Live: Joyce says dynamics have changed after WA by-election win

Barnaby Joyce says the result of One Nation’s Western Australian by-election victory has altered Australian politics, warning that it would be “foolish” to think otherwise. One Nation won its first lower-house seat in the state after Luke Herdegen defeated Labor candidate Georgia Tree.

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It would be foolish not to believe that the dynamics in Australian politics have changed. There is no safe Labor seat anymore.

“There is no safe Labor seat anymore,” Joyce told Seven’s Sunrise. Labor’s Tanya Plibersek sought to frame the contest as a state matter, while saying Labor would learn from the result and would not take any seat for granted.

Labor frontbencher Murray Watt also cautioned against reading too much into a state by-election. He said the result should nevertheless remind the government to keep delivering changes that improve people’s lives and to show voters what could be at risk if One Nation and the Liberal Party worked together.

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We’ve got to be a little bit careful to read too much into a state by-election, especially one that wasn’t going to change the result in terms of who was going to be in government.

The live coverage also reported that 43 Australians remained unaccounted for after floods in Nepal and Tibet. Assistant Foreign Minister Matt Thistlethwaite said 12 additional consular staff had been sent to the region to help locate the missing Australians.

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We’ve got 12 additional consular staff that we’ve sent to the region to assist our post on the ground there to try and recover those Australians as quickly as possible.