Election preview: Western Australia

The state of Western Australia goes to the polls tomorrow in what will probably be one of the year’s least exciting democratic elections. But it’s worth a look if only because the last one was so unusual, and it will be interesting to see how much of it is reproduced.

The important thing you need to know about Western Australia is that it is very remote. It’s comparable in size to Western Europe but has less than three million people; of those, about 80% live in the metropolitan area of Perth, which is the most isolated city of its size on earth. As we discovered in a 2022 by-election, a single electorate twice the size of Germany has only 11,000 voters.

So when Covid-19 struck five years ago, it was quite easy to seal Western Australia off from the rest of the world, and doing so was popular, because its people to a large extent already saw themselves that way. The Labor government of then-premier Mark McGowan closed the border and kept it closed for probably longer than made any epidemiological sense. But it made political sense.

At the last election, four years ago, McGowan, already sitting on a large majority, got a swing of 14.1% in his favor and almost annihilated his opponents. Labor won 59.9% of the vote (or 69.7% two-party-preferred) and won 53 of the 59 seats in the Legislative Assembly; it also won a majority in the upper house (22 seats out of 36) for the first time in its history. It’s the biggest election victory in any state since the two-party system was established early last century.

Only two other parties won seats: the Liberals, with 21.3% of the vote, won two, and the Nationals on 4.0% won four. (In between them were the Greens, with 6.9% but no seats.) Nationals leader Mia Davies improbably became leader of the opposition; in 2023 she resigned and was replaced by Shane Love. Libby Mettam became Liberal leader at the same time. Later the same year, one Nationals MP (from the afore-mentioned North West Central) defected to the Liberals, leaving them at three-all.

Also in 2023 McGowan retired and was replaced by his deputy, Roger Cook. At the end of that year a redistribution was finalised, creating a new Labor seat in the south-eastern suburbs and merging two rural seats – North West Central and Moore, which happens to be Love’s seat – into one. So the opposition actually starts at a 54-5 disadvantage; to win a majority it would need another 25 seats, which on a uniform basis would require a swing of 23.3%.*

There is universal agreement that the 2021 result will not be repeated and there will be a correction in the opposition’s favor, possibly a quite substantial one. But the idea that it could get a 23% swing is the stuff of fantasy. While Antony Green bravely maintains that “No election should ever, or can ever, be treated as a forgone conclusion,” he concedes that “it’s a principle that is hard to stick by” in this case.

Nonetheless, it will be interesting to see just how far Covid has faded from the voters’ minds. Probably the biggest thing working against Cook is a factor over which he has no control, namely the defeat in 2022 of the federal Coalition government. Its hostility to the border closure, coupled with hints of Covid-denialism, made it fiercely unpopular in the west; with that obstacle removed, the Liberal and National parties have hopes of a recovery, if only on a modest scale.

The other big item of interest is the Legislative Council, where, with Labor having won a majority, it brought in comprehensive democratic reform. The whole state, voting as a single electorate, will elect the 37 members, meaning that the chance of any single-party majority for the future is remote. But with a range of minor parties likely to win representation, including a few Greens, the government will have plenty of options for passage of its legislation.

With no daylight saving, Western Australia at GMT+8 is three hours behind south-eastern Australia, so if you’re in Melbourne or Sydney results will come in pretty late tomorrow night. Realistically, it might not be worth sitting up.

.

* I’m using the figures from Antony Green’s pendulum; William Bowe’s calculations are very similar.