ALP 16.9%
Incumbent MP
Josh Wilson, since 2016.
Geography
South-western Perth. The seat of Fremantle covers the City of Fremantle and the Town of East Fremantle, as well as most of the City of Cockburn and small parts of the City of Melville. Suburbs include Fremantle itself as well as Cockburn, Coolbellup, Success, Atwell, Jandakot, Spearwood, Coogee, Beaconsfield and Hamilton Hill.
Redistribution
Fremantle contracted slightly, losing Palmyra and part of Kardinya to Tangney.
Fremantle is an original federation electorate. After alternating between parties up to 1934, and since then has always been held by the ALP. From 1934 to 2007 it was held by a series of senior Labor figures.
Fremantle was won in 1901 by Elias Solomon, a Free Trader who had been in the Western Australian Legislative Assembly since 1892.
In 1903, Solomon was defeated by the ALP’s William Carpenter. Carpenter held the seat for one term, before losing in 1906. Carpenter went on to serve in Western Australian state politics.
Carpenter lost in 1906 to William Hedges, elected as the only representative of the Western Australian Party, a party formed from Anti-Socialists and Protectionists, but sat as an independent, before joining the new Commonwealth Liberal Party in 1909. He was re-elected in 1910 but lost in 1913.
He was replaced by the ALP’s Reginald Burchell. He left the ALP over the conscription split and was re-elected as a Nationalist MP, serving as Member for Fremantle until his retirement in 1922.
Fremantle was won in 1922 by independent candidate William Watson. Former Liberal MP Hedges was pushed into third place behind the ALP. Watson held the seat until his retirement in 1928, when the seat was won by the ALP’s John Curtin.
Curtin held the seat for one term, losing in 1931 to Watson, who had returned as the candidate for the United Australia Party. Curtin returned in 1934 after Watson again retired, and the ALP has held the seat ever since.
Curtin was elected leader of the Labor Party in 1935, and became Prime Minister in 1941, leading Australia through the Second World War. Curtin died in July 1945.
The 1945 Fremantle by-election was won by the ALP’s Kim Beazley. Beazley was a prominent figure in the federal ALP through the 1950s and 1960s, and served as Education Minister in the Whitlam government from 1972 to 1975. He retired from Parliament in 1977. His son is Kim Beazley Jr, who served as Leader of the ALP from 1996 to 2001 and from 2005 to 2007.
The younger Beazley contested the ALP preselection for Fremantle in 1977, but lost to John Dawkins, who had previously held the marginal seat of Tangney from 1974 to 1975.
Dawkins joined the Labor frontbench in 1980. He served in the Hawke cabinet from 1983, and was appointed Treasurer in the Keating government in 1991 after Keating replaced Bob Hawke. He served in the role until he resigned in December 1993 after facing opposition within Cabinet to his budget.
The 1994 Fremantle by-election was won by Carmen Lawrence. Lawrence had been a state MP in Western Australia since 1986, and had served as Australia’s first female Premier from 1990 until the ALP lost power in 1993.
Lawrence served as Minister for Health for the last two years of the Keating government. She served as a shadow minister in the Labor opposition from 1996 to 1997 and again from 2000 to 2002, having been forced to step down in 1997 due to allegations of perjury, for which she was later acquitted. She resigned from the frontbench in 2002 in protest at the party’s asylum seeker policy.
Lawrence was elected as the ALP’s first directly-elected National President in 2003, and served in the role in 2004. She retired from Parliament in 2007.
At the 2007 election, Fremantle was won by Labor’s Melissa Parke, a lawyer who worked for the United Nations from 1999 to 2007. Parke was re-elected in 2010 and 2013, and retired in 2016.
Labor’s Josh Wilson won Fremantle in 2016.
Wilson was forced to resign from parliament in early 2018 due to his late citizenship renunciation in 2016, but he was re-elected at the resulting by-election, and again in 2019 and 2022.
