Electoral district of Kalgoorlie

Kalgoorlie Western Australia—Legislative Assembly
Location of Kalgoorlie (dark green) in Western Australia
State	Western Australia
Dates current	1901–present
MP	Kyran O'Donnell
Party	Liberal
Namesake	Kalgoorlie
Electors	20,024 (2017)
Area	555,448 km2 (214,459.7 sq mi)
Demographic	Mining and Pastoral

Kalgoorlie is an electoral district of the Legislative Assembly in the Australian state of Western Australia.

The district includes not only the town of Kalgoorlie, but significant parts of the outback in central and eastern Western Australia.

Long a Labor stronghold, the district was lost to the Liberal Party at the 2001 state election. The new Liberal member, Matt Birney, was re-elected at the 2005 state election but the district has changed hands at every election since then.

The district of Kalgoorlie was first created for the 1901 state election and has continued to exist as an electorate ever since. Over its first 100 years it was always represented by the Labor Party with the exception of two interruptions between 1905 and 1911 and 1921 and 1923. For most of the time after 1923, it was a reasonably safe Labor seat.

However, it became far less safe for Labor due to demographic changes in Kalgoorlie in the 1990s. Labor lost the seat in 2001 when Liberal Party candidate Matt Birney defeated incumbent MP Megan Anwyl at the 2001 state election. Oddly, this was also an election that brought Labor into government. Indeed, Anwyl was the only Labor MP to lose her seat at that election. However, as a measure of how the ground had shifted from under Labor, Anwyl only led Birney by eight votes on the first count, and lost when One Nation preferences flowed overwhelmingly to Birney.