2017 Western Australian State Election
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The 2017 Western Australian state election was held on Saturday 11 March 2017 to elect members to the
Parliament of Western Australia The Parliament of Western Australia is the bicameralism, bicameral legislature of the Australian states and territories of Australia, state of Western Australia, which constitutes the legislative branch of the state's political system. The parl ...
, including all 59 seats in the Legislative Assembly and all 36 seats in the
Legislative Council A legislative council is the legislature, or one of the legislative chambers, of a nation, colony, or subnational division such as a province or state. It was commonly used to label unicameral or upper house legislative bodies in the Brit ...
. The eight-and-a-half-year two-term incumbent Liberal– WA National government, led by
Premier Premier is a title for the head of government in central governments, state governments and local governments of some countries. A second in command to a premier is designated as a deputy premier. A premier will normally be a head of govern ...
Colin Barnett, was defeated in a
landslide Landslides, also known as landslips, rockslips or rockslides, are several forms of mass wasting that may include a wide range of ground movements, such as rockfalls, mudflows, shallow or deep-seated slope failures and debris flows. Landslides ...
by the
Labor Labour or labor may refer to: * Childbirth, the delivery of a baby * Labour (human activity), or work ** Manual labour, physical work ** Wage labour, a socioeconomic relationship between a worker and an employer ** Organized labour and the labour ...
opposition, led by Opposition Leader Mark McGowan. Labor won 41 of the 59 seats in the Legislative Assembly—a 12-seat
supermajority A supermajority is a requirement for a proposal to gain a specified level of support which is greater than the threshold of one-half used for a simple majority. Supermajority rules in a democracy can help to prevent a majority from eroding fun ...
. This was WA Labor's strongest performance in a state election at the time, and formed the largest majority government and seat tally in Western Australian parliamentary history until that point. Additionally, Labor exceeded all published opinion polling, winning 55.5 percent of the
two-party-preferred vote In Australian politics, the two-party-preferred vote (TPP or 2PP), is the result of an opinion poll or a projection of an election result where preferences are distributed to one of the two major parties, the Labor Party and the Liberal/Nati ...
from a state record landslide 12.8-point two-party swing.Labor 55.5% 2PP vote and +12.8-point 2PP swing sourced from Antony Green's temporary estimate within provided ABC link published 30 March 2017, which states "The two-party-preferred count is based on estimates for Baldivis, Moore and
Roe Roe, ( ) or hard roe, is the fully ripe internal egg masses in the ovaries, or the released external egg masses, of fish and certain marine animals such as shrimp, scallop, sea urchins and squid. As a seafood, roe is used both as a cooking, c ...
. â€
Final 2017 WA Election Results plus a New Electoral Pendulum: Antony Green ABC 30 March 2017
It was the worst defeat of a sitting government in Western Australia, as well as one of the worst defeats of a sitting state or territory government since Federation. Labor also became the largest party in the Legislative Council with 14 of the 36 seats. The Labor government thus required at least five additional votes from non-government members to pass legislation.


Results


Legislative Assembly

The four main media networks covering the election, the ABC,
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, Seven News and
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, all called the election for Labor within two hours after polls closed. McGowan succeeded Barnett to become the 30th
Premier of Western Australia The premier of Western Australia is the head of government of the state of Western Australia. The role of premier at a state level is similar to the role of the prime minister of Australia at a federal level. The premier leads the executive br ...
. By the morning of 12 March, two thirds of votes had been counted and seven lower house seats were still in doubt, showing that Labor had won at least 36 seats, well above the 30 required for a majority, which the ABC predicted would increase to 41. Meanwhile, the Liberals and WA Nationals had won only 10 and five seats respectively, with a further three expected to be retained by the Liberals. The swing against the government affected traditionally safe seats. Consequently, six government ministers lost their seats in the Legislative Assembly while one lost his seat in the Legislative Council. The Labor landslide was built primarily on a near-sweep of Perth. Labor took 34 of the capital's 43 seats on a swing of 13.6 points, accounting for nearly all of its majority. By comparison, it had gone into the election holding 17 seats in Perth. According to the ABC's Antony Green, the 10 percent swing Labor needed to make McGowan premier was not nearly as daunting as it seemed on paper. Green noted that several Liberals in outer suburban seats sat on inflated margins. Additionally, Green argued that the one vote one value reforms of 2008, which allowed Perth to elect over 70 percent of the legislature, proved to be a boost for Labor in 2017. Green noted that when Labor last governed from 2001 to 2008, it did so in a legislature where voters in country seats had twice the voting power of voters in a Perth-based seat.


