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)
- Josh Last (Socialist Alliance)
- 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.
The most interesting part of the seat is the north is established, green leafy inner city suburbia, while the south is mortgage belt outer suburbia, easily shown by the Green vote. The borders of this seat will probably stop the Greens being a real force, a friendly Fremantle would include the west part of Tangney until the Kwinana freeway instead.
Will see libs and greens gain from Labor bleed, but nothing too intense, this is a Labor seat through and through until either a massive redistribution or the Greens start gaining in outer suburbia.
The Greens in Fremantle are a rabble – the Greens council killed the city I grew up in, and this will not be forgotten quickly.
I can the Greens going in the top two here.
Possibly but unless the Labor gets knocked out of the 2CP the Greens cannot win.
Agree Nimalan,
The Greens won’t win here unless Labor didn’t something seriously wrong and the Liberals directed their preferences to them.
@ SpaceFish
Correct and also a lot of areas especially more inland are suburban compared to the trendy parts of Fremantle which is why this seat voted No to the Voice eventhough some booths in Fremantle itself had a 75% Yes vote. This is one seat the Libs cannot gain they did not even win it in 1975.
If the Greens ever wanted to win this seat, they’d need to win the state level one first!
If Juliet fails to win the state seat what are the chances she runs here. Also anyone got any info on the Ind who are running one is listed as a party simply noted (SA)
Kate Hulett looks to have very narrowly missed out on the state seat. A seat with the same name in the same area, barring section 44 issues it would make a lot of sense for her to run again.
Barring that, with a campaign that can pick up crossover Liberal votes and preferences, easy ALP retain. Greens aren’t even particularly competitive in the “base” area (and it should be alarming to the party that the momentum went to Hulett instead)
@john agreed the libs should absolutely hold labor over the barrel as theyre trying to keep Chaney in office in Curtin. libs should preference Hulett unless labor horse trades.
in my opinion both Fremantle and South Perth will be subject to recounts and possibly formal requests of another due to the closeness
Your opinion based on what exactly? Hulett seems to be considerably underperforming on absents and postal and now is a few hundred behind with more to come. It’s not looking like that margin is going down, let alone tightening to the point of a couple dozen votes, which is what a recount requires. South Perth may have more potential to tighten but what is left are mostly absents, which are usually favourable to Labor. The fact that out of district prepolls are now included in absents may complicate that story but it’s still a little over 180 vote margin currently and that is most likely a lead that won’t be overturned.
she losing because of liberal preferences
This is an outer suburban electorate and a completely different profile from the state level. I think the electoral commission should consider a rename.
@Andrew, it’s a federation division, representing what is technically a different city to Perth. The AEC would need an extremely good reason to change the name.
If Kate Hulett doesn’t win the state seat, then the federal seat would be much harder to win.
First off, I believe fed Labor is perceived to be more left leaning on climate change than WA Labor. WA Labor is very pro-mining and pro-fossil fuels, especially gas.
Fremantle, the state seat, has gentrified over recent decades and is a left-wing, hipster, artsy enclave. a high proportion of people are high-income earners or white collar professionals or degree holders. It’s the sort of demographic that would favour teals.
The federal seat of Freo contains more middle-income and working-class suburbs both inland and to the south, in Freo LGA and in Cockburn LGA. Such areas don’t favour the Greens nor teals.
The Federal boundaries of Fremantle makes no sense to me. it’s more a Cockburn based seat rather than Fremantle.
The idea of Fremantle and Hilton being in the same electorate as Aubin Grove and Jandakot makes no sense. I think all those Suburbs north of South St including Bateman, Applecross, Bicton and Attadale should be been included as part of Fremantle in the latest redistribution. Those Suburbs have better transport links with Fremantle and definitely have better communities of interest.
In my opinion north Fremantle should be in Curtin as it is in cottesloe. Huelett would have easily won Fremantle with liberal preferences. So would the federal seat.
Labor is only gonna win with liberal preferences at both state and federal level vs a teal.
same with franklin
@Darth Vader
As arbitrary as the boundaries of North Fremantle and Mosman Park looks to be, the North Fremantle booth sticks out like a sore thumb in any Cottesloe 2pp map.
North Freo is also part of the City of Fremantle, which Mosman Park is not.
North Fremantle is Fremantle, while the WAEC refuses to cross the river, it would be silly to assume it has different interests to Fremantle.
I concur with the above comments. North Fremantle is a part of Fremantle LGA and has shared interests. Its voting patterns are way more aligned with Fremantle than Cottesloe.
