Contesting New England for One Nation possible: Joyce

Barnaby Joyce has not ruled out recontesting his New England seat for One Nation despite being committed to running on the populist party’s NSW Senate ticket.

Mr Joyce is the only One Nation MP to hold a seat in the House of Representatives.

He won the federal seat during his time with the Nationals and has held it since 2013, aside from a brief disqualification in 2017.

Asked by Sky News if he could retain his seat, Mr Joyce said: “I could, to be honest.

“The plan is that I’ll stand for the Senate. But I’ll put a caveat on that, that if we get closer to the day and the party says that they want me to do another job, then of course I’ve got to consider that.

“I’ve got to do what’s best for One Nation and that’s what I intend to do.”

Mr Joyce abandoned a decades-long career with the Nationals in November to jump ship to One Nation.

One Nation has emerged as a significant threat to the Coalition after a summer of back-to-back boosts in the polls.

On Monday, the Resolve Political Monitor poll – the first published since the Liberal Party ousted Sussan Ley – found the populist party on par with the Coalition for the first time.

Both the Coalition and One Nation hold 23 per cent of the primary vote, while Labor holds 32 per cent, according to the poll.

Earlier, deputy Liberal leader Jane Hume acknowledged her party had to win back the Australian people’s trust to fight off a rising One Nation in a battle for the conservative vote.

Asked how the Liberals’ new leadership could turn the dismal results around, Senator Hume told Seven’s Sunrise:“The Liberal Party’s vote is at its lowest since it began back in 1944. It was bad when we lost the first election in 2022, and it got worse in 2025.

“We’re not under any illusion that we’re coming from behind, which was probably why this reset was desperately needed,” she said.

Addressing the One Nation threat, Senator Hume went on to describe the populist party as one of grievance but added: “ … people are rightly aggrieved right now when they’ve seen their standard of living going backwards.

“They’re looking for answers. They weren’t finding it in the Liberal Party. That’s why this reset is needed.”

She went on to say the Liberal Party would never become “a party of grievance or … reactionary politics” but needed to return to its centre-right roots.

“We want to make sure that we don’t need to move to the right, we don’t need to move to the left,” Senator Hume said.

“We just need to remind people who the Liberal Party stand for and who we fight for,” she said. “That’s mainstream Australians. We speak for the unrepresented. We don’t look after sectional interests like big unions or big business.

“We look after Australian families … What we want to give is people that sense that next year is going to be better than last year, and they haven’t had that for so long under Labor.

“That’s what the Liberal Party wants to restore. That’s what we’re all about.”

Earlier, Senator Hume conceded the Liberal Party would have to admits its mistakes to move forward.

The party’s mea culpa is emerging as a key theme as it works to re-establish trust in critical areas like immigration, energy, and housing, to deliver the “strong policy package” promised by Mr Taylor to voters at the next election.

Mr Taylor and Senator Hume clinched the leadership in a bloodbath spill that rolled Ms Ley and her deputy Ted O’Brien last week.