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.
- John Bird (Citizens Party)
- Kate Hulett (Independent)
- Josh Last (Socialist Alliance)
- Tait Marston (Liberal)
- Amy Warne (Greens)
- Josh Wilson (Labor)
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.
@yoh but shes anti AUKUS as well. as tommos point was her being anti aukus not him. agreed but the liberal vote is usually at least enough to keep them in the 2pp on primaries while that wasnt the case last election that can be attributed to the aberation in WA. the lib vote should recover and the right of centre vote will be enough to keep them in the 2pp. Kate Hulett has basically given herself free adertising in the federal seat from the state campaign. the correction will probably help the liberals remain in the race unless she is able to woo enough voters away or the Liberals run dead and/or vote tactically.
@lurking Labor having one less seat could also hurt them in any negotiations. It would would likely be political suicide for Chaney to side with Labor even more so if they have fewer seats. and the libs could help Hulett as retaliation and in order to deny Labor another seat.
At a state lvel labor preferenced Liberals in exchange for their preferences in Fremantle (a seat they couldnt win) the libs wont be giving labor them for free federally either. The liberals probably wuld have preferenced her iwithout them. They were preferencing them in seats the libs didnt currently control and labor tbh who while they thought they might lose thought their preferences wouldnt be distributed. The only seat their preferences mattered was Mid-west. a seat they could never win.
@jeremy josh wilson is of the same views. “my enemies enemy is my friend”. unseating a labor minister and denying them another vote (which doesnt matter) would have of been just as satisfying. they didnt do it for free in the state seat and they wont do it for free in the Federal seat. either way Chnaey will lose in my opinion
also this Fremantle contains the left leaning North Fremantle which has a very high Greens vote and the other IND clearly won.
https://www.waliberal.org.au/federal-candidate/tait-marston/
https://www.tallyroom.com.au/aus2025/fremantle2025/comment-page-2#comment-836165
My first comment here was about how the geography of the federal seat is not favourable for a teal independent candidate.
In addition, there could be tactical voting. The federal opposition holds a larger portion of seats and is more able to win government than the state opposition was. There was no risk in voting teal at the state election. Denying Labor a seat was not going to change the government and so voters felt they could lodge a protest vote. There was no way the Liberals would win under Mettam and the election winner was very predictable.
There’s mention that the teal is left-wing and so she might not be placed after Labor on the Liberal HTV card.
Last sentence should be that if she’s left-wing and Greens-like, she might be behind Labor on the Lib HTV card.
@votante Luke Wilson is also left wing. Libs won’t be doing him free favours
If Hulett gets Liberal preferences she has a chance. Liberals won’t be trying very hard here so I think the 3CP hurdle for her to overtake them will be around the 30% mark.
Basically the Liberals with their highly influential HTVs will get to decide the outcome here. I expect there to be some sort of preference deal brokered by Labor in exchange for some other seat
Although now I think about it there will be a substantial direct flow of preferences from Greens to Labor even if the Greens HTV recommends Hulett. So perhaps not enough of a threat to motivate Labor to preference against a Green or Teal somewhere else.
@blue the only seat labor have to bargain with is Curtin. Hulbert almost won the state seat against preferences
Tealish independent preferences (re: Casey, Caulfield, Boothby) often go more than 50% to the Greens in the 3CP – in the NT in Nightcliff this was over 70% iirc! a “teal” independent like this who is much more progressive than an average indie will probably give a really strong flow to the Greens. Greens can’t win here but I think if they stay above Hulett they could very well get 2nd.
The teal will draw votes from both labor and the greensno way the teal finishes below 3rd.
@John, you mean Josh Wilson?
I don’t recall HTV cards that well but I believe at past federal and state elections, Labor and Greens put teals as second or at least ahead of the Liberals. The Liberals put right-wing minor parties ahead of the teals and then Labor.
@votatn greens put teals second. im not sure about labor
The Liberals came third in two of the state seats within federal Fremantle. In state Fremantle, 53% of their preferences went to Kate Hulett, and in Bibra Lake 37% went to the Greens – both against the HTV card recommendation.
It’s equally true that at least a third of Green voters give their second preference direct to the ALP even when the Green HTV card places an Independent ahead of Labor. In State Fremantle when the Greens were excluded from the count 59% of preferences went to Hulett with 36% direct to the ALP. This counteracted the Liberal voters who ignored the HTV card.
In those country seat where the ALP finished behind National and Liberal, the Nats got about half the ALP preferences despite the ALP HTV card.
Looks like Kate Hulett might be in some trouble with her inherited UK citizenship. Apparently she only completed the paperwork for renunciation recently and given that the Home Office in the UK used to take ages in dealing with the citizenships of so many MPs previously (ironically, including Josh Wilson who had to resign and contest Super Saturday) in 2017-18, there’s a possibility that her renunciation might not be completed in time before the close of nomination.
If that falls through, it will be a safe Labor retain with no qualms whatsoever.
Tommy the actual words are to take all reasonable steps to renounce it. That’s why Fatima Payman is still in parliament despite being an Afghan citizen still
John, Tommo is arguing that in cases where it is easy to renounce citizenship (i.e. UK), and they tell you it takes a few months to process then it is short sighted to leave it to the last minute. Just like with getting a passport, you need to apply well in advance before any booked overseas trips.
Even the ‘last minute’ nomination argument may fall through as it did for Josh Wilson, because he unsuccessfully sought the Labor nomination/preselection but was called in just before the close of nominations due to the original candidate having to withdraw for personal reasons.
I do agree this whole ‘renounce citizenship’ rule is quite onerous and probably doesn’t need to exist in the modern era. Josh Wilson and Kate Hulett, who were not expected to run for Parliament until just prior to the election, should not be expected to have to renounce their citizenships in advance.
Still she has taken all reasonable steps. She was probably banking on winning the state seat and not contesting the federal seat.
If it was any electorate, I think there’s likely to be some justifiable empathy to go along with the fact that she may not have been fully aware of the requirements and haven’t put everything in in time, but given her contender is someone who’s fallen foul of Section 44 and has had to go through a by-election to win the seat back, I think to say that she didn’t know about it or wasn’t banking on it and only decided that it was ‘easy’ to run for the larger electorate federally before realising she had to renounce her citizenship by descent seems a bit…dodgy to say the least.
It may end up gp ok my to the high court for them to determine.