Legislative Council – WA 2025

• History
• Electoral system
• Sitting MLCs
• 2021 result
• Candidates
• Assessment

History
Prior to the 1989 election, the Legislative Council was elected from a series of provinces. Each province was represented by two members serving overlapping six-year terms with just one seat filled at each election.

As of 1989, the electoral system was changed to have members elected by six regions: three in metropolitan Perth and three in the remainder of the state. Three of the regions elected seven members, with the other three electing five, for a total of 34. Despite the malapportionment, this was the first proportional feature of Western Australia’s electoral system.

The first proportional upper house election in 1989 saw no minor parties elected, but the Greens won their first seat in 1993. In 1996, two Democrats and three Greens won seats.

In 2001, when Labor returned to power, the Legislative Council featured five Greens and three members of One Nation (at least for a short period).

Both houses of Western Australia’s parliament were significantly malapportioned at the time, and it was a priority of the new Labor government to introduce “one vote one value” principles. While Assembly boundaries were changed to eliminate most malapportionment, the upper house continued to be severely malapportioned, but now with all six regions electing six members for an expanded total of 36 seats, with legislation passed after the 2005 election before the new Council took office.

Just two crossbenchers were elected in 2005, both Greens.

The Liberal Party took power in 2008 in alliance with the Nationals, and the two parties between them held an upper house majority. Four Greens were elected to the crossbench.

In 2013 there was a further shift to the right, with the first Shooters, Fishers and Farmers win and an extra Liberal, while the Greens lost two seats.

In 2017, Labor came back to power with a huge lower house majority, but could only manage half the seats between themselves and four Greens. This Council had the biggest crossbench, with one Liberal Democrat, a Shooter, three One Nation and the four Greens.

The 2021 election was an enormous landslide to Labor, and it was enough to give them a one-party majority in a chamber both designed to favour conservative rural interests and to make it hard for any party to win control. Legalise Cannabis won two seats, with the Greens reduced to one seat. Daylight Saving Party won their first seat on one of the lowest vote shares ever to win under group ticket voting, which was the final straw demonstrating the need for reform.

With Labor holding 22 out of 36 seats, they were able to pass legislation to restructure the upper house with ease, abolishing the regions and group voting tickets.

Electoral system
The Western Australian Legislative Council is elected using a system of proportional representation, with all MLCs elected to represent the entire state, as of 2025. From 1989 until 2021, MLCs represented one of six regions, but those regions will no longer be used as of 2025.

There will be 37 members of the new Legislative Council, up from the existing 36. With such a large number of members elected as a single electorate, the quota is very low at 2.63%.

The Legislative Council elected in 2021 was severely malapportioned. Roughly three quarters of the state’s population lives in the metropolitan region, but this area only elected half (18) of the seats in the Council. This produced a severe imbalance in favour of conservative parties like the Liberals and Nationals, but also One Nation and the Shooters, Fishers and Farmers.

By electing the entire chamber as a single electorate, it ensures that votes all have equal value, and the question of regional malapportionment becomes irrelevant.

Up to the 2021 election, the upper house was elected with a ‘group ticket voting’ system similar to that used in the Senate up until 2013. This led to a situation where many seats were won by minor parties, some of whom won a very small vote. Often those minor parties won more seats than much larger parties. At the 2021 election, Legalise Cannabis won two seats on less than a third of the vote of the Greens, who won just one seat. Famously the Daylight Saving Party won a seat on just 0.24% of the vote, and with only 0.2% of the vote in the region where they managed to win one of six seats.

Prior to this election, the system has been reformed to abolish ticket voting. Under the current system, voters can vote ‘above the line’, but their vote will only flow to candidates of parties who have directly received a preference from that voter.

This will prevent parties from snowballing preferences from a really small vote to overtake other parties with much higher votes. The electoral system will be similar to those used to elect the Senate, the New South Wales Legislative Council and the South Australian Legislative Council.

The new electoral system has eliminated the influence of group voting tickets and malapportionment, but the number of members elected in a single electorate will also make a significant change to the voting system.

The closest comparison is the New South Wales upper house, which elects 21 members at a time, with a quota of 4.55%.

The new Western Australian upper house will have a quota of 2.63%.

The first thing is that most seats will be decided without the influence of preferences – in the case of the NSW Legislative Council, no more than one seat has gone to someone who wasn’t ranked in the first 21 on primary votes.

Most seats will be decided on full quotas in a way that has an easy-to-understand relationship between vote share and seat count.

The last few seats will then be decided by a preference count. A party will likely need about half a quota to be competitive for one of these seats.

Because the quota is just 2.63%, and half a quota will be enough to be competitive for a seat, small minor parties can each win a single seat, while Labor, Liberal, the Greens and Nationals should be able to win multiple seats.