Seats changing parties

:1 Matt Taylor was the member for the seat of Bateman, but contested Bicton after losing preselection to Dean Nalder, the member for the abolished seat of Alfred Cove. :2 Albert Jacob was the member for the abolished seat of Ocean Reef, but instead contested Burns Beach, a seat containing much of the same territory. * Members listed in italics did not contest their seat at this election. * Labor also retained two seats— Collie-Preston and West Swan—which were notionally Liberal-held after the redistribution. The Liberals retained Hillarys, which was being contested by the incumbent MLA Rob Johnson as an independent.


Legislative Council

Labor became the largest party in the Legislative Council with 14 of the 36 seats. The Labor government will require at least five additional votes from non-government members to pass legislation. On 4 April, the Western Australian Electoral Commission conducted a recount of 2013 election results to fill two casual vacancies for the remainder of the 2013–17 term caused by the resignation and subsequent election to the Legislative Assembly of Amber-Jade Sanderson (Labor) in East Metropolitan and Peter Katsambanis (Liberal) in North Metropolitan. The vacancies were filled by Bill Leadbetter (Labor) and Elise Irwin (Liberal), who will first sit in the Legislative Council on 11 May 2017.


Date of election

On 3 November 2011, the
Government of Western Australia The Government of Western Australia is the States and territories of Australia, Australian state democratic administrative authority of Western Australia. It is also commonly referred to as the WA Government or the Western Australian Governmen ...
introduced fixed four-year terms for the Legislative Assembly, with the elections to be held on the second Saturday in March. The first election under the new law was the 2013 election. Previously, under electoral reforms of the Burke Government in 1987, four-year maximum terms were adopted for the Legislative Assembly, and fixed four-year terms for the Legislative Council.


Campaign

The Western Australian National Party led by Brendon Grylls, who retook the leadership in August 2016, ran on a policy to increase the tax on every tonne mined from $0.25 to $5 for BHP and Rio Tinto. The big mining companies ran an advertising campaign against the policy, while a poll conducted found that 39.4% of voters surveyed supported the policy, 37.1% opposed and 23.5% were undecided. The Liberal Party undertook a preference deal with One Nation during the elections, saying the party held less extreme views than it did in the 1990s. Some One Nation candidates were against the preference deal with the Liberal Party. One Nation ran on opposing privatisation and the National party mining taxes.


Seats held


Lower house

At the 2013 election, Labor won 21 seats, the Liberals won 31 seats and the Nationals won 7 seats. No seats were won by independents. On 15 April 2016, the Liberal member for Hillarys, Rob Johnson, resigned from the Liberals to sit as an independent, leaving the government with 30 seats in the lower house.


Upper house

At the 2013 election, the Liberals won 17 seats, Labor won 11 seats, the Nationals won five seats, the Greens won two seats and the Shooters and Fishers won one seat. Western Australia's Legislative Council is divided into six regions. Three are based in Perth, while three are rural. Each region elects six members to the Legislative Council. These areas are not of similar population sizes, with rural areas receiving from one and a half to about six times the effective membership of the metropolitan regions. The Western Australian rural population dropped from about 12.1% to 10.7% of the state's enrolled electors after the 2008 election. Election analyst Antony Green predicted this would make it more difficult for the Liberals or Labor (who typically perform better in Perth than rural areas) to increase their presence within the Legislative Council.


