Senate – Western Australia – Australia 2022

Incumbent Senators

Term due to expire 2022 Term due to expire 2025
Michaelia Cash (Liberal) Slade Brockman (Liberal)
Dorinda Cox (Greens) 1 Pat Dodson (Labor)
Sue Lines (Labor) Matt O’Sullivan (Liberal)
Ben Small (Liberal)1 Louise Pratt (Labor)
Dean Smith (Liberal) Linda Reynolds (Liberal)
Glenn Sterle (Labor) Jordon Steele-John (Greens)

1Dorinda Cox will replace Rachel Siewert later in 2021.
2Ben Small replaced Mathias Cormann on 25 November 2020 following Cormann’s resignation.

History
Western Australian Senate races were dominated by the Coalition from 1951 until the beginning of the 1980s. The 1951 election produced a result of four ALP senators, four Liberal senators and two Country Party senators.  The 1953 election saw the ALP win a seat off the Country Party, but the previous result was restored in 1955. The 4-4-2 result was maintained at every election throughout the 1950s and 1960s. The 1970 Senate election saw the Liberal Party lose one of its four seats to independent Syd Negus, who was elected on a platform of abolishing death duties.

The 1974 double dissolution saw Negus defeated and the Country Party lose one of its two seats. The result saw five Labor senators alongside four Liberals and one Country senator. The 1975 double dissolution saw the Coalition regain its majority in Western Australia, with the ALP losing its fifth senate seat to the Liberals. The 1977 election saw the National Country Party lose its senate seat to the Liberals, producing a result of six Liberals and four Labor senators.

The 1983 double dissolution saw the Liberals lose their majority, with five Liberals, four Labor and one Democrat elected. The 1984 election saw Labor gain both new Senate seats while the Democrats lost their seat. In addition to 6 ALP and 5 Liberal, the Nuclear Disarmament Party’s Jo Vallentine was elected. At the 1987 double dissolution, Vallentine was re-elected as an independent along with a Democrat and five each for the two major parties.

The 1990 election saw the Liberals win six seats, along with five Labor and the re-elected Vallentine, who was re-elected as a Green. The Liberals have maintained six WA seats ever since. The 1993 election saw the Greens win a second seat off the ALP. From 1993 until today, WA has been represented by six Liberals, four Labor senators and two minor party Senators from the Greens or Democrats.

In 1996, the Greens lost one of their seats to the Democrats, losing their other seat in 1998. The Democrats held onto their seat in 2001 before losing one of their seats in 2004. The last Democrat was defeated by the Greens candidate in 2007.

The 2010 election was a status quo result. It was the third election in a row which saw three Liberals, two Labor and one Green elected.

The 2013 election produced a bizarre result, where a tiny vote margin between two nonviable candidates decided whether two seats would go to the Palmer United Party and Labor, or the Greens and the Australian Sports Party. A recount reversed the result, but also saw a large batch of ballot papers go missing, forcing a re-election.

At the 2014 re-election, large swings to the Greens and the Palmer United Party saw both parties win one seat each, with the Liberal Party retaining their three seats and Labor limping in with only one seat.

There were two changes at the 2016 double dissolution. Labor recovered their fourth seat, while the Liberal Party dropped from six to five. The Greens maintained their two seats. The Palmer United Party lost their sole seat, with One Nation winning a single seat.

The Liberal Party regained their third seat (for a total of six) at the 2019 election, with One Nation losing their sole seat. There was no change for Labor or the Greens.

2019 result

Group Votes % Swing Quota
Liberal 591,860 40.9 +2.4 2.8639
Labor 399,639 27.6 -0.7 1.9338
Greens 170,871 11.8 +1.5 0.8268
One Nation 85,129 5.9 +1.9 0.4119
Australian Christians 23,983 1.7 +0.0 0.1160
Help End Marijuana Prohibition 24,404 1.7 +1.7 0.1181
United Australia Party 25,296 1.7 +1.8 0.1224
Nationals 20,336 1.4 -1.1 0.0984
Shooters, Fishers and Farmers 17,072 1.2 -0.7 0.0826
Western Australia Party 17,213 1.2 +1.2 0.0833
Animal Justice 14,130 1.0 +0.0 0.0684
Liberal Democrats 10,438 0.7 -0.1 0.0505
Conservative National Party 8,425 0.6 +0.6 0.0408
Pirate Party 8,526 0.6 +0.6 0.0413
Others 29,301 2.0

Preference flows
Three seats were won on primary votes: two for the Liberal Party and one for Labor. Three other candidates were over 80% of the way to a quota.

