WA has cast their vote and while votes are still being counted, one thing is certain, Roger Cook’s WA Labor Party has won another term of government with an overwhelming majority of seats in the Legislative Assembly. At current count, Labor has won 40 of the 59 seats with the Liberal party winning five, the Nationals four, and ten still undecided.
A re-elected Cook Labor government
During the election period, the WA Labor Party made a lot of promises on the basis of re-election. ABC News tracked all election promises as they happened which can be found here. A few of the key promises were:
- Build to Rent — This aims to get more long-term rentals in the market and help ease cost-of-living pressure and the housing shortage by offering land tax concessions to developers and boosting social housing by 1,000 homes per year, at a cost of more than $1.5 billion.
- Raise the stamp duty exemption threshold for first homebuyer purchases of established properties from $450,000 to $500,000, and lift the thresholds at which discounted rates apply from $600,000 to $700,000 in metropolitan Perth and $750,000 in regional WA.
- Health Care — Labor has promised $250 million for major upgrades for emergency care, including transforming Midland Health Campus’ emergency department, and expanding the WA Virtual Emergency Department program. Labor has also pledged to improve the emergency department at Royal Perth Hospital.
- Clean Energy Projects — A $60M commitment to a second round of the Investment Attraction Funds’ New Energies Industries stream.
- WA-first Residential Battery Scheme to help WA families purchase residential batteries, with one-off rebates of up to $5,000 for Synergy customers and up to $7,500 for Horizon Power customers available from July 2025.
- $745M to deliver quality school infrastructure and facilities for WA students, including funding towards 11 new schools and upgrades to dozens more.
- Make travelling on public transport cheaper by creating a flat one-zone fare on public transport, capping the fee at $2.80.
- $217.5M to build a Perth Street Circuit and entertainment precinct at Burswood to host motorsport events.
What went wrong for the Liberal Party?
The WA Liberal Party will see this weekend’s result as a disappointing one, given analysts had projected them to pick up 11 seats, taking their total to 13. While there has been an overall swing towards the Liberal Party (+7.3%), it hasn’t been enough to materialise into seats and has positioned WA Labor to win at least one more four year term when the state goes back to the polls in 2029.
Basil Zampilas has won the Churchlands seat from Christine Tonkin with a 3.8% swing — a seat that many projected to be a strong swing to Liberals.
So what went wrong for the Liberal Party in WA? In the coming months, the party will no doubt do some ‘soul searching’ as they did following their loss four years ago where they were reduced to just two seats, meaning they were no longer considered the Opposition.
We asked a few people for their thoughts and two main themes popped up:
- Running a negative campaign without any vision of what they would do for the state fell very flat in prominent demographics which are rapidly becoming the majority of voters and decision makers — millennials and gen-z.
- A lack of focus on policies and how they planned on addressing some of the more important issues facing the people of WA like climate change, cost of living, and affordable housing.
How will this impact the Federal election?
Australia is set to head to the polls for a federal election at some time in the next few months. The latest date it can be held is May 17th,2025 with a minimum of 33 days of notice required.
There was speculation that Prime Minister Anthony Albanese would announce an election date today or tomorrow; however, that has been ruled out.
Albanese will have been watching the WA election closely and will view the result as a strong win for the WA Labor Party and very encouraging on a national stage. Once all votes are counted and the final result is confirmed, Albanese will likely see it as a catalyst to call an election sooner rather than later.
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