Sitting MLCs

¹Ben Dawkins was appointed on 20 March 2023 to replace Alannah MacTiernan, who resigned on 10 February 2023. Dawkins was suspended from the ALP prior to taking up his seat, and subsequently expelled, so has only sat as an independent.
²Louise Kingston was appointed on 19 September 2023 to replace James Hayward, who had lost his seat after being convicted of a crime with a maximum sentence of over five years. Kingston resigned from the Nationals in June 2024 after being preselected for the fifth spot on the Nationals ticket for the 2025 election.
³Sophia Moermond was elected as a member of Legalise Cannabis, but resigned from the party in May 2024.

2021 result

The 2021 election was an extremely strong one for Labor, and even in the upper house – a proportional chamber which makes it hard for a party to win a majority, and one malapportioned to favour Labor’s opponents – Labor was able to easily win a majority.

Labor won 22 out of 36 seats, with 4 seats in the three metro regions and Mining and Pastoral, as well as 3 out of six in the South West and Agricultural regions.

The Legalise Cannabis party did well, winning two seats with good preference flows. The Greens suffered a 2.2% swing, and were reduced to just one seat.

The Daylight Saving Party won a seat off 0.24% statewide, and only 0.2% in the Mining and Pastoral region.

Retirements
Eight members of the Legislative Council have announced that they will retire at the upcoming election: Labor members Sue Ellery, Martin Pritchard, Sally Talbot and Darren West; Liberal members Peter Collier and Donna Faragher; and Nationals members Martin Aldridge and Colin de Grussa.

Candidates

• Labor
  1. Jackie Jarvis
  2. Matthew Swinbourn
  3. Stephen Dawson
  4. Kate Doust
  5. Pierre Yang
  6. Samantha Rowe
  7. Alanna Clohesy
  8. Ayor Makur Chuot
  9. Andrew O’Donnell
  10. Katrina Stratton
  11. Lauren Cayoun
  12. Klara Andric
  13. Parwinder Kaur
  14. Sandra Carr
  15. Dan Caddy
  16. Klasey Hirst
  17. Peter Foster
  18. Mat Dixon
  19. Lorna Harper
  20. Rosetta Sahanna
  21. Henny Smith
  22. Shelley Payne
  23. Eloyise Braskic

• Liberal
  1. Simon Ehrenfeld
  2. Nick Goiran
  3. Steve Thomas
  4. Phil Twiss
  5. Steve Martin
  6. Neil Thomson
  7. Tjorn Sibma
  8. Michelle Hofmann
  9. Michelle Boylan
  10. Anthony Spagnolo
  11. Kathryn Jackson
  12. Dean Wicken
  13. Amanda-Sue Markham
  14. Ka-Ren Chew
  15. Xavier Garbin
  16. Suzanne Migdale
  17. Randall Starling
  18. Kyran O’Donnell
  19. Gabi Ghasseb

• Greens
  1. Brad Pettitt
  2. Sophie McNeill
  3. Tim Clifford
  4. Jess Beckerling
  5. Diane Evers
  6. Clint Uink

• Nationals
  1. Julie Freeman
  2. Rob Horstman
  3. Julie Kirby
  4. Heidi Tempra
  5. Ben Simpkins

• Legalise Cannabis
  1. Brian Walker
  2. Melissa D’Ath

• One Nation
  1. Rod Caddies
  2. Phil Scott

• Australian Christians
  1. Maryka Groenewald
  2. Mike Crichton
• Louise Kingston (Independent)
• Sophia Moermond (Independent)
• Wilson Tucker (Independent)

Assessment
This election will be far simpler than would have happened under the old electoral system.

I expect at least 30 seats will be decided on full quotas and will mostly be distributed to Labor, Liberal, Nationals and Greens. The remaining seats will be subject to a preference count, but most of those seats will end up going to the parties who are leading on the primary vote count.

Labor polled almost 23 quotas in 2021, but that won’t happen again in 2025. They would only be able to retain their majority if they poll close to a majority of the primary vote, which is very unlikely.

The Liberal Party should recover some seats. The Nationals will likely see losses due to the end of malapportionment. They should win one safe seat and can win a second in a good year.

The Greens would have won 2-3 seats on their 2021 result, but would have won three seats comfortably on their 2013 and 2017 votes. Their result in 2008 would have been enough to win four. The Greens would have to do very well to win more than four.

A vote of roughly 1.5% is probably enough for a small party to win a seat. Legalise Cannabis and the Australian Christians both reached this threshold in 2021, but other parties may emerge and compete for those final seats.

Results of the 2021 WA Legislative Council election for the five highest-polling parties

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