Fast forward to the last ten candidates competing for the final three seats:

  • Louise Pratt (ALP) – 0.9559 quotas
  • Matt O’Sullivan (LIB) – 0.8939
  • Jordon Steele-John (GRN) – 0.8883
  • Peter Georgiou (ON) – 0.4536
  • Nick Lethbridge (HEMP) – 0.1674
  • James McDonald (UAP) – 0.1386
  • Ellen Joubert (CHR) – 0.1378
  • Stuart Ostle (SFF) – 0.1160
  • Julie Matheson (WAP) – 0.1159
  • Nick Fardell (NAT) – 0.1156

Nationals preferences primarily flowed to the Liberal candidate:

  • Pratt (ALP) – 0.9619
  • O’Sullivan (LIB) – 0.9590
  • Steele-John (GRN) – 0.8948
  • Georgiou (ON) – 0.4595
  • Lethbridge (HEMP) – 0.1700
  • McDonald (UAP) – 0.1435
  • Joubert (CHR) – 0.1405
  • Ostle (SFF) – 0.1254
  • Matheson (WAP) – 0.1233

Preferences from the Western Australia Party scattered amongst the remaining candidates, with Labor and Liberal doing best:

  • Pratt (ALP) – 0.9856
  • O’Sullivan (LIB) – 0.9824
  • Steele-John (GRN) – 0.9144
  • Georgiou (ON) – 0.4685
  • Lethbridge (HEMP) – 0.1820
  • McDonald (UAP) – 0.1558
  • Joubert (CHR) – 0.1462
  • Ostle (SFF) – 0.1343

Shooters preferences elected O’Sullivan to the fourth seat:

  • O’Sullivan (LIB) – 1.0048
  • Pratt (ALP) – 0.9980
  • Steele-John (GRN) – 0.9234
  • Georgiou (ON) – 0.4940
  • Lethbridge (HEMP) – 0.2094
  • McDonald (UAP) – 0.1666
  • Joubert (CHR) – 0.1543

After distributing O’Sullivan’s small surplus, UAP preferences elected Pratt to the fifth seat:

  • Pratt (ALP) – 1.0216
  • Steele-John (GRN) – 0.9381
  • Georgiou (ON) – 0.5462
  • Lethbridge (HEMP) – 0.2187
  • McDonald (UAP) – 0.1966

The small flow of Pratt preferences favoured the Greens, and then UAP preferences most strongly flowed to One Nation, but still brought the Greens close to a majority:

  • Steele-John (GRN) – 0.9877
  • Georgiou (ON) – 0.6289
  • Lethbridge (HEMP) – 0.2411

At this point, Georgiou had no mathematical chance of victory, and Lethbridge’s preferences pushed Steele-John over the line:

  • Steele-John (GRN) – 1.0836
  • Georgiou (ON) – 0.6749

Candidates

  • Ungrouped
    • Ziggi Murphy (Independent)
    • Ashley Buckle (Independent)
    • Peter McDonald (Independent)
    • Yunous Vagh (Independent)
    • Bob Burdett (Independent)
    • Valentine Pegrum (Independent)

Assessment
The most likely result at the next election would be a status quo result of three Liberals, two Labor and one Green.

If there is a large swing to Labor like we saw in the 2021 state election, it could see Labor gain a seat off either the Liberal Party or the Greens, but it would require quite a large swing.

We could also see the Liberal vote drop far enough to lose their third seat to a minor party without being enough for Labor to gain the seat.

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147 COMMENTS

  1. @NP the requirement for a federal senator is a lot higher and also that was when they had different regions for the upper house also this is a state wide vote as is the new LC

  2. Nether Portal, id you don’t want to be called an Uncle Tom, then do not engage in genocide denial while trumpeting your ancestry as a shield against any claim of anti-Arab racism. That is most definitely identity politics.