Assessment
Fremantle is a safe Labor seat, but it is worth watching the Greens vote in this seat – there is a chance they could break through into the top two.
| Candidate | Party | Votes | % | Swing | Redist |
| Josh Wilson | Labor | 43,111 | 44.0 | +6.0 | 44.1 |
| Bill Koul | Liberal | 23,749 | 24.2 | -10.8 | 24.1 |
| Felicity Townsend | Greens | 17,790 | 18.1 | +2.1 | 18.0 |
| William Edgar | One Nation | 3,060 | 3.1 | -0.7 | 3.2 |
| Ben Tilbury | Great Australian Party | 2,293 | 2.3 | +2.3 | 2.4 |
| Janetia Knapp | Western Australia Party | 2,248 | 2.3 | -0.3 | 2.3 |
| Stella Jinman | United Australia | 2,000 | 2.0 | +0.1 | 2.1 |
| Cathy Gavranich | Federation Party | 1,367 | 1.4 | +1.4 | 1.4 |
| Yan Loh | Liberal Democrats | 1,251 | 1.3 | +1.3 | 1.3 |
| Sam Wainwright | Socialist Alliance | 1,184 | 1.2 | +0.1 | 1.2 |
| Informal | 6,025 | 5.8 | +0.4 |
2022 two-party-preferred result
| Candidate | Party | Votes | % | Swing | Redist |
| Josh Wilson | Labor | 65,585 | 66.9 | +10.0 | 66.9 |
| Bill Koul | Liberal | 32,468 | 33.1 | -10.0 | 33.1 |
Booths have been divided into three areas: north, south-east and south-west.
Labor won a majority of the two-party-preferred vote in all three areas, ranging from 65% in the south-east and south-west to 72.7% in the north.
The Greens primary vote ranged from 14.4% in the south-east to 28.1% in the north.
| Voter group | GRN prim | ALP 2PP | Total votes | % of votes |
| South-East | 14.4 | 65.2 | 16,706 | 18.1 |
| North | 28.1 | 72.7 | 15,811 | 17.1 |
| South-West | 15.4 | 65.1 | 9,603 | 10.4 |
| Pre-poll | 16.2 | 66.4 | 31,804 | 34.4 |
| Other votes | 17.1 | 65.4 | 18,469 | 20.0 |
Election results in Fremantle at the 2022 federal election
Toggle between two-party-preferred votes and primary votes for Labor, the Liberal Party and the Greens.
I’d say 3/4 to 4/5 will
Labor could be at risk but Hulett may not even beat the Liberals.
Hulett got 25.6% on primary votes in a state seat that contained the most electorally Green and least Liberal parts of the federal seat of Freo. The federal seat has about 4 times more electors.
Once she gets above the greens it should be relatively easy to beat the liberals on green preferences. The libs didn’t even make 1/3 on the 2pp last time. I’m saying Wilson v Hulett on the 2cp
There’s some kind of blog post on this but switching preferences between Labor and Greens normally gets Liberal preference flow of around 65-35 in favour of whichever is on the ticket. So maybe about 30% of voters who copy the card. Significant but far from all of them
If you take a look at the 2010 election of adam bandt he received 80% of liberal preferences and labor lost that seat quite resounding with a 38% primary. 56-44. Josh Wilson’s primary at last election was 44% So if it drops to 40 you’d have to says he might be cooked.
Josh Wilson’s vote was inflated by the Mark McGowan factor. I think his primary dropping to around 35% is entirely possible.
If that happens he will lose
Bandt’s 2010 election is 15 years out of date by now – there’s much more recent contests and data on Liberal preferences between different HTVs and the figures I quoted are more representative.
@Adda
*Bandt’s 2010 election is 15 years out of date by now*
LP preferencing Bandt was viewed as cynical at the time, but he’s been a millstone around Labor’s neck ever since.
4 Elections down the track until Labor won a 1 seat majority, now the spectre of Bandt looms over another minority Labor Government.
