CLANCY OVERELL | Editor | CONTACT
Millions of Western Australians are today shrugging at the result of the 2025 state election, with many wondering why they even bother having elections anymore.
The Liberal Party remains comically unelectable in Western Australia, as Labor secured another landslide victory in the state election overnight.
Premier Roger Cook voted in by the public as premier for the first time, after stepping in to replace the pandemic-era leader Mark McGowan – who broke state records with a 53 seat win in 2021.
This marks Labor’s third consecutive victory since Labor adopted four year Parliamentary terms. It also marks three of the worst consecutive losses that the State Liberals have experienced in the history of the state.
Things have been so bad for the Liberal Party that the Nationals actually saw themselves holding more power than their urban conservative counterparts, and openly ran candidates against them in the marginal seats, in a hope to perhaps recreate a 1980s Queensland-style Nationals-led Coalition.
But despite slightly improving on 2021 by winning 2 or 3 more seats, this doesn’t mean the Liberals didn’t suffer yet another disastrous election night, with their new leader Libby Mettam failing to win many of the expected seats.
In fact, they lost so badly that the former TV presenter turned 12-month mayor of Perth, Basil Zempilas almost didn’t get elected in the safe blue-ribbon electorate of Churchlands. It appears that Kerry Stokes’ favourite celebrity politician may just scrape through with a majority.
In horrifying news for the Federal Liberals, massive swings were also recorded towards independents and the Greens – with the Greens recording their largest vote in the state’s history.
At both a state and federal level, this result has left the Liberal Party with some soul-searching to do in WA. It is not clear that they should have never done a preference deal with Pauline Hanson in 2017. They also shouldn’t have sided with Clive Palmer in his effort to open borders during the pandemic. Also, maybe they shouldn’t have ridiculed them for not wanting to have lockdowns. Also, maybe Julie Bishop would’ve made a better leader than Scott Morrison?
