Farrer may be an electorate of only about 180,000 people, but One Nation's byelection victory in the conservative heartland is sending shockwaves across the country.

"Australia's changed, Australia's changed, Australia's changed," One Nation MP Barnaby Joyce told the ABC tonight from a celebration in the southern NSW seat.

"There'll be a bomb going off in Canberra right now."

One Nation's David Farley was leading the two candidate-preferred count over popular independent Michelle Milthorpe by about 60 per cent to 40 per cent. And whilst there was no Labor candidate and a potent protest vote against the Liberals, Farley said it was the beginning of a new era for One Nation.

"One Nation has reached the end of its beginning, we're going through the ceiling from here," he said.

Joyce, a one-time deputy prime minister as the former leader of the National Party, said his defection to Pauline Hanson's One Nation was "a journey that so many from the Nationals and Liberals and Labor had before me and will have after me".

His joining of One Nation is being seen as key for the party to reach more voters, and he said he expected the result in Farrer to be replicated in other parts of the country.

"The Australian people are not dumb," he told the ABC.

"What you saw tonight was not just a result for Farrer, it's a result for Australia … and what we see is the Australian people saying I'm over this, I'm going to change things around, completely change the batting order, and they did it tonight."

Joyce lashed his former Coalition colleague Angus Taylor, whose success in the Liberal Party leadership spill in February led to the Farrer byelection when his predecessor Sussan Ley quit politics.

The result for the Liberals tonight was catastrophic, attracting about 12 per cent of the vote in a seat that has only ever been held by the Liberal or National parties in its 77-year history.

Taylor blamed divisions within the Coalition as turning voters off.

"For too long we have been a party of convenience, not of conviction, and that must change," he said.

"Over the last year or so the Coalition hasn't done what it should do: been united and stable and strong, with two breakups of the Coalition over that time.

Ley, who held the seat for 25 years, released a statement tonight as a warning to Taylor.

"I urge the Liberal leadership to accept this result with humility because the voters never get it wrong," she said.

"On the day the leadership spilled in February, the new leader said the Liberal Party needed to 'change or die'.

"Three months later, the result in Farrer demonstrates that statement to be far truer today than it ever was."

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