Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull distanced himself from the WA election campaign. Credit:Louise Kennerley On Sunday afternoon, ABC election analyst Antony Green was predicting One Nation would win two upper house seats –the same as projected for the Shooters and Fishers party –though only half the vote had been counted. Victorian Liberal MP Tim Wilson said the result showed the Liberal Party must avoid becoming "One Nation lite" and should not enter into preference deals with the party. "When we do a preference deal with One Nation we legitimise them and get distracted as the folly of many of their policies are exposed," he said. "The WA election shows there isn't a vast bulk of reactionary voters waiting to be embraced as part of the mainstream.

WA's next premier, Mark McGowan, on Rockingham Beach, near Perth, with his wife Sarah and children Samuel, 13, Alexander, 11, and Amelia, 7, on Sunday. Credit:Trevor Collens "The Liberal-National Coalition is at its best when it starts from its centre-right mainstream base and reaches into the mainstream middle – not when it legitimises the fringes." Mr Joyce said One Nation had a "shocker" at the election and it was a mistake for the WA Liberals to preference One Nation over the Nationals. The McGowans savour the moment after Mr McGowan delivered his victory speech on Saturday night. Credit:Dan Peled "All the imbroglio with regards to preferences means people start to over-assess and exaggerate what they think the support is of their new partner and they also just confuse their constituencies," he said.

"So it's in the Liberal Party's interests to be close to the National Party, and it's in the National Party's interests to be close to the Liberal Party." Victorian Liberal MP Tim Wilson is one of several Liberal MPs pushing for a free vote on same-sex marriage. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen WA Liberal senator Dean Smith said the preference deal had "sucked the oxygen" from the Liberal campaign. "The election results pose a significant electoral warning for the Coalition," Senator Smith said. "With a Liberal Party primary vote of 30 per cent, there is nothing to be gained by sugar-coating this result.

"A frank and honest assessment will show the 2016 federal election was an early indicator – especially in Perth's outer suburbs – that the Liberal brand was sinking." Federal Aged Care Minister Ken Wyatt said: "Liberal supporters were quite frank with me at the polling booths – there was an unhappiness with the deal with One Nation." Mr Wyatt, who holds the marginal Perth seat of Hasluck, said: "When people are feeling disaffected they think about whether the federal government is serving them in the best way possible." State seats inside electorates held by Mr Wyatt, Social Services Minister Christian Porter and MP Andrew Hastie fell to Labor on the back of massive swings against the Liberals. Both Senator Smith and Mr Wyatt nominated GST distribution as an issue that needed more attention from the federal government.

Mr Turnbull said the WA Liberal Party had lost because of state issues and the "it's time" factor after mor than eight years under Premier Colin Barnett. He said any preference deals were the matter for state divisions and declined to rule out a deal with One Nation federally. WA senator Mathias Cormann, who helped negotiate the preference deal, defended the arrangement on Sunday. "If we wanted to minimise losses, maximise our chances of holding onto seats, we needed to be able to source preferences and clearly, these weren't going to come from Labor and the Greens," Senator Cormann told the ABC's Insiders program. Speaking on election night, Ms Hanson said she would be extremely wary of doing preferences deals with the Liberal Party in future.