Also, Fremantle is a federation seat and it’s unlikely the name will be axed. Kooyong is too and before the latest redistribution, it didn’t even contain the suburb of Kooyong.
Still the swan river serves as a natural boundary just like the yarra and Brisbane river and to a lesser extent the the rivers that run through Sydney and the outer suburbs. Regardless of its voting patterns doesn’t mean they can’t use the swan river as a blundary
North Fremantle has been included in the state district of Cottesloe since 1962. Back then with Mosman Park it formed a blue-collar ALP minority segment in otherwise Liberal Cottesloe but gentrification now makes it a better fit. Equally in federal distributions the LGA boundary has always been upheld.
Also the City of Cockburn has always been included in the federal seat of Fremantle. There isn’t much point in urging the distribution commissioners to somehow engineer a Green/teal seat by removing it.
Hulett is a green/left candidate, not a centrist. As such Liberal preferences were directed to the ALP ahead of her and the official Green.
@jeremy libs only prefernces them in exchange for labor preferences in 4 country seats over nats otherwise libs would have easily prefernces her to hurt labor
@patreon_57 – 100% agree on your sentiments over the boundaries of the Fremantle federal seat. It’s absolutely more of a Cockburn seat in comparison to a Fremantle seat. Adding into Bicton/Bateman area is definitely logical, but there are problems in boundaries that I feel preventway.
1. So theoretically you have a Fremantle electorate containing Fremantle, Kardinya, Bateman, Bicton, etc. The problem emerges when you have to draw Tangney and Burt
– The logical method is that Tangney shifts east into Thornlie and Maddington area, it’s not the best but at least the boundaries for the most part are reasonable and not too garish.
– Burt would thus become a Cockburn-Armadale seat.
Here’s a rough map on My Maps on what this configuration would look like. Obviously some tinkering needed but it gets the message across:
https://jmp.sh/QDUKnM71
@James, as someone who lives WA those maps in the link makes a lot more sense to me than the current boundaries. Tangney shifting eastwards into Thornlie and Maddington isn’t a step too far considering it already includes Canning Vale.
The current boundaries where Palmyra is in Bicton and Banjup in Fremantle seems crazy. I bet most people in Fremantle have never heard of Banjup.
Unfortunately the aec goes for slight tinkering over radical change. However an additional seat in wa could see it lose north Fremantle
@vitante Kooyong used to hence then name. Also I reckon the Fremantle federal name could be tweaked to be after the person on not the city. Unlike the state seat which would differentiate it.
It looks like labor have narrowly held Fremantle again thanks to liberal preferences. Let’s see what Hulett does in relation to the federal seat. If she were to run and she could poll enough to get over the greens into 3rd she would scoop up their preferences and then probably jump the libs so it would be up to the libs who wins the seat. As labor’s primary would be under 40% likely. And she could then run again in 2028 if she failed and then if she didn’t get that she’d would probably win the state seat in 2029
I must have missed this – why did the Liberals preference Labor over the independent in the state seat?
Is Hulett a quasi-Green or “more left than Labor” that would turn the Libs off?
@John, I don’t think the AEC has a motivation to change electorate names that also happen to be state electorate names. Most state capital cities have both state and federal electorates named after them as do Parramatta and Newcastle.
@Mark Mulcair Illegal environmental protests which the state government cracked down on were a big flashpoint in this seat. Hulett was supportive of them and thus that issue probably decided the Liberals’ preferences.
@mark and add a. They did it in exchange for labor preferences in Warren Blackwood Kalgoorlie mid west and Geraldton over the nats
@votante yes however that’s because that’s the cities they are centred around. The federal division of Fremantle however seems to be centred around cockburn as it has been pointed out.
Mark and Adda you are totally correct. Hulett is seen as to the left of Labor and I can assure all correspondents that that was a the deciding factor in the Liberal decision to recommend preferences against her.
@jeremy it was done via horsetrading
John, yes, you’re right that it is centred around Cockburn. Cockburn LGA is larger in size and population size than Fremantle LGA. The AEC prefers not to ditch federation electorate names unless there’s a really good reason.
Like I mentioned before, the AEC kept the name of Kooyong despite not having the suburb of Kooyong for some time. Only at the latest redistribution did the suburb go back to the electorate of Kooyong.
@Mark, the Independent candidate Kate Hulett was definitely more left wing than Labor. In any other year she could have very well been the Greens candidate. if you put forward her policies to people without the Independent label attached, 99% of people would have thought those were policies of a Greens candidate, ie her policies on Environment, Fracking in the Kimberley, Refugees, Gaza and housing were pretty identical to those of the Greens.
