And then there were two. With the swearing in of David Farley as the member for Farrer, One Nation has doubled its parliamentarians on the floor of the House of Representatives.

Happily, for One Nation supporters, Farley was not required to stand in front of any flags when he declared his allegiance to King Charles, his heirs and successors, on the floor of the parliament, as he had already defied his party’s policy and revealed that he would be flying not just the Australian flag but the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander flags at his electorate office.

Farley’s reasoning is that, ‘We all live in three worlds. We live in the world of our forefathers and those that (sic) came before us. We live in the present today. And we live in the future.’

This was news to One Nation leader Pauline Hanson, who has always said that having multiple flags is divisive and if she were prime minister, ‘there wouldn’t be three flags in this country’, reminding reporters, and perhaps Farley, if he’s listening, that One Nation’s policy is that ‘there is only one flag and that’s the Australian flag’.

It’s not the first time Farley, who has only just joined One Nation, has failed to toe the party line. During his campaign to win the seat of Farrer, Farley was asked in a debate whether 306,000 migrants were too many, and replied, ‘No, it’s probably not’.

Later, after a quick briefing on One Nation’s immigration policy, he ‘changed his position’ as Prime Minister Albanese or Treasurer Jim Chalmers would put it, and clarified that, ‘We must slash immigration to reduce housing demand and put Australians first,’ declaring that, ‘One Nation will cap immigration at 130,000 per year.’  That is actually pretty tolerant for One Nation which originally campaigned on net zero migration.

Is this the last time Farley will freelance on policy? Who knows? When asked this week whether he was prepared to vote according to his personal beliefs or those of his electorate, even if that meant disagreeing with his party leader, Farley was coy about ruling out further disloyalty. ‘It’ll be rare that we find ourselves in disagreement,’ he claimed before adding, ‘but then again, I’ve got one job to do – it’s to represent Farrer and represent it the best I can.’

Who can blame Farley for struggling to remember what he stands for? Over the last decade, he was a member of the Nationals from 2015 to 2020. In 2020, he applied to join the Australian Labor party and run as a candidate but was rejected. And in 2023, he backed the Climate 200-funded ‘Voices for Farrer’ supporting its shy-Teal candidate Michelle Milthorpe at the 2025 federal election. So far, the only parties he hasn’t tried to join are the Liberals and the Greens, but there is still time for the 69-year-old to add to his political smorgasbord.

If Farley were to abandon One Nation after riding on its coattails into parliament, he would hardly be the first person to do so. A recent review claimed that 37 people had served in federal or state parliaments under the One Nation banner, and 27 of them had failed to complete a single term with the party as they either resigned, were expelled, defected or ended up sitting as independents.

All of this sits oddly with One Nation’s meteoric rise in popularity.  When people say they like One Nation, they obviously don’t mean the 73 per cent of its elected representatives who parted ways with the party during their term in parliament.

Presumably, when people say they support One Nation, they mean the fiery redhead who has kept the flame of One Nation burning since she lit it back in 1997. But even that isn’t true. Hanson was expelled from One Nation in 2002 and ran in state and federal elections as the leader of Pauline’s United Australia Party (PUAP), which she registered with the Australian Electoral Commission in 2007 and deregistered in 2010.  She also ran as an independent before she rejoined One Nation in 2013, became the leader again in 2014, and was elected to the federal Senate in 2016 and 2022.

Support for One Nation is also presumably not based on Senator Hanson’s parliamentary performance since she has missed 88 per cent of all Senate estimates days since returning to parliament in 2016. She had also missed 12 regular parliamentary sitting days since the last election, including five without approval, equalled only by Jacqui Lambie.

As Nationals leader Matt Canavan pointed out, it is a core part of the job. ‘To be a senator at estimates is one of the greatest contributions you can make. Often, the votes you have on the floor don’t count… but to have the power to directly combat the woke agenda of our bureaucracy makes huge advances with the public.’

Perhaps it’s the lack of a solid core at the centre of One Nation that makes its supporters so angry when this is pointed out. Liberal Senator James Paterson had a run-in in Albury with an irate One Nation volunteer merely for defending the truth of the posters that pointed out Farley’s failed attempt to represent Labor. One Nation apparatchiks and loyalists blamed Paterson for the skirmish, and the volunteer told the local newspaper that he was ‘disappointed’ at ‘getting suckered in’ to a fight and believed he was ‘the victim of a set-up’.

But as Paterson recognised this week, however flaky One Nation may be once you scratch below the surface, the Coalition has ‘serious work to do… to earn back the trust that we’ve lost.’

The positive aspect of their rise is, as he notes, that ‘their increased prominence in the polls brings increased legitimate scrutiny on their performance, on their policies, on their candidates, on their conduct.’ Bring it on. It can’t come soon enough.