@Tommo9: “That is assuming ALL Liberal voters will be preferencing Hulett, which I somehow doubt given that she’s to the left of Labor.” Think about Andrew Wilkie. Wilkie is also left of Labor. He even ran as a Greens candidate in the 2004 federal election for the NSW seat of Bennelong and in the 2007 federal election as a Senate candidate for Tasmania. Despite having run as a Greens candidate in Tasmania, Liberal preferences still heavily favoured him over Labor when he first contested Denison as an independent in 2010. When Andrew Wilkie was first elected as the MP for Denison (now Clark) in 2010, Liberal preferences flew 81.5% to him over Labor. Liberal preferences have consistently flew more than 75% to Wilkie over Labor at every election since. It is entirely possible for Liberal preferences to strongly favour Hulett over Labor, just like Liberal preferences strongly favour Wilkie over Labor.
@Adda: “So I find it difficult to see his vote falling far enough for a loss” Labor support returning to 2019 level would be enough for Labor to lose if Hulett could poll a primary vote similar to what she got at the state election. If Labor support returns to the 2019 level of 38%, and Hulett polled a primary vote similar to what she polled at the state election, say 25%, she only needs 67.6% of preferences to win, which should be easy to achieve given that both the Liberal Party and the Greens have recommened preferences to her over Labor. Wilkie got 69.7% of preferences in 2010. She probably won’t poll as well as she did at the state election, however with the help of both Liberal and Greens preferences the race could be fairly close.
Wilkie is an exceptional case and his election was notable precisely for how rare such an event of winning from his primary vote in 4th place was. As a candidate, he was quite different from Hulett too – he was not associated with disruptive protests which Hulett has attached herself to and instead mostly focussed on very widely popular causes in Denison like pokies reform.
The big assumption here is that Hulett can poll similarly to what she received to the state result. The state electorate covers not even a quarter of the electors in this division and it’s the most Green sections of this seat which can be seen on the map to have very different voting patterns to the rest of the booths. Hulett will need to find different ways to appeal to a much broader voting cohort which are thinking of different issues than environmental protests in Fremantle.
Adda, since Wilkie contested an election over 15 years ago it is hard to compare him against Kate Hulett. Whilst Hullett may be seen as a more disruptive figure, this is because today’s world and news environment is seen to be more fast paced and protests erupt spontaneously compared to the early 2000’s where movements were planned and organised.
Wilkie himself was known for being involved in several anti-Iraq war protests during his early days with the Greens.
The Iraq war was profoundly unpopular in Australia particularly by 2010. That established his credibility, rather than dividing the electorate. It certainly didn’t lose him any votes.
I agree that Wilkie isn’t a particularly good choice of comparison. 15 years is an eternity in politics and Hulett is better compared to other teal candidates of more recent years. But I do note that going that far back in itself highlights how extraordinary his victory was and by consequence the difficulty of breaking through for Hulett. Were it an easier matter, more recent examples would suffice.
I also specified “disruptive” protest for a reason. Specifically from this article https://archive.is/h812X:
“Ms Hulett’s campaign advisor Jesse Noakes was one of three activists fined last week, for trespass and criminal damage outside Woodside boss Meg O’Neill’s home in City Beach.”
Outside of Fremantle itself, most people in this electorate are probably relatively supportive of gas companies like Woodside and there might not be a lot of sympathy for illegal protest activity which breached someone’s home and caused damage.
I’m not saying that she can’t possibly win but being branded as a disruptive environmentalist would be harmful in getting broad appeal.
@Adda:
Hulett has broad appeal, compared to the other serious candidates, what she needs is some crossover from Labor/Greens, tactical voting by Liberals, and preferences fro Liberals and Greens, which she’s got.
Labor hasn’t pushed back on the idea of ‘counity based independents’ because it’s been hurting the Coalition parties, so far.
They’re likely to be hoist on their own petard here, perhaps in MacMahon too?
Albo was in Fremantle campaigning with Josh Wilson which means labor must be worried enough about this seat
After the State Election, i said the Independent candidate Kate Hulett doesn’t have a chance in Federal Fremantle. I have changed my mind. I now think she definitely does have a look chance, specially after Liberals decision to preference her.
There are a lot soft Labor voters in places like Spearwood, Hamilton Hill and Bibra Lake who would have not voted for Greens or Liberals but would mind voting for a viable Independent like Kate Hulett, even though policy wise she is identical to Greens.
