The button has finally been pressed on the Western Australian Legislative Council count (the Western Australian Electoral Commission pleads “a higher than anticipated number of voters preferencing above or below the line”), with the result related on X via Dylan Caporn of The West Australian: Labor 16, Liberal 10, Nationals two, Greens four, One Nation two, and one each for Australian Christians, Animal Justice and Legalise Cannabis.
We must await publication of the full count for details (which I’m attempting to get hold of via back channels), but other alternatives I had considered possible were an eleventh seat for the Liberals and a seat for Sophie Moermond, a former Legalise Cannabis member who ran at the head of a ticket of incumbents who had quit their existing parties. I had felt the latter a more likely outcome than a seat for Animal Justice, but I had perhaps underestimated how well they would do out of a substantial Greens surplus.
UPDATE: Full results and distribution of preferences here. At the final exclusion, Sophie Moermond fell out with 25,560, resulting in the election of One Nation’s second candidate on 33,997, Labor’s sixteenth on 28,640 and Animal Justice on 26,951. The eleventh Liberal in fact came nowhere near winning: Stop Pedophiles, Shooters Fishers and Farmers (who effectively disqualified themselves by identifying as SFFPWA on the ballot paper) and Sustainable Australia all survived to later stages of the count.
(Copied from the main thread)
Labor: 16 (-6)
Liberal: 10 (+3)
Greens: 4 (+3)
National: 2 (-1)
One Nation: 2 (+2)
Legalise Cannabis: 1 (-1)
Australian Christians: 1 (+1)
Animal Justice: 1 (+1)
So with 19 out of 37 MLC’s needed to pass legislation, WA Labor seems to have a workable crossbench.
Now ends the saga!
The Libs have more members in the upper house than they do in the lower house. What en extraordinary result.
The Libs had more members in the upper house last time too, it’s closer this time!
Labor will have to rely on Greens to reach the 19 votes to get legislation through, unless the Australian Christian or One Nation members are unexpectedly supportive.
This is what Adam Bandt has been wanting, let’s see how it plays out.
Anne Aly workers two young labor members knocked on the door just now dressed in red – was about local health facilities funded by labor etc.
Scare campaign coming state Greens balance of power followed by potential fed greens balance of power libs need to ram this home in WA.
BTsays
It’s not as if Labor has never needed cross bench support to get legislation through the upper house.
The landslide of 2021 delivered them a majority there for the first time!
Hence we now have a one-vote one-value election for seats there.
I’m sure the sky will not fall in.
Labor will find numerous ways to get 3 extra votes considering the Nationals, AJP, Legalise Cannabis, ON, Christians have 7 votes berween them, as well as Greens 4.
Should have a coalition with the Nationals and One Nation.
Assuming that an ALP MLC becomes president of the Legislative Council, this will mean they have 15 ordinary members and will need 4 votes to make a majority or 3 to rely on the deciding vote of the President in tied situations. 15 ALP and 4 Greens will make it a majority.
The full preference distribution is available as a spreadsheet upload on the official website. A bit hard to follow due to the large number of rows and columns. Seems that candidate Dawn was the last elected, candidate Moerland the last excluded.
Helpful summary of final quotas and order of elected members, but no full pref distribution on ABC site https://www.abc.net.au/news/elections/wa/2025/guide/lc-results
Thank god the TERF didn’t make it!
Can’t believe Anthony Spagnolo got up
Spagnolo got a winnable position so never really in doubt.
The Clan lives on.
I wonder how long the 2 One Nation MLCs will remain One Nation members.
Nice to see a fair and democratic result. The Legislative Assembly is too “Winner Takes All, IMHO.
Jimmy says:
Wednesday, April 16, 2025 at 8:54 pm
Thank god the TERF didn’t make it!
——
She was known more for her anti-vax position I think, than for any feminist positions. I doubt many voters would know who she was outside of her being denied entry to parliament for not being vaccinated. Possibly they might remember her for being Cannabis Party, which would also turn off a lot of voters.
Is this right – KOBRYN-COLETTI, R – LC votes = zero? Is this a record? Some other candidates at least seem to have managed (presumably) to have voted for themselves, even if no one else did.
Why did the ALP decide to have a ridiculous number of LC candidates filling up the ballot paper?
Fargo61 @ #18 Thursday, April 17th, 2025 – 10:05 am
It’s fairly common political practice in Australia to have around the same amount of candidates as seats up for election (so around 6 for standard Federal senate elections, etc.)
It’s safer to have a large number of spare candidates in case something happens to the election of the higher candidates, or a situation arises such as in the 2020 Irish election where Sinn Fein got more votes but ran out of candidates to be elected.
Really enjoyed the Poll Bludger’s coverage and good analysis.
No intention of leaving One Nation having been duly elected on Wednesday.
The WAEC did a good job of the count and the delay was not really unexpected.
Unfortunately there was pile on after the Election Day problems and clearly there were issues then.
Congratulations Philip Scott.