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.