Fremantle – WA 2025

ALP 14.4% vs GRN

Incumbent MP
Simone McGurk, since 2013.

Geography
South-western Perth. The seat covers the centre of Fremantle, and stretches from East Fremantle to Port Coogee.

Redistribution
Fremantle gained part of East Fremantle from Bicton and lost the remainder of O’Connor to Bicton. Fremantle also lost Hamilton Hill to Bibra Lake and gained a small area near Port Coogee from Cockburn.

History
The seat of Fremantle has existed continuously since 1890. The seat was held by the ALP continuously from 1924 to 2009.

The seat was held from 1980 to 1990 by David Parker. He served as Deputy Premier briefly from 1988 to 1989 and resigned in 1990.

The 1990 by-election was won by Jim McGinty, despite a large swing against the Labor government.

McGinty served as Labor leader from 1994 to 1996, and as Attorney-General from 2001 to 2008.

After the Labor government lost power in 2008, McGinty resigned and triggered the 2009 Fremantle by-election.

The Greens ran Adele Carles, who had polled over 27% at the 2008 election. The ALP ran former Fremantle mayor Peter Tagliaferri.

The ALP’s primary vote stayed steady, but a 16% swing to the Greens on primary votes put Carles on a 44% primary vote, and gave her 54% of the two-candidate vote.

Carles’ time as a Greens MP didn’t last. In 2010 she admitted to an affair with the Treasurer, Troy Buswell. Her relationship with the Greens broke down, and she resigned as a Greens member. She served out the remainder of her term as an independent.

Labor’s Simone McGurk recaptured Fremantle in 2013, with Carles coming a distant fourth.

McGurk was easily re-elected in 2017 and 2021.

Candidates

Assessment
Fremantle is the only seat in Western Australia that featured a party outside of Labor, Liberal or Nationals in the top two, and thus the margin may not be expected to drop so much with a return in support for the Liberal Party. It is worth noting, however, that if the Labor vote drops and the Greens are competitive anywhere, it would be in Fremantle.

2021 result

Candidate Party Votes % Swing Redist
Simone McGurk Labor 14,646 57.3 +6.0 55.6
Liberty Cramer Greens 4,769 18.6 0.0 19.8
Miquela Riley Liberal 3,837 15.0 -5.5 16.5
Sam Wainwright Socialist Alliance 726 2.8 +0.8 2.6
W Schulze No Mandatory Vaccination 577 2.3 +2.3 2.0
Carl Schelling Liberal Democrats 492 1.9 +1.9 1.5
Rod Grljusich Independent 318 1.2 +1.2 1.0
Janetia Knapp Western Australia Party 216 0.8 +0.2 0.7
Others 0.4
Informal 900 3.4

2021 two-candidate-preferred result

Candidate Party Votes % Redist
Simone McGurk Labor 16,800 65.7 64.4
Liberty Cramer Greens 8,753 34.3 35.6

Booth breakdown

Polling places have been split into two parts: north and south.

Labor’s two-candidate-preferred margin was slightly stronger in the north than the south.

The Greens polled much better in the north than the south.

Voter group LIB prim GRN prim ALP 2CP Total votes % of votes
North 14.5 28.0 60.9 4,250 18.4
South 12.0 24.0 60.5 3,629 15.7
Pre-poll 18.0 16.2 66.8 9,680 41.9
Other votes 18.4 17.1 67.9 5,551 24.0

Election results in Fremantle at the 2021 WA state election
Toggle between two-candidate-preferred votes and primary votes for Labor, the Greens and the Liberal Party.

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15 COMMENTS

  3. Fed figures -> state seat of Fremantle

    Lib: 17.7
    ALP: 38.6
    GRN: 31.5
    OTH: 12.2

    Probably the Greens best chance at winning a seat in WA. Unlike the fed seat, this seat stays purely inner city. Seems people in here are finally forgetting about Adele Carles. I expect Fremantle to have the biggest swing to the Greens.

  4. The West Australian has reported this week that a teal candidate may stand here.

    https://voicesforfremantle.org/

    Fremantle would seem more like a Labor-Greens contest so a teal would probably not likely get elected though may serve to pinch more votes off Labor and Liberal and assist the Green campaign here. The local MP seems fairly well liked so expecting a narrow Labor hold but this seat would be up for grabs and probably be picked up by the Greens as soon as the incumbent vacates you would think.

  5. @Malcolm a teal would only do well in East Fremantle which is a Liberal booth. But it’s good that the teals have FINALLY decided to not just target Coalition seats and actually go for Labor seats. Somewhere like Coogee in NSW would be teal heartland.

  6. Actually a teal would do well in that they would attract the liberal and greens vote if they managed to get to second and would only need to strip some Labor voters to do so. However I don’t think the Labor is that unpopular ueyt maybe in 2029 it may be possible

  7. Yeah Nether Portal I’d expect a teal to do well in East Fremantle being a fairly affluent area, not so much in other booths. I’d like to see one stand even as a bit of a test run to see how well they fair in different areas of the seat and how their vote distributes to other candidates.

  8. https://heraldonlinejournal.com/2025/01/10/indis-pick-hulett-for-freo/

    Old news now but Kate Hulett is officially running as the ‘voices of Fremantle’ independent.

    This could be interesting – I do wonder if a candidate such as this has a better chance of taking this seat from Labor than the Greens as as she seems suited to picking up preferences from both the Greens and the WA liberals.

    Would of course depend on whether she makes the two candidate preferred count.

  10. She might be better off running in the federal seat after she likely fails here that has a much weaker primary vote and she would likely topple Josh Wilson with combined preferences.

  11. The “Voices of Fremantle” group does not use the teal colour or the word “teal”, probably because Fremantle is not a typical teal electorate. Considering the high Greens vote in the electorate, a successful independent needs to attract favourable Greens preferences over Labor, whch means any independent who wants to win here needs to be more socially and economically progressive than Labor, similar to Andrew Wilkie. An independent here will attract votes from Labor, Liberal and the Greens, but mostly Labor and Liberal. Since the Labor primary vote is so high, I don’t think an independent or the Greens will have a chance here until the incumbent Labor MP retires.

  13. This is my territory and have seen lots of Kate Hulett placards up on businesses specially around High St where most business are family and locally owned. Kate Hulett has opened an office on High St in a very prominent location. Kate Hulett seems like how a Greens candidate, has a Ceasefire sign up on business and generally campaigns on environmental issues.

    So she will likely attract some primary vote off the Greens, but will not in my opinion outpoll Greens on primary. There will also be a massive correction swing against Labor here and generally the sentiment is slowing turning against Labor in Fremantle but i can not see them losing in March. Long term though, this seat will be a lot more vulnerable than the margin suggests.

  14. Thanks Ben for always interesting information. May I suggest that a Community Independent be called that rather than merely Independent. Murdoch and the duopoly love calling the Community Independents ‘teals’ which is, of course, a nonsense. An Independent endorsed by a Voices group from the community is a very different thing to a random Independent who who runs on ego rather than community endorsement. I suspect Kate Hulett, like Community Independents elsewhere, has a far better chance than generally accepted as people’s trust in the duopoly continues to be eroded.

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