MELBOURNE, Australia—Following Luke Herdegen’s stunning win in the Secret Harbour by-election for One Nation Western Australia on the weekend, all eyes are on the Victorian state election on Nov. 28.
Victorian state leader Warren Pickering said to keep the orange wave of support going means sticking solid to the party’s messaging—less government intervention, lower taxes, and addressing violent youth crime.
“We’re not going to chase votes. We are going to continue with the messaging that this party has delivered for 30 years, and people are now waking up and realising that’s the continuity we need,” he told The Epoch Times.
“This is the value set that the people of Victoria now identify we need to adopt in order to save our state.”
Pickering made the comments at a Turning Point Australia event launching centre-right parties for the Victorian election, held in Melbourne’s eastern suburb of Rowville last week.
The event comes as voters in Australia’s second most-populous state grapples with debt approaching a quarter of a trillion dollars, ongoing incidents of machete youth crime, struggling roads and hospital infrastructure, as well as the renewable-energy Victoria to New South Wales Interconnector West (VNI West) project, which has aggravated private property owners like farmers.
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The poll, which interviews 2,000 voters, also found Liberal-National Coalition support at 26 percent, level with the Labor government’s 26 percent.
“I won’t say it [the surge in One Nation support] has been a surprise to me personally. I was actually at this event four years ago at this venue, and I was optimistic that we had an opportunity to save Victoria then,” Pickering said.
“So I was arguably a little bit too optimistic. But now we’re here four years later and I think that optimism has paid off.
“Sadly, it took our state to deteriorate another four years. But now the sunny disposition is warranted and there’s a real opportunity here to save our state.”
‘Send Criminals to NSW If We Have To’: Pickering
In fact, Crime Statistics Agency (CSA) figures for 2025 show offences by minors increased by about two percent for the 2025 calendar year.
Police arrested 1,223 children a combined 6,997 times, the figures showing minors committed 57.6 percent of carjackings in Victoria and 52.6 percent of home invasions.
Exacerbating Victoria’s violent youth crime crisis is the fact its jail cells are overcrowded.
Police Association Secretary Wayne Gatt has gone on the record saying it is only a matter of time before there is a death in custody due to overcrowding.
Pickering said One Nation Victoria would prioritise a tough-on-crime approach.
“With youth crime, there need to be consequences for crimes. That’s the best deterrent. But as far as jail cells go, if we need to send prisoners to New South Wales, we’ll do it,” he said,
“What we are going to do is make sure we focus on basic services that Labor has failed Victorians in delivering.”
Recent addition to One Nation, Greg Cheesman, echoed those views.
“People are saying to me the main issues are safety in the home, crime, the ridiculousness of youth offenders and all violent offenders get caught, go to court and then they’re back on the streets sometimes within hours,” he told The Epoch Times.
In Labor’s 2026-27 budget, the government committed $51 million to deliver 50 new Protective Services Officers to support Victoria Police, and $9.9 million to maintain police custody cells, and an additional custodial doctor.
It has also committed $117 million for a specialised, fast-tracked youth court list in the County Court to speed up hearings.
Libertarians Warn Kids ‘Recycled’ Through Prison
Also in attendance were representatives of the Christian-leaning Family First and the Libertarians.
Ash Blackwell is the chief of staff for David Limbrick, the Libertarians’ upper house MP for South-East Metropolitan.
He said believes current consequences for bad behaviour were not enough.
“Obviously, we agree with the idea that recycling kids 50 times is absolutely mental and insane,” he told The Epoch Times.
“There are a couple of things that can be done better. One is for violent crime that causes serious harm—if kids need to be removed from society for the safety of everyone else for a period of time, then fine.
“There’s too much lovey-dovey, feel-good stuff in schools. You don’t negotiate with a violent 15-year-old—you enforce consequences.
Meanwhile, Blackwell said that as popularity surges for parties outside of Liberal and Labor, they’ll be more work needed on managing growth.
“This is what One Nation will be going through right now. When you go through a period of rapid growth, that just creates a crazy administrative and logistical problem because you’ve got to rapidly build the systems to manage that growth,” he said.
Family First Candidate Lives Near Sex Offender
Jane Foreman, the Family First candidate of the South-Eastern Metropolitan region, says the judiciary should be more accountable.
“We are very concerned about what’s happening in our judicial system with our judges, so we would certainly support anything that holds these judges and magistrates to account,” she told The Epoch Times.
“As an example, we have a gentleman living opposite us on the sex offenders’ list. My daughter had to report him to the detective and he was put in jail.
“Guess what? He’s been released, and guess where he’s returning to?”