Redistribution

A redistribution of electoral boundaries for the lower house was completed on 27 November 2015. This resulted in a net gain of one seat for the Liberals from Labor. The Liberal seats of Alfred Cove, Eyre and Ocean Reef, the Labor seat of Gosnells and the National seat of Wagin were abolished. Five new seats were created (or re-created): the notionally Liberal seats of Bicton (mostly replacing Alfred Cove) and Burns Beach (mostly replacing Ocean Reef), the notionally Labor seats of Baldivis (created from parts of Kwinana and Warnbro) and Thornlie (replacing Gosnells), and the notionally National seat of
Roe Roe, ( ) or hard roe, is the fully ripe internal egg masses in the ovaries, or the released external egg masses, of fish and certain marine animals such as shrimp, scallop, sea urchins and squid. As a seafood, roe is used both as a cooking, c ...
(merging Wagin and Eyre). The Labor seats of Collie-Preston and West Swan became notionally Liberal.


Retiring MPs

Members who did not re-nominate at the 2017 election:


Liberal

* John Castrilli MLA ( Bunbury) – announced 14 March 2016 * Kim Hames MLA ( Dawesville) – announced 2 August 2014 * Liz Behjat MLC ( North Metropolitan) – lost preselection * Barry House MLC ( South West) – announced 27 October 2015


National

* Wendy Duncan MLA (
Kalgoorlie Kalgoorlie-Boulder (or just Kalgoorlie) is a city in the Goldfields–Esperance region of Western Australia, located east-northeast of Perth at the end of the Great Eastern Highway. It is referred to as Kalgoorlie–Boulder as the surroundi ...
) – announced 4 December 2015 * Terry Waldron MLA ( Wagin) – announced 25 November 2014


Electoral pendulums

The following
Mackerras pendulum The Mackerras pendulum was devised by the Australian psephologist Malcolm Mackerras as a way of predicting the outcome of an election contested between two major parties in a Westminster style lower house legislature such as the Australian House ...
s work by lining up all of the seats according to the
percentage point A percentage point or percent point is the unit (measurement), unit for the difference (mathematics), arithmetic difference between two percentages. For example, moving up from 40 percent to 44 percent is an increase of 4 percentage points (altho ...
margin post-election on a
two-candidate-preferred In Australian politics, the two-party-preferred vote (TPP or 2PP), is the result of an opinion poll or a projection of an election result where preferences are distributed to one of the two major parties, the Labor Party and the Liberal/Nati ...
basis, grouped as marginal, safe etc. as defined by the
Australian Electoral Commission The Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) is the independent statutory agency of the Australian Government responsible for the management and oversight of Australian federal elections, plebiscites, referendums and some trade union A ...
.


Pre-election pendulum

This pendulum takes the redistribution into account. One sitting member, retiring Wagin Nationals MP Terry Waldron, does not appear in this pendulum: his seat was combined with Eyre to form
Roe Roe, ( ) or hard roe, is the fully ripe internal egg masses in the ovaries, or the released external egg masses, of fish and certain marine animals such as shrimp, scallop, sea urchins and squid. As a seafood, roe is used both as a cooking, c ...
, a seat with a National margin that will also be contested by Eyre Liberal MP Graham Jacobs, who is listed as the defending member below. Two Liberal members, Dean Nalder ( Alfred Cove, now renamed Bicton) and Matt Taylor ( Bateman), were contesting each other's seats; this is reflected below. Retiring members are listed in italics.


Post-election pendulum


Opinion polling


Graphical summary


Voting intention


Newspaper endorsements


See also

* Candidates of the 2017 Western Australian state election * Members of the Western Australian Legislative Assembly, 2017–2021 * Members of the Western Australian Legislative Council, 2017–2021


References


External links


Early voting centres
at Western Australian Electoral Commission
Voting Systems in WA
at Western Australian Electoral Commission {{Western Australian elections 2017 elections in Australia 2017 in Western Australia Elections in Western Australia March 2017 in Australia