    That’s nice that your family are Catholics, but I don’t see how that being different to Muslims is pertinent, given Palestinians have significant numbers of Christians as well as Muslims, as does the whole Arab Australian community. I’ve met Arab Christians who as fervently in favour of the Palestinian struggle for rights and dignity as any Arab Muslim. It’d be wrong to imply that all Christians have one stance and Muslims have another.

  3. Seems like a really dumb decision to me. Labor have been struggling to retain the Arab and Muslim voters they’ve traditionally taken for granted, not to mention small-l liberals and even just the basic Labor rank-and-file that haven’t been very impressed with Labor’s American lackeyism, indifference to the genocide and betrayal of the party’s own policy platform. I don’t see what Labor gains by spitting in their faces. Dickheads who think it’s antisemitic for Palestinians to have freedom and not be bombed into oblivion generally aren’t going to vote Labor anyway, no matter how desperately Labor panders to them.

  4. Labor are in such a hard position having to rely on Jewish and Muslim votes. Their stance of fence sitting has cost them with the Jewish community going to the libs and tr Muslim community the greens this could do well to sure up those Jewish votes as any lost Muslim votes will only come back on preferences

  5. With the Jewish vote, it’s a contest between Labor and the Libs. With the Muslim vote, it’s between Labor and the Greens. Since it is becoming increasingly impossible to appeal to the both of them, it’s better for Labor to sacrifice Wills since in all other seats the vote they would lose will flow back to them on preferences. Whereas if they lose Jewish votes to the Libs it will flip quite a few marginal seats to the Libs.

  6. I do think Peter Khalil’s position is dire in Wills now. I pointed before Peter Khalil is very pro American, AUKUS and the Greens can use this in their Campaign material. As FL stated, this conflict has also led to Anti-Americanism among Muslim communities around the world. In many outer suburbs we will probably see a shift from UAP to Greens/Socialists as well and in part this conflict has caused many Muslims to forget about the lockdowns and loose interest in LGBT issues etc.

  7. It’s not just the Greens. See Fowler 2022. And I don’t think Labor are at all happy or even moderately disappointed to lose to the Greens anyway. This decision seems much more likely to be motivated by the wounded egos in the party leadership than any sort of electoral strategy. It would have made much more sense to just let the story die or, since they ran on Palestinian recognition anyway, to just assent to the Greens motion. Either that or they’re worried about Zionists dumping money into Liberal electoral coffers.

  8. No Wills is not ”Lost”, You guys are assuming the seat of Wills is antisemitic. It is not. Antisemitism never succeeds and has no place in Australia.

    Now it is time to expel Payman. Labor can’t afford to lose the Jewish vote, and the action today helps them keep it. Had they defended Payman. they would lose a ton of seats to the coalition. Putting the PM’s seat in doubt in 2025.

    Woke Greens are not going to gain Wills, Cooper or any other seats with a high Islamic population.

  9. @ FL
    I think something i find ironic is that that the right flank of the Libs prior to October 7 often talked about seats like Calwell being their future especially the Sky After Dark mob see link below. However, more recently the same people have accused the Labor party of pandering to the same seats which until recently they were praising as not being “woke”. Today, the Libs call the Pro-Palestine protests “woke”.

    https://ipa.org.au/ipa-today/the-liberals-need-to-embrace-their-working-class-voters-to-win-over-the-outer-suburban-freedom-fighters

  10. @daniel t Grayndler is one of the safest seats in the country. The lib vote is so low it’s a alp v GRN contest on a high margin

  11. I guess it’s worth talking more about Jewish Australian demographics. Let’s assume for the sake of argument that the Jewish Australian vote is unquestionably aligned with the maximal, colonialist and essentially fascistic norm of Israeli politics- which in reality, it absolute is not. The vast majority of Australian Jews do not live in electorates that Labor has to worry about. In Sydney they’re mainly concentrated in Wentworth (safe teal/Liberal seat, Labor will never win it) Kingsford Smith (safe Labor, Liberals will never win it) and Bradfield (Labor will never win it). In Melbourne they’re mostly in Macnamara (recent years a Labor/Greens marginal), Goldstein (teal/Liberal) and Higgins (which now doesn’t exist). Out of all of these, Macnamara is really the only electorate Labor has any interest in pandering to an imagined all-powerful Zionist constituency. One seat in the country pales in comparison to what they stand to lose by a collapse in Arab and Muslim support.

  12. @Daniel T I generally agree with you sentiment but I still think Wills is a very good chance of falling over this issue.

