Western Australian state election, 1989

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4 February 1989 (1989-02-04)

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All 57 seats in the Western Australian Legislative Assembly
and all 34 seats to the Western Australian Legislative Council
29 Assembly seats were needed for a majority

	First party	Second party	Third party

Leader	Peter Dowding	Barry MacKinnon	Hendy Cowan
Party	Labor	Liberal	National
Leader since	25 February 1988	25 November 1986	1979
Leader's seat	Maylands	Jandakot	Merredin
Last election	32 seats	19 seats	6 seats
Seats won	31 seats	20 seats	6 seats
Seat change	1	1	0
Percentage	42.46%	42.79%	4.60%
Swing	10.54	1.47	0.89

Premier before election

Peter Dowding
Labor

Elected Premier

Peter Dowding
Labor

Elections were held in the state of Western Australia on 4 February 1989 to elect all 57 members to the Legislative Assembly and all 34 members to the Legislative Council. The Labor government, led by Premier Peter Dowding, won a third term in office against the Liberal Party, led by Opposition Leader Barry MacKinnon.

The result was a major swing against the Labor Party, coming in the wake of revelations of dealings between Government and business that came to be known as WA Inc. The redistribution that took place in 1988, based upon the Acts Amendment (Electoral Reform) Act 1987 which abolished several country and outer metropolitan electorates while creating new metropolitan ones, makes it difficult to assess how Labor would have performed on the old boundaries—while it lost four seats, it gained one Liberal-held seat and won several of the new seats, so in net terms, it only lost one seat despite the massive swing and the low two-party-preferred result.

Western Australian state election, 4 February 1989
Legislative Assembly
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