Time For Farley To Just Shut Up

The following article was first published at NationFirst.com.au:

I played a small part in helping David Farley get elected as the One Nation Member for Farrer. For a few weeks, I advised him during the by-election, given tips on messaging, media, and the issues biting across the electorate. I wanted him to win and was pleased when he did.

So I am not writing this as someone who had it in for him from the start. Quite the opposite. I invested time and effort in getting him into Parliament.

But during that campaign, I had to give him a single piece of advice more than once: David, shut up about immigration.

Pauline Hanson told him much the same thing as I did on immigration. So did others. Every time he wandered off the reservation, somebody had to pull him back. We managed it during the campaign because people were close at hand and watching what was being said. Once he was elected, I worried that he would go his own way.

That worry now looks well-founded.

During the campaign, Farley was asked whether net overseas migration (NOM) of 306,000 was too high. His answer was that it was “probably not” too many.

He said that while standing for a party whose official immigration policy promises to put Australians first by capping visas at 130,000 a year⁠. It was an extraordinary answer for a One Nation candidate, especially at a time when mass immigration was one of the biggest reasons voters were turning away from the major parties.

Pauline counselled him, the campaign recovered, and the voters of Farrer handed One Nation an historic victory. Farley should have learned from the experience.

He didn’t.

On the ABC’s Insiders, he said One Nation’s migration figure would be “not too different” from Labor’s. According to Farley, the party could have net migration of 130,000 and then admit at least another 100,000 skilled workers, backpackers and Pacific labourers on top of that.

His figure came to about 230,000, slightly higher than Labor’s forecast of 225,000 for 2027-28. Pauline had to issue a correction within hours⁠, insisting the party’s net migration target remained 130,000.

Barnaby Joyce was then sent onto television to clean up the mess. He called it a “rookie mistake” and confirmed there wouldn’t be another 100,000 added to the target.

A rookie mistake is getting a figure wrong in your first interview. Farley had already caused trouble over immigration during the campaign and had been spoken to about it. This was the same mistake, only bigger, made on national television after he’d been elected.

Immigration is the issue most responsible for One Nation’s rise. Australians can see what the huge intake is doing to housing, wages, roads, schools, and hospitals. They can also see their communities changing at a pace they were never asked to approve. Pauline has spent decades warning about this, usually while the same media now chasing One Nation’s votes called her every name under the sun.

Then, Farley goes on Insiders and tells the country that One Nation’s immigration number isn’t much different from Labor’s.

Of course, Labor and the Liberals jumped on it. They would have been mad not to. The Financial Review declared One Nation’s migration policy was “in a shambles”, while even normally sympathetic alternative media accused the party of pulling the immigration rug⁠ on its own supporters.

One Nation does need to clear up the wording of its policy. Its website talks about a cap on visas, while Pauline has spoken about a net migration target. That confusion should be fixed. But Farley didn’t clear anything up. He came up with his own category of “true NOM”, added another 100,000 people and left his leader to explain what he meant.

This keeps happening.

Shortly after being elected, Farley announced that he intended to display the Australian, Aboriginal, and Torres Strait Islander flags at his electorate offices. One Nation’s position is that Australians should unite under one national flag.

Pauline had to pull him into line again. She later told a conference that she had been forced to “have a conversation” with him about both immigration and the flags. Only then did Farley retreat and say Australians “unite under one flag”. The whole episode became another public argument between the new MP and his leader⁠.

Then came media access. Pauline had barred outlets she believed had behaved dishonestly towards One Nation, including the ABC and The Guardian. Farley publicly distanced himself from her approach, saying the media had treated him “equitably” and that he would remain open to journalists unless there was some future “breach of trust”.

He went on to say access would depend on his own judgement of the “quality of journalism”. Once again, reporters were handed a public difference between Farley and Hanson⁠.

The Mardi Gras comments were just as clumsy. While Pauline was dealing with controversy over One Nation’s position, Farley decided to tell the media that he had enjoyed a “great night of entertainment” at Sydney’s Mardi Gras. He also compared the diversity of One Nation to the United Nations, which is a fairly bizarre way to advertise an Australian nationalist party.