I think she will finish 3rd on primary and overtake the Liberals on Greens preferences and than give Josh Wilson a good run for his money. I think Josh Wilson’s vote was inflated because of Mark McGowan’s insane popularity. I’m predicting Labor primary to drop to around 35% which will make Wilson vulnerable.
I have met Josh Wilson in person. He does seem like a genuinely nice guy but has -43 chrisma.
If his vote drops to 35% he will lose
If hulett wins here labor will have difficulty winning this back. Withput liberal preferences.
ABC’s now got this as a Labor retain.
Gotta give credit to Hulett for coming so close to winning Freo in both the state and federal elections, especially since both of them were ALP landslides.
Hulett exceeded my expectations. I wrote her off and thought Labor’s Josh Wilson would romp home. Imagine if it weren’t Labor landslide elections.
There are still around 8000 absent and declaration prepoll a to count but yea Wilson has likely won. Given the only party who preferences him above labor one nation has likely saved Josh Wilson.
Above hulett
You’d think hulett will give it another go in 2028 federally and will probably win
I thought Hulett would at best run Wilson a close race given the scale of the federal seat compared to the state seat but it seems that she was able to gain ground in some of the less ‘green’ suburban areas like Bibra Lake and Spearwood. What did it for Wilson was the big margins of Cockburn Central, Beeliar, Atwell and Success which are firmly outer suburban areas and favour Labor more than Hulett or the Greens.
Hulett could run in 2028 but not sure if she’ll have the same appeal or momentum to win given the political circumstances could be drastically different in 3 years time.
She’s a teal. Boele didn’t go quietly and basically ran for 3 years. And almost got gisele. The older a govt gets the more problems build up. Especially when you have the same party in govt at a state and federal level. It will be interesting to see the the 2cp of the prefernces. If onp had of prefernces hulett she probably would have won here. Same as how she only lost the state seat because the libs preferenced labor. Or maybe that was by design?
Conversely you’ve also got Teals like Alex Dyson and Caz Heise who’s come back but the incumbents were re-elected. As I said the conditions for this year might not be the same as 2028.
Agreed, Labor will almost certainly be in a worse position in 2028 than 2025, just by virtue of the fact that older governments lose popularity.
There’s no reason some of these ‘nearly’ seats can’t be won if Indys recontest.
Yea but teals in the country are different to teal sin the city.and they experienced a swing against them on their second try. Hulett will never know if she doesn’t at least try. Holmes a Court will keep them cashed up and it probably won’t be long before he tries his hand in Canberra where the Ind got 11% and maybe Perth. I’m sure he will be back in Franklin which may become more favourable to a teal after redistribution and if the greens don’t select someone with dual citizenship and labor’s vote drops off a bit.
@John I know you’re keen for Labor to lose seats but if we’re being realistic we can only really make predictions once we get well into the next parliamentary term. Right now any predictions will be pointless. I mean Andrew Constance contested Gilmore twice and almost got it on the first occasion but he lost badly the second time round with a swing to Labor, that’s despite everyone (yours truly included) saying that the Liberals will almost certainly win Gilmore. Also Werriwa had the same candidate twice but the same happened.
Now that could be because Labor had a huge swing towards them this time around but three years is a long time. Anything can happen is all I’m going to say.
Yes but there were unexpected circumstances that led to that.the libs have well and truly hit bottom. The swing in werriwa was next to nothing and is indicative that people weren’t overly satisfied with labor and the current member there. It wasn’t a rejection of Constance in my opinion but a rejection of the liberal brand, policies or lack of, trump, scare campaigns and effective vote buying.the libs will be back in 2028 probably on a slightly better result then 2022. Labor can be reduced to a small minority and the libs will try and replicate their success in Goldstein and Kooyong in Mackellar and Curtin. Though I think warringah island Wentworth are lost till the 2030s or when those teals retire whichever comes first. The greens will probably win wills. The coalition strategy was good as you saw neglible or low swings in outer surburban target seats. I’ll get together a list of target seats once it’s all been decided and the redistributions done.
@John Thanks for writing the Liberals press release. I’d like to see them come up with things that resonate with mainstream Australians before making those bold statements.