Kate Hulett is officially running as an independent for the federal seat of Fremantle and is vowing to oppose AUKUS if elected.
https://fremantleshippingnews.com.au/2025/03/24/and-now-get-ready-for-the-kate-for-canberra-campaign/
I imagine if Kate Hulett would have a chance here, while the seat is a lot less green inclined that the state seat of Fremantle it does have areas like North Freo, East Freo, Coolbellup which were pretty strong for greens/independents at the state election. I think making the final 2cp count is certainly plausible, I think it would be impossible to defeat labor without liberal preferences, liberals definitely came out worse after the last preference deal so I can imagine they might reconsider doing it again.
@votante and it was for precisely that reason i suggest Kooyong be renamed. Also it would be easy to just change fremantes namesake from being named after the City to being named after the man Captain Charles Fremantle who the city of Fremantle is named. Or i would even support Walyalup.
@Andrew well i said it didnt I. labors curse of winning the state state where they have a clear majority is they now are under threat of a much needed Federal Seat. labors only chance of holding it will e with liberal preferences and i doubt they ll give them away for free. the only seat in wa labor have to trade federally is Curtin.
@HUge i would argue it is impossible for Labor to win without them. She came close in the state seat with liberal preferences oing against her. Labors primary vote at a federal level is much weaker then McGurks. aLTHOUGH TH the lib primary is much stronger.
theoretically labor labor could lose out on the 2cp altogether and she would win against a lib candidate. there could be enough right wing vote to push the libs into the 2cp. it would depend on how badly the labor primary is hurt.
Hulett will probably do well in Fremantle itself but outside of that it’s probably unlikely to shake off Labor given that Labor has generally done well in that part of the world (Cockburn and surrounds) even during the 2013 landslide. I don’t see any big changes in Labor support outside of Fremantle and Josh Wilson is not Simone McGuirk who’s tied to the state’s industry-based economic development which costed her votes.
And the Liberals won’t get up in Fremantle they have never gotten up that much and Labor was always ahead of them since forever on primaries so even if it might become much more competitive, it should still be a solid Labor retain as opposed to the state seat.
@tommo while they will never win the seat unless people shift to Hulett and she makes the 2pp there is enough conservative vote for them to make th 2pp. labor will need to shift resources to defend this seat now as well as the other WA seats under threat. labor strondest part is Fremantle and Hulett will change that, 2013 means nothing since Josh Wilson was not the member at that time. 2022 was a particuarly good year for labor in WA and fremantle was no different the libs have usually polled enough vote to make the 2pp. so labor will need liberal prferences to win here i think against Hulett.
Also should point out that if Hulett is going to be anti-AUKUS then that will go down like a lead balloon in the southern part of the electorate because the federal Fremantle also contains Henderson which is where AUKUS will be built. It’s much more industrialised the further south you go and this won’t be well received as it could be perceived as an attack an jobs in the area. Could further consolidate the votes for Labor to make up for any deficits in Fremantle itself.
From experience, Fremantle the closest WA has to a “hippy town”, it’s a pretty left leaning, wealthy area. I frequently visited Jandakot, Cockburn Central and Success and let’s just say that they’re not exactly Greenie areas.
If Hulett barely lost the state seat of Fremantle which was just comprised of Fremantle itself, I doubt she’ll have a chance in the inner suburbs unless she’s really charismatic. It’s likely Labor will retain Fremantle and Liberals will preference Labor over Hulett mainly bc of ideological reasons.
Even if Hulett somehow wins Fremantle she’ll mainly side with Labor anyways, so it’d be more beneficial for Labor if Cheney retains Curtin just to deny the Liberals another seat to get an edge in negotiations for minority government.
This tit for tat deal wouldn’t benefit Federal Labor the same way it benefitted WA Labor. WA Labor exchanged seats that they were already going to lose (Warren Blackwood, Geraldton), never had (Mid-West) or were expecting to lose (Kalgoorlie) for Liberal preferences in a winnable seat to help save a state minister.
@Tommy Josh Wilson is anti AUKUS
Darth, I would agree with Tommo’s point that being anti AUKUS will help Josh Wilson in the contest against Kate Hulett. Simone McGurk as state MP being close to the resource sector and a right faction MP enabled Hulett to campaign strongly against her, something that would be much harder against a more progressive leaning Labor incumbent (Josh Wilson).
No one should underestimate ideological factors. Hulett’s anti-resource, anti-AUKUS views are despised by the Liberal Party and her defeat in state Fremantle was deeply satisfying. It wasn’t a “deal”.