Pauline said she still didn’t like Mardi Gras. Farley apparently thought that was a good time to reminisce about what a wonderful night he’d had there⁠.

I don’t care whether he enjoyed himself. That’s his business. I care that One Nation’s newest MP seems incapable of recognising when his comments will create another completely avoidable story about disagreement inside the party.

Political discipline isn’t complicated. MPs will have personal opinions and occasionally disagree with their colleagues. They just don’t need to blurt out every thought that enters their head while a journalist is holding a microphone.

My concern during the campaign was Farley’s background in corporate agriculture. I spent enough time talking with him to wonder whether he was really the right fit for One Nation. I feared that if he won, his loyalties on immigration would sit more comfortably with the agribusiness world he came from than with the voters who elected him.

Corporate agriculture has become addicted to imported labour. Whenever there is a workforce problem, its preferred answer is another visa category, more backpackers, or another foreign-worker scheme. It rarely wants to discuss what would be required to attract Australians into those jobs.

Farley has since said that One Nation possessed “limited or scarce knowledge of agriculture and the requirement of immigration” when he joined.

That comment annoyed me more than most.

I represented the Bowen region, Australia’s largest winter-growing area, for almost 12 years in federal Parliament. I know farmers. I know the industry, and I know the type of work being done in those paddocks and packing sheds. Australians will do hard agricultural work when the pay and conditions justify it.

The problem starts further up the chain. Coles and Woolworths have enormous power over the producers supplying their shelves. The ACCC confirmed a “significant bargaining power imbalance”⁠ between the supermarket giants and many suppliers.

When a supermarket screws a grower down on price, the grower has fewer dollars to spend on labour. A farmer living from tender to tender, never knowing what the next crop will fetch, cannot simply offer the sort of wages needed to persuade Australians to relocate for hot, physical, and seasonal work.

The legal casual minimum for an adult fruit or vegetable picker is now $32.18 an hour⁠. For a bloke with rent or a mortgage, travel costs, and a family, even that may not be enough to uproot himself for work that will just disappear when the season ends. We also continue to see migrant workers, especially those employed through labour hire arrangements, allegedly being paid well below their lawful entitlements.

The Fair Work Ombudsman recently took action against a labour hire operator accused of paying two migrant blueberry pickers by output without topping them up to the guaranteed minimum. The workers were allegedly owed more than $14,000 between them. One said her pay had been so low that she sometimes needed to borrow money from her supervisor to buy groceries.

Visa-dependent workers often put up with conditions Australians won’t because they hope the job will help them remain in the country. Labour hire companies know it. The migration system gives them a workforce with less bargaining power.

These labour hire companies need to be run out of town. Farley should start there instead of freelancing on immigration policy,

Then, if he really wants to help farmers, Farley should put some heat on Coles and Woolworths. Fight for a fair return at the farm gate so growers can pay wages that attract Australians. That would do more for country people than going on television to explain why One Nation supposedly needs another 100,000 foreign workers.

He should also push for serious welfare reform. An able-bodied, work-ready Australian shouldn’t stay on JobSeeker indefinitely while suitable unskilled vacancies sit open nearby. Give people a week or two to organise themselves, apply and arrange transport or accommodation. After that, refusing suitable work without a genuine reason should affect their payment.

The system already claims to impose mutual obligations, yet financial penalties and payment cancellations are currently paused⁠. Farley could take up that fight. It would help farmers fill vacancies while giving Australian jobseekers a path back into paid work.

Instead, he is using his new position to repeat the corporate agriculture line that foreign labour is indispensable.

The voters of Farrer didn’t choose David Farley because they wanted Labor’s immigration numbers administered by a former agribusiness executive. They backed him as Pauline Hanson’s candidate. They wanted the alternative One Nation had promised them.

Farley owes his seat to those voters, to Pauline, and to the party workers who helped get him there. He needs to remember that before the next television producer clips a microphone to his jacket.

For now, the most useful thing he could learn is when to shut up.

“Never miss a good chance to shut up.”
– Will Rogers