2025-04-30
Labor down but far from out, but with their lost votes not necessarily going to the Liberals but to minor parties and independents
By Mark Brogan, Volunteer with The Greens (WA). Formerly ECU. Advocates on environment and heritage.
Time Machine: WA2021
Slogans, memes and tropes are the bread and butter of election strategists and analysts. In 2021, the McGowan Government ‘had our backs’ on Covid. As other States, with less effective lock downs did it tough, ‘State Daddy’, as he become affectionately known, kept the WA economic power house operating at maximum efficiency. As Covid pressures eased, McGowan won a landslide victory, an electoral ‘tsunami’ that gave it commanding majorities in both Houses. The Liberals were reduced to two (2) seats in the Lower House, with the mantle of Opposition passing to the regions-based Nationals, who held five (5). Greens were not spared, with our Legislative Council team reduced from four (4) to one (1) seat, held by former Fremantle Mayor and academic Dr Brad Pettitt. In short, the tsunami had delivered in Parliamentary terms a near one party state.1
The comprehensiveness of the McGowan victory in 2021 played out to deliver a harsher Western Australia in which homelessness grew, the provision of social housing faltered, and cost of living pressures took their toll on Western Australians. Meanwhile big mining and gas prospered, as the WA government retreated from environmental regulation and lay doggo on obscene levels of corporate profitability. In 2022-23, The Australia Institute estimates that WA gas companies pocketed $56 billion from exporting liquified natural gas out of WA. They paid $0 in Petroleum Resource Rent Tax (PRRT) and most of the companies paid $0 in royalties.2
In short, the near one-party state had made Government less accountable on issues of homelessness and housing and made the problem of capture from extractive industries worse. Under the McGowan and Cook Labor Governments, Western Australia also grew its Greenhouse Gas Emissions (GHGe)3 and failed to take meaningful action on climate change. By 2025, coral bleaching was endangering our Ningaloo Reef4 and declining rainfall from climate change was killing our forests and shrublands.5 Across a range of environmental issues, the WA Government was being outed for blatant recklessness and indifference. It was even prepared to put at risk the supply of Perth’s drinking water by authorising the mining of bauxite near dams that supplied Perth’s drinking water.6 While problems of capture were entrenched with big mining and gas before Covid, new areas of economic activity also fell under its spell. These included planning, urban development and transport.
With the disruption of Covid in the distant past and ‘State Daddy’ no longer a factor in election calculus, the Cook Labor Government needed a new election strategy. It announced that WA2025 would be a ‘Made in WA’ election.7 Going forward, WA Labor would deliver on economic diversification by lifting WA manufacturing. It would also ramp up its energy transition and cost of living measures.
The Election: Labor takes a hit
In the wash up, the election delivered a state-wide -18.5% decline in Labor’s primary vote from its 2021 Tsunami high water mark.8 Quite a scare and sufficient to put an end to its dominance of both Houses of Parliament, the Legislative Assembly and the Legislative Council. However, the Liberals were beneficiaries of only 6.7% of this swing.9 Greens, independents and smaller parties took the rest. Greens have returned four (4) MLCs, on a record FP vote and are set to play a key role in the new Parliament. How did it happen?
The mainstream narrative on WA2025 has framed the outcome as a contest between the two majors in which the Libs got it wrong, by focussing too much energy and resources on winning back heartland inner City seats at the expense of outer suburban and regional seats. It is these outer suburban and regional seats that are most acutely affected by interest rates, housing affordability and cost of living pressures. However, this does not explain why Liberals under performed in inner-city seats with long connections to conservatism. In Churchlands, high profile Liberal candidate Basil Zempilas could only manage a 2.7 % swing against Labor’s Christine Tonkin.10 Swings were higher in Riverton (6.7%)11 and South Perth (8.5%)12, but insufficient to upend sitting Labor members.