  13. @Furtive Lawngnome Labor could be competitive in Wentworth when Spender retires, especially since the seat can only expand south and west. Labor probably would’ve won Wentworth in 07 if it weren’t for Malcolm’s personal vote

  14. Tomorrow’s July, I think I can start making predictions. This is first.

    I’d say Wills is a tossup. Brunswick votes heavily Greens but the really Muslim areas vote Labor. As Daniel T pointed out, even if many Muslims are dissatisfied with Labor’s stance over Gaza, the Greens are very progressive on issues like LGBT rights, and socially conservative Muslims typically oppose things like gay marriage and abortion (even though they aren’t debated anymore since they’re legal everywhere here unlike in the US where evangelical Christians and Republicans are pushing to restrict gay marriage in some states and abortion is now banned in many states due to the overturning of Roe vs Wade). Therefore, they wouldn’t go for the Greens because they’re too woke.

    If a Galloway-style candidate ran here, he or she might win or at least win some northern booths with high Muslim populations. Like a reverse teal: economically left-leaning (pro-trade union, etc) but socially conservative, with a pro-Palestinian position and reaching out to disaffected ethnic voters.

    On that assessment, if the Greens want to win this, they need to win big in places like Brunswick in the progressive south, whereas if Labor win they’ll need to hold on to their strongholds in the Muslim north.

  15. @John I think he meant the PM’s seat as in who becomes PM (i.e Albo or Dutton).

    @Scart Wentworth should be a Liberal seat if a moderate runs a good campaign. If Kellie Sloane (the state Liberal member for Vaucluse) retires from state politics and is open to moving to federal politics then she should seriously consider running for Wentworth. Same goes for James Griffin (Manly) in Warringah, etc.

  16. @ NP
    One point that i disagree with you about Muslims not voting for socially progressive candidates is that the Victorian Socialists did well at the last state election in working class ethnic seats with a large Muslim population such as Broadmeadows, Thomastown and Greenvale. The northern parts of Wills which has the most Muslims overlaps with Broadmeadows state electorate where Victorian Socialists already did well prior to October 7th. They actually fielded a Muslim candidate, Omar Hassan. The Victorian Socialists will preference Greens ahead of Labor. I expect the Socialists who are Pro-Palestine, LGBT, Abortion to do the heavy lifting in the north to help take out Peter Khalil.

  17. @Nimalan that is true (and the Greens-Victorian Socialists combined primary at the 2022 state election in Broadmeadows was 16.4%), I don’t think it’s enough to win. Those voters were likely more progressive Muslims or even non-Muslims with progressive views.

  18. Daniel T, do not speak on antisemitism or the motives of people posting here, because you clearly don’t even have the first clue about either of them. Spare us all the ignorant speculation.

  19. @ James
    Apologies, i will take the conversation onto the Wills thread now
    @ Nether Portal et al, i have posted on the Wills thread for us to continue the conversation there.

  20. Dan M, which Labor seats will flip from Jewish votes? I can only think of Macnamara. My understanding is that the Jewish Australian community is pretty heavily concentrated into a couple of seats, namely Wentworth and Macnamara, rather than being geographically widespread. Macnamara might fall to the Greens since it’s a true three way contest at present, but Wentworth has never been a Labor seat at any point since federation.

    And in general, if Labor has to choose between hanging onto either Muslim votes or Jewish votes, from a pure numbers perspective it makes more sense to hang onto the Muslim votes. After all, the census data shows there are over six times as many Muslim Australians as Jewish Australians. While many of them are concentrated in safe Labor seats, Labor found out in Fowler 2022 what happens when they start taking a community for granted and try to impose things they don’t like.

  21. @Nimalan – Don’t stress about it. I was just saying as it is now a conversation about Wills. I’m not a mod after all lol.

  22. @scart by the time spender retires the parliament will have likely expanded thereby shrinking Wentworth back to favourable boundaries for the libs.

