Western Australia goes all-in on the red – and it can provide a Labor majority government | Australian election 2022

It wasn’t exactly the bloody bath that the Liberal Party endured in the Western Australian election in 2021, but a huge 10.2% of Labor fluctuations proved crucial to the coalition’s defeat in the federal election.

The “red wave” in the west was the biggest fluctuation at the national level and could provide Labor with a majority in parliament.

“When Labor gets into the majority government, it’s because of Western Australia,” said ABC analyst Anthony Green.

Independent Green and Tea parties made great strides elsewhere on Saturday night, but the WA federal result was reminiscent of the March 2021 state election. The former safe places of the Liberals were again destroyed.

Pierce Christian Porter’s place went to Labor’s Tracy Roberts, and Indigenous Affairs Minister Key Wyatt lost Hesluck to Tanya Lawrence. Swan also went from hand to hand with 12% fluctuation to Labor MP Zaneta Mascarenhas.

More surprisingly, Public Service Minister Ben Morton seems to be losing his wealthy electorate in the southern suburbs of Tanghi, which embraces the Swan River. 12% of the fluctuations were made by Labor MP Sam Lim, a former dolphin trainer who speaks 10 languages.

Perhaps the most embarrassing result of the Liberals in the WA took place at Julie Bishop’s former location in Curtin, centered in the “golden triangle” of rich coastal suburbs in western Perth. Here, incumbent President Celia Hammond was replaced by independent Kate Cheney with a move away from the Liberals by 16.8%.

Cheney was one of the independents who along with the Greens liked it an unforgettable night in a number of urban electorate across the country.

The WA was the only state where this uprising was also accompanied by a significant turn to work.

“Western Australia has behaved very differently than the rest of the country,” Green said.

This is partly because during the Covid WA pandemic it was very different from Eastern Australia.

For two years, the state was guarded by Labor Prime Minister Mark McGowan, whose tough border prevented a pandemic, and Morrison criticized the position of zero COVID-19 and compared Western Australians to A cartoon of the Crudz family living in caves.

Prime Minister too initially supported the resignation of Clive Palmer against the brutal closure of the border by McGowan, which was not popular.

Porter, former Attorney General, did not convince Pierce on Saturday after in March 2021 he called himself a man at the heart of ABC history, which reported allegations of rape in 1988 of an unnamed cabinet minister by a woman who has since died.

Porter flatly denied the allegations and took defamatory action, which was later dropped.

Political analyst at the University of Notre Dame Martin Drum said the Liberal brand in WA is “on the nose”.

“We are talking about a government that is perceived here as having forgotten the WA,” Drum said.

“It is perceived that they are [the Morrison government] supported Clive Palmer in lowering the borders, as he called us “cavemen” and went to war with the very popular prime minister. “

Labor’s campaign announcements of intense rotation in the state targeted Morrison for siding with Palmer in his attempt to break the WA’s tough line.

WA Liberal Sen. Michael Cash admitted that Morrison’s early support for Palmer’s call for a hard WA border bounced back at a party Saturday night.

Prior to this election, WA Liberals held 10 of the 15 federal seats, while Labor had only five.

Now the situation has turned, and Labor is on track for four of them, cutting the Liberals to five seats in 2022.

“The challenges were very unique to Western Australia in terms of … how we handled Covid, the closed border and the popularity of Prime Minister McGowan,” Cash told The West Australian.

McGowan’s fight against the pandemic has made him one of the country’s most popular prime ministers.

“The Liberals have been boxed since they tried to support a Commonwealth Supreme Court lawsuit against Palmer, as well as an early call to demolish the border, and they have been struggling ever since to recover,” Drum said.