byelection was triggered by the resignation of Sussan Ley from parliament after she lost the Liberal leadership to Angus Taylor on 13 February. After a quarter-century absence, the Nationals are returning to contest the seat of Farrer, a sprawling electorate anchored by Albury and stretching west through the irrigation districts to the South Australian border. The move sets up a four-way contest and marks the start of a grassroots campaign aimed at rebuilding the party's brand in a region where conservative loyalties are already being tested by One Nation and a Climate 200-backed independent.
"It's going to be tough for the Coalition," Littleproud acknowledged. "We haven't been there for 25 years and it has been a Liberal seat apart from the period that Tim Fischer held it." He also conceded the party's brand recognition was largely invisible in the electorate. Fischer, the former deputy prime minister, held Farrer from 1984 until his retirement in 2001, when Ley won it from the Nationals by just 206 votes. It has been Liberal ever since.
The podcast interview also covered the more combustible question of the two Coalition splits that have defined recent months. The second split happened in January 2026, after Nationals frontbenchers Bridget McKenzie, Susan McDonald, and Ross Cadell crossed the floor to vote against hate speech laws following the 2025 Bondi Beach shooting. After Ley accepted their resignations, Littleproud left the Coalition agreement in solidarity. Littleproud denied that he engineered the crisis to bring down Ley's leadership. He said the relationship was now "settled" under Taylor, with a renewed focus on core Coalition policies.
Critics within the Nationals are not all convinced. Queensland MP Colin Boyce, who challenged Littleproud for the party leadership in late January, cited that leaving the Coalition was "political suicide", and argued that "David has made some bad decisions recently." Littleproud defeated Boyce in the 2 February party room vote, but the episode left a mark. The questions about whether the splits were strategic or principled have not gone away.
Meanwhile, the Farrer contest is drawing attention well beyond the bush communities it represents. The byelection will be an early test of new Opposition Leader Angus Taylor's popularity, and whether One Nation can translate strong performance in opinion polls into actual votes. One Nation polled just 6.6% in Farrer at the 2025 election, but given that national opinion polls now suggest the party's vote has risen to over 20%, it is likely to attract a much higher share in the byelection. Independent Michelle Milthorpe, who polled 20% of the primary vote at last year's election, is already campaigning again.
The structural challenge for the conservative bloc runs deeper than one electorate. Since its defeat at the 2025 federal election, the Liberal-National Coalition's primary vote has fallen to 18%, now below One Nation at 28%. That single statistic captures a realignment that was once inconceivable. The party of Menzies, tracing its roots to the very city of Albury where Farrer's main polling booths sit, is now polling behind a minor party built on grievance and protest.
The picture in South Australia adds another layer of urgency. According to a Roy Morgan survey conducted from 19 to 23 February, primary support for Labor in South Australia sits at 35%, well ahead of One Nation on 28%, and more than double the Opposition Liberals on 16.5%. The Greens are at 11%, with independents on 6.5%. A majority of 61% of South Australian electors approve of the way Premier Peter Malinauskas is handling his job, giving Labor a commanding platform ahead of the 21 March state election.
The SA Liberals, under state leader Ashton Hurn, face a particularly grim reckoning. A South Australian Newspoll gave the Liberals just 14% of the primary vote four weeks before the state election. "One Nation overtaking the Liberals on primary vote would have been unthinkable a few years ago," said Ace Strategies managing director Matt Neagle. "It speaks to a deep disruption in the centre-right vote and a level of volatility that will reshape the campaign." Former SA senator Cory Bernardi is expected to spearhead One Nation's upper house push, with the swing potentially delivering the party's SA president Carlos Quaremba a second seat.
Those inclined toward the progressive view of these events will note, with some justification, that the conservative fragmentation reflects real voter dissatisfaction rather than mere political dysfunction. Many Australians, particularly in rural and regional areas, feel the major parties have failed to deliver on cost-of-living pressures, water rights, and local infrastructure. One Nation's surge is, at least in part, a symptom of that unmet demand. Dismissing it as pure protest does not explain why the numbers keep climbing.
Littleproud's own framing acknowledges this. "They know the only ones that can beat Albanese are the Coalition. We are the only ones that can get 76 seats," he said of his constituents. "They want us to be strong. They understood what we did and most people said they were glad we did what we did — it showed that we stood for something as Nationals." It is a coherent argument: that principled disagreement, even at short-term cost, builds credibility over time. Whether the voters of Farrer share that view will become clearer once a date is set for the ballot, likely sometime in April or May.
If there is a lesson here, it is one that resists simple telling. The conservative vote is not disappearing; it is fracturing and redistributing. The Australian Electoral Commission will eventually count the Farrer ballots, and the numbers will tell a story about what rural Australia actually wants, not what Canberra assumes it wants. For a centre-right that has spent months fighting itself, arriving at that answer with some clarity is not optional. It is the price of remaining relevant.