‘Not your normal group of pollies’: Meet your One Nation members
One Nation is poised to pick up seven spots in South Australia’s parliament. Its party leader this morning revealing his team and saying the Aboriginal Voice to Parliament is firmly in their sights.
One Nation’s South Australian leader Cory Bernadi kicked off his first press conference revealing the new state team by saying it was “not your normal group of politicians”.
The state leader fronted a first press conference reaffirming his commitment to fight against the state’s Aboriginal Voice to Parliament, votes are currently being counted for its new list of representatives. And he also wants to get rid of “nonsense net zero” targets on harmful emissions, and introduce reforms to make local government more efficient.
“We do have stated objectives, which we took to the election, and we want to see if we can work cooperatively with the government and the opposition to implement those objectives, the first of them, of course, is to remove the Aboriginal Voice to Parliament and end all race-based legislation,” Bernardi said.
On Wednesday morning the Electoral Commission started recounting votes for the rural Yorke Peninsula seat of Narungga as One Nation candidate Chantelle Thomas leads Liberal Tania Stock with a tiny margin of 71 votes.
It is the last seat to be declared in SA Parliament’s lower house and could see the 30-year-old photographer and makeup artist enter the parliament with six other new One Nation members across the upper and lower house. Another has formerly worked on Christmas Island in the immigration detention system.
Bernardi said “that diversity” of candidates from different working backgrounds is the party’s strength.
Despite her spot still being counted, Thomas joined the rest of One Nation’s state election success stories at the Kent Town Hotel to address the media for the first time after the landmark result for the Pauline Hanson-led party. Thomas said she felt “confident” about the recount but “won’t take anything for granted”.
When asked his thoughts about two of the One Nation candidates winning seats being named Ngadjuri and Narungga, Bernardi said there was no need to change seat names “to have Aboriginal place names in place” and if he could, Bernardi would have kept Ngadjuri as its old name, Frome.
Winning candidate Paton’s Facebook page is named “David Paton for Frome – One Nation”, but other One Nation material and promotional images used the seat’s new name, Ngadjuri or Ngadjuri (formerly Frome). Ngadjuri was used for the first time in the 2026 state election.
Frome was named for General Edward Charles Frome, who surveyed land for settlers after SA’s proclamation. The name was changed over concerns about his involvement in burning a village and executing two Milmendjeri men as “retribution” against Aboriginal people in the Coorong area who murdered some or all survivors of the shipwreck ‘Maria’ in 1840.
Bernardi also noted the suggestion to rename the federal electorate of Grey to O’Donoghue, after the renowned Aboriginal figure Lowitja O’Donoghue, saying, “I don’t have a particular problem” with the name change because “it’s not an Indigenous name, it’s the name of an Indigenous person, and that should be the principle”.
After almost two weeks of counting, One Nation has secured four seats in the lower house and three in the upper house – its best result at a state election.
Among them Argentinian migrant Carlos Quaremba, a former Mount Barker councillor and former Adelaide Plains Deputy Mayor.
The first One Nation candidate to enter the South Australian parliament was Sarah Game, who left the party in 2025 saying she did not regret leaving despite a “highly traumatic” election campaign that saw her Sarah Game Fair Go for Australians party fail to pick up a single seat.
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These are the new One Nation politicians who will be representing the people of South Australia.
Cory Bernardi
Cory Bernardi is the SA leader of Queenslander Pauline Hanson’s party and was its first candidate on the upper house ticket, delivering him eight years in parliament.
He has been an outspoken critic of same-sex marriage and Aboriginal place naming, and during the state election campaign doubled down on his previous comments that compared gay marriage to bestiality – sparking backlash.
Bernardi – who owns Oyster HQ in Coffin Bay with his wife Sinead – was a federal senator for South Australia from 2006 until 2020 and quit the Liberal Party in 2017 to set up his own party, Australian Conservatives.
Australian Conservatives was deregistered and Bernardi left politics at the end of 2019 after an unsuccessful federal election.
Bernardi joined One Nation last year saying he was approached by Hanson to run for South Australia’s upper house.
After he resigned from politics Bernardi presented his own segment on conservative news outlet Sky News, the slot was axed in 2023.
Carlos Quaremba
Quaremba is One Nation’s state president and was previously its lead upper house candidate before Bernardi announced his SA run in February.