Drilling down into the voting data for these inner suburban seats we can see why Labor incumbents mostly prevailed. To the extent that heartland seats had become progressive on social issues and climate change, they were vulnerable to Greens and Independent progressive campaigns, and this is where most of the disaffected vote went. In South Perth, where I campaigned for Greens candidate, Carl Evers, of the primary vote only 4.9% of the -13.3% swing against Labor went to the Liberals.13 In Churchlands the outcome for high profile Liberal candidate Basil Zempilas was even worse, with only 0.5% of the -11.4 % swing against Labor on FP votes going to the Liberal Party.14 The main beneficiary in Churchlands was independent, Lisa Thornton who garnered 14.0% of the vote. Independents day was also the thing in Fremantle where Climate 200 funded candidate Kate Hullett took 25.6% of the FP votes, precipitating a decline in Labor’s vote of -22.6%.15 While counting after election night saw Kate’s 2CP lead dwindle, her performance stung Labor. So much so, that sitting Labor member Simone McGurk was prompted to do the unthinkable for a Cook Government politician ‒ talk about WA Labor’s relationship with the gas industry and the urgency felt by voters on climate change.16
In summary WA2025 added another chapter in the unfolding story of long-term decline in electoral support for Australia’s two major parties and the two-party system of government that they own. The data are compelling. Once commanding 80% of the primary vote, the combined Liberal and Labor vote in the 2021 Federal election had reduced to 66%.17
Another overlooked narrative concerns the extent to which Labor will be dependent on Greens preferences, if it is to win a remarkable fourth term at the next State election in 2029. In terms of the Two Candidate Preferred (2CP) vote benchmark for relative safety (56%), Labor now holds twelve seats (12) seats that are marginal against this criterion. But it is not all good news for the Greens. They will also be vulnerable in these seats to strong community and climate change focussed independent candidates. For the Greens, seats such as Fremantle (-3.6%) and Cottesloe (-4.4%) show the extent to which a climate focussed Teal campaign can also hurt the Greens vote. Managing its relationship with climate focussed independent campaigns is set to become an important issue for Greens going forward. Cookie cutter preference deals that deliver Greens preferences to Labor candidates with poor records on climate may cause rancour in contests with strong climate focussed independents.
Stuff ups at the WAEC were also a big post-election story. Themes included a please explain from politicians and former WAEC staff over WAEC outsourcing of election operations, long voting queues and ballot shortages on election day. Amid all this an important success story from WA2025 went unheralded. A new, more diverse Legislative Council has been elected based on reforms to the Legislative Council franchise enacted in November 2024.18
WA had been a long-time laggard in democratisation of the franchise for its house of review. The reforms created a whole of State electorate that replaced multiple regions and enshrined one vote one value as a guiding principle for both Houses. Reforms also removed the ticket system for above the line voting and replaced mandatory preferencing with optional preferencing. Combined, these reforms curtailed preference harvesting by micro parties to obtain a full quota via preference swaps. As Table 1 shows, in WA2021, preference harvesting resulted in the election of three MLCs with absurdly low quotas:19
Table 1 ‒ Minor Party election quotas WA 2021
In 2021, Daylight Savings Party had returned an MLC for the Mining and Pastoral Region with only ninety-five (95) ticket votes representing a 0.01 quota.
The impact of the reforms can also be seen by modelling outcomes from previous elections if they had been conducted under the new rules. Consider the Greens vote from the tsunami election of WA 2021 and how this would have played out, if the reforms had been in place. Greens would have minimally doubled their Parliamentary representation:
Table 2 ‒ Projected MLCs in 2021 based on 2024 Reforms20
Reforms and an improved FP vote enabled the election of four (4) Greens MLCs in WA2025 representing a fair and proportionate share of the thirty-seven (37) available seats based on the Greens vote as a percentage of the total.20 In other respects improvements to the voting system were less successful. The count remained frustratingly slow, and the ballot paper remained long and difficult for voters to navigate. The informal vote rose from 2% in 2021 to 3% in 2025.
Conclusion
In summary, the electorate has given Labor a very big kick in the pants in WA2025 and delivered a more democratically elected Parliament that includes more Greens MLCs. Is WA in for a period of democratic catharsis led by a more diverse and assertive Legislative Council? We will have to wait and see. The fault lines over climate, energy, environment, planning and development are real and widening. It is likely that capture of the WA Government by industry will be more keenly contested in the term of the new Cook Government with more elected Greens members. But balance of power in the Legislative Council could turn out to be more rhetorical than real. Afterall, the Cook Government’s problem with numbers in its house of review might otherwise be solved by collaborating with conservative minded smaller parties. At the time of writing the Nationals, One Nation and Australian Christians are on quotas that equate to four (4) seats. They could hold more with three seats still in doubt to be decided by Bottom of the Line (BTL) voting.21The Cook Government could also side with the Liberals. At a Federal level, this has already happened with Labor and the Liberals combining to deliver changes to political donations law that clearly align with the interests of the two major parties at the expense of independents and the Greens.22 Labor’s fall from grace may not yet be complete.
The election has also left Greens with a conundrum of how to manage their relationship with climate focussed community independents. With Climate 200 Independent Kate Hulett’s candidacy in Fed 2025, this issue is already upon us.