    @np please explain that statement

  23. @Nether Portal Sharma was a moderate and he still lost convincingly because people there didn’t like ScoMo

  24. @scart sharma got lucky in my opinion and so did the libs. By losing to spender he got a Senate spot and may have lost his seat to labor on the new boundaries and having spender there safeguards Wentworth until the next expansion of parliament when the boindaries would shrink and become favourable to make it safe liberal again

  25. SCart I don’t think hoping for a future Labor victory in Wentworth based on predicted boundary changes and a 17 year old election result (when they *still* lost) makes any sense. Labor’s primary vote was less than 11% at the last election. Spender isn’t going anywhere any time soon. When she does she’ll likely have a successor groomed.

    Sorry but the idea that this decision was taken for strategic electoral reasons is ludicrous. The only sense I could conceivably believe it is that they’re worried about the Israeli lobby becoming what AIPAC is in the United States. Of course if they were really worried about that, they have more than enough political capital to head it off with the kind of broad campaign finance reform that isn’t practically possible for Biden and the Democrats. But that’s clearly not a tack they’re interested in taking. Richard Marles and Penny Wong have been pretty open about their motivations in the media. Penny Wong’s whinging about her cowardice in the face of the SSM debate was self-centered, self-serving nonsense – she delayed reform for years, subjected the LGBT community to a humiliating referendum for their rights and completely forfeited the initiative and the majority of the credit for reform to Turnbull and the Coalition – but it was pretty illuminating about her character and the general thinking in caucus. This has all the earmarks of ALP powerbrokers flexing muscle.

  26. I don’t understand why Muslims have been linked to a culture war over abortion upthread. It seems like a conflation of the US Evangelist Christian obsession over abortion with Muslims, simply because they’re both religious and often socially conservative. But Muslims in general are a lot less absolutist about abortion. For example, almost every Islamic scholarly view of abortion permits it in order to save the life of the mother, as the mother’s life is considered more important than that of a foetus, whereas many Evangelical Christians disagree with that notion. Some Islamic authorities even state abortion should be permitted for the first 120 days after conception, which is longer than almost every US state permits it.

    A 2022 poll in the US found that 56% of Muslims surveyed thought abortion should be legal in all or most cases, which makes them no more conservative in this regard than Catholics. So if Catholics aren’t susceptible to a culture war over abortion in Australia, I struggle to see why Muslims would be.

    Source for the poll – https://www.ispu.org/2022-abortion-data/

  27. @ Wilson
    See the Wills thread please. I also dont know why Muslims are susceptible to a culture war on Critical Race Theory, Welcome to country etc like White Working Class voters.

  28. @Wilson I somewhat agree but there’s general consensus that Australian Muslims (and British Muslims for the record) are more socially conservative than American Muslims. Whether statistics prove this or not is a different question, but the general assumption seems to be that that’s the case.

    In the same sense, Australian (and British) Christians are usually much less socially conservative than American Christians. Though in saying that Australia (and the UK) are less religious than the US in general, with less than half of Australians identifying as Christian.

  29. Anyway, let’s take this to the Wills thread as Nimalan said because we shouldn’t be getting too off-topic.

  30. Interestingly, Josh Burns while disagreeing with her stance has reached out her and called for no further punishment.

  31. This split makes a coalition win more workable. Afyer 2022 Labor and the greens controlled half of the votes now if the coalition were to win they could at least negotiate to pass legislation

  32. However, Senator Fatima is still left-wing and so is Lidia Thorpe so they will not vote to repeal climate legislation etc.

  33. @nimalan yea im aware of that but its only hypothetical as i doubt the coaltion can get the numbers to form govt this time around without those teal seats

  34. Labor and Greens will likely get 3 seats between in WA in 2025 Senate and the Coalition will win 3.

  35. @nimalan agreed. Payman is on borrowed time as well unless a spot opens up on the greens ticket in 2028

  36. For the Coalition to have a good senate they need to win a couple of 4-2 Right left split. Jacqui lambie is workable but she did vote for Climate legislation so is unlikely to repeal that. It is really good years such as 2004, 2013 where the Coalition has a chance of a right-leaning senate. 2019 was a very good year for the political right in QLD but the rest of the nation was more split.

    see the thread below

    https://www.tallyroom.com.au/51498

  37. @nimalan they wont get any 4-2 splits outside qld and maybe just maybe wa. there is still a chance they can unseat lambie though

  38. @NP couple days late. shes on borrowed time because labor wont get a 3rd spot in 2028 and she may be kicked out due to s44 due to her afghan citizenship. she was a token candidate as labor didnt think they would get a 3rd seat.

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