Elections were held in the

state State may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Literature * ''State Magazine'', a monthly magazine published by the U.S. Department of State * ''The State'' (newspaper), a daily newspaper in Columbia, South Carolina, United States * ''Our S ...

Western Australia Western Australia (commonly abbreviated as WA) is a state of Australia occupying the western percent of the land area of Australia excluding external territories. It is bounded by the Indian Ocean to the north and west, the Southern Ocean to th ...

on 4 February 1989 to elect all 57 members to the Legislative Assembly and all 34 members to the Legislative Council. The

Labor Labour or labor may refer to: * Childbirth, the delivery of a baby * Labour (human activity), or work ** Manual labour, physical work ** Wage labour, a socioeconomic relationship between a worker and an employer ** Organized labour and the la ...

government, led by Premier

Peter Dowding Peter McCallum Dowding SC (born 6 October 1943) is an Australian lawyer and former politician who served as the 24th Premier of Western Australia, from 25 February 1988 until his forced resignation on 12 February 1990. He was a member of parli ...

, won a third term in office against the

Liberal Party The Liberal Party is any of many political parties around the world. The meaning of ''liberal'' varies around the world, ranging from liberal conservatism on the right to social liberalism on the left. __TOC__ Active liberal parties This is a li ...

, led by

Opposition Leader The Leader of the Opposition is a title traditionally held by the leader of the largest political party not in government, typical in countries utilizing the parliamentary system form of government. The leader of the opposition is typically se ...

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 WA Inc was a political scandal in Western Australia. In the 1980s, the state government, which was led for much of the period by premier Brian Burke, engaged in business dealings with several prominent businessmen, including Alan Bond, Laurie ...

. 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. This was the first election in WA contested by the

Australian Greens Party The Australian Greens, commonly known as The Greens, are a confederation of Green state and territory political parties in Australia. As of the 2022 federal election, the Greens are the third largest political party in Australia by vote and th ...

Results

Legislative Assembly

Legislative Council

Seats changing parties

* A redistribution prior to the election had made the Labor-held seat of Warren notionally Liberal * Members listed in italics did not contest their seat at this election. * * figure is vs. National * ** figure is vs. Labor * *** figure is vs. Liberal

Post-election pendulum

References