ENDNOTES
1 Vide Western Australian Electoral Commission. (n.d.). 2021 State general Election. Legislative Assembly – Elected Members. Retrieved from: https://www.elections.wa.gov.au/elections/state/sgelection#/sg2021/LAElectedMembers
2 The Australia Institute. (2024). Gas in Western Australia. Retrieved from: https://australiainstitute.org.au/post/gas-in-western-australia/
3 Australian Government. Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water. (2024). State and territory greenhouse gas inventories: annual emissions. Retrieved from: https://www.dcceew.gov.au/climate-change/publications/national-greenhouse-accounts-2022/state-and-territory-greenhouse-gas-inventories-annual-emissions
4 Bates, A., Shackleton, J. and Davis, A. (2025). WA environment minister calls for urgent briefing on Ningaloo Reef coral bleaching event. Retrieved from: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-02-19/coral-bleaching-event-hits-ningaloo-reef-amid-marine-heatwave/104943574
5 Fontaine, J. et al., (2024). The big dry: forests and shrublands are dying in parched Western Australia. Retrieved from: https://theconversation.com/the-big-dry-forests-and-shrublands-are-dying-in-parched-western-australia-227053?utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=bylinecopy_url_button
6 Pin, Phoebe. (2025). Documents reveal Water Corp had serious concerns about Alcoa mining contaminating drinking water. ABC News. Retrieved from: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-02-27/perth-water-supply-risk-alcoa-bauxite-mining-documents-reveal/104990308?utm_campaign=abc_news_web&utm_content=link&utm_medium=content_shared&utm_source=abc_news_web
7 SkyNews (2025). WA Labor Launches Election Campaign. https://youtu.be/sR2MrUUG8Z8?si=PdJft77ammqBT9bv
8 As of 31 March 2025. Vide Poll Bludger Results Summary at: https://www.pollbludger.net/wa2025/Results/?
9 Ibid. 10 Figure current with 90.2% of the vote counted. Vide https://www.pollbludger.net/wa2025/Results/LA.htm?s=Churchlands
11 Figure current with 91.8% of the vote counted. Vide https://www.pollbludger.net/wa2025/Results/LA.htm?s=Riverton
12 Figure current with 88.0% of the vote counted. Vide https://www.pollbludger.net/wa2025/Results/LA.htm?s=SouthPerth
13 Ibid.
14 Figure current with 90.2% of the vote counted. Vide https://www.pollbludger.net/wa2025/Results/LA.htm?s=Churchlands
15 Current with 84.7% of the vote counted. Vide https://www.pollbludger.net/wa2025/Results/LA.htm?s=Fremantle
16 Bourke, K. (2025). Fremantle count continues in WA election with Simone McGurk, Kate Hullett neck and neck. ABC News, Mon. 10 March. Retrieved from: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-03-10/fremantle-counting-wa-election-simone-mcgurk-kate-hulett/105032228?utm_campaign=abc_news_web&utm_content=link&utm_medium=content_shared&utm_source=abc_news_web
17 England, D. (2022). Is this the end of the two-party system in Australia? The Greens, teals and others shock the major parties. The Conversation. Retrieved from: https://theconversation.com/is-this-the-end-of-the-two-party-system-in-australia-the-greens-teals-and-others-shock-the-major-parties-182672?utm_source=clipboard&utm_medium=bylinecopy_url_button
18 Government of Western Australia. Department of Justice. Parliamentary Counsel’s Office. (2024). Electoral Act 1907. Retrieved from: https://www.legislation.wa.gov.au/legislation/prod/filestore.nsf/FileURL/mrdoc_47953.pdf/$FILE/Electoral%20Act%201907%20-%20%5B17-h0-00%5D.pdf?OpenElement
19 Brogan, M. and Spencer, R. (2021). Building Better Government: Electoral Reform in WA. p.1 Retrieved from: https://www.wa.gov.au/system/files/2021-06/Submission%20J95%20-%20Brogan%20and%20Spencer.pdf
20 Figure current as of 25 March with 78.12% of the vote counted.
21 Psephologist Antony Green has column on this. Vide Green, A. (2025). 2025 Western Australian Election – Projecting the Upper House Result. Retrieved from: https://antonygreen.com.au/2025-western-australian-election-projecting-the-upper-house-result/
22 Browne, Bill (2025). “Stitch up” Labor and Coalition Deal on Electoral Reform. Retrieved from: https://australiainstitute.org.au/post/stich-up-labor-and-coalition-deal-on-electoral-reform/
[Opinions expressed are those of the author and not official policy of Greens WA]