He migrated to Melbourne from Argentina with his parents in 1977 and went to school in Croydon. He is a carpenter and runs a construction business in Victor Harbor.
Quaremba was elected a Victor Harbor councillor in November 2022 and ran for One Nation in his local seat of Finniss in the 2022 state election.
He said the party’s growth had been a “long journey” with hard work from leader Pauline Hanson. He said the result showed “the people of Australia now starting to wake up”.
He will join Bernardi and Rebecca Hewett in the upper house for the eight-year term.
Rebecca Hewett
Rebecca Hewett – a seventh-generation wheat farmer – secured a third spot for One Nation in the upper house, where she will serve an eight-year term alongside Bernardi and Quaremba.
She is most concerned about the effects of rising costs and poor infrastructure affecting voters in the regions.
Hewett ran for One Nation in the seat of Mayo in last year’s federal election, and is a former Mount Barker councillor who gained media attention when she opposed funding a First Nations survival day event in 2025.
At the time, Mount Barker Mayor David Leach said her comments “harmed” First Nations people. Hewett said she was “silenced”.
Survival Day events, held on January 26, mark the British colonisation of Aboriginal land rather than celebrating Australia Day.
David Paton
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David Paton – the Adelaide Plains Deputy Mayor – was the first candidate from the Pauline Hanson-led party to pick up a seat, securing Ngadjuri in the mid-north.
On Wednesday morning, he said he had “about three more hours” left of the Deputy Mayor role and that “there’s a CEO out there at the moment that’ll be counting those hours down, who finally got rid of me”.
Paton has served on the council since 2022 and is married with two children.
He won the seat off the incumbent Liberal Penny Pratt, who was the shadow health minister for regional health in the last government.
The seat used to be called Frome, but was renamed Ngadjuri for the traditional owners of the area, and has new boundaries this election.
Chantelle Thomas
Photographer and make-up artist Chantelle Thomas appears to have narrowly defeated Liberal Tania Stock for the seat of Narungga, which was previously held by Fraser Ellis – an independent dis-endorsed by the Liberal party after being charged with misusing parliamentary funds.
With a 71-vote margin, the Electoral Commission began a recount on Wednesday.
Thomas said she was “confident” about the recount.
“I think everyone in the country is fed up and they want a strong voice to be heard, and that is what I will be for them,” she said.
The electorate of Narungga was renamed after the traditional owners of Yorke Peninsula in 2018, replacing the old name Goyder and stretches to the towns of Snowtown and parts of Port Pirie.
Thomas, who is 30 years old, says on her website, “I’ve worked in a lot of different fields with all sorts of different people”, with experience ranging from hospitality to being a counsellor with Lifeline.
Her website focused on healthcare, saying that hospitals in the Yorke Peninsula had been “neglected”.
Robert Roylance
Mannum local and craft distiller Robert Roylance won the seat of Hammond over Labor candidate Simone Bailey, the former Mid Murray Council Mayor.
He also ousted the Liberal incumbent Adrian Pederick for the seat which includes Murray Bridge and Strathalbyn. Pederick had held the seat since 2006.
Roylance operates the Walker Flat Ferry and has distilled vodka and whisky with his brother Benjamin since 2020; the duo opened their first shop in 2023.
His website says Roylance is most passionate about fixing rising energy costs for business and One Nation’s plan for the education sector.
“Our policy is to strip the curriculum of ideological material and emphasise core learning like English, mathematics and the sciences,” he said.
Jason Virgo
The Liberals’ Rebekah Rosser conceded to Jason Virgo – a former Mount Gambier councillor – earlier this week for the South East seat of MacKillop.
Virgo said he ran “because the South East has been forgotten” by the major parties.
Virgo was raised in Port MacDonnell and has worked in councils and on Christmas Island in the immigration detention system. In 2023, he became a Mount Gambier Councillor, filling the vacancy left by Liberal Ben Hood when Hood moved to the state parliament’s upper house.
Virgo picked up 35.5 per cent of the first preference vote in MacKillop – the seat of Nick McBride, a former Liberal MP currently wearing an ankle bracelet after being charged for the alleged assault of his wife, one he denies.
One Nation called the result “seismic”, given the rural seat was previously a Liberal stronghold.
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