Impressive result for socialists in WA council elections
The WA Socialists achieved a solid result in their first electoral foray—into local council elections, which were completed on 18 October. Despite launching only in June this year, the party ran ten candidates across eight local councils, with grassroots campaigns concentrated in Bayswater, Canning and Fremantle.
In Bayswater’s South ward, teacher Lewis Todman finished second with 15.8 percent of first preference votes. Also finishing second was nurse Rachel Goldsbrough in Canning’s Mason ward, with 24 percent. Finally, Nick Everett—longtime socialist and secretary of Friends of Palestine WA—finished third in Fremantle’s East ward with 19.7 percent of the vote.
Among them, these campaigns mobilised more than 100 volunteers, many of whom were on the hustings for the first time. Together they knocked on 18,000 doors and spent countless hours getting the word out to voters. The message was straightforward: residents deserve a council that will put the interests of people ahead of the profits of developers and big business.
This means, among other things, that councils should use their power to tackle the cost of living and housing crises head on. WA Socialists candidates argued for expanding or in some cases setting up council-run services, ranging from child care to aged care. Candidates also called for increasing council rates on vacant homes and for increased investment in community spaces.
Over the course of the campaign, candidates also took up the big political issues. In Cockburn and Fremantle, we argued against the transformation of Perth’s southwestern suburbs into a hub for the AUKUS alliance. And in every ward, WA Socialists candidates argued for local governments to take up the issue of the genocide in Gaza.
This message found an audience beyond those reached by our volunteers. With little more than a candidate statement sent out to voters along with their ballots, WA Socialists candidate Zoe Stevens won 17.7 percent of first preference votes in Armadale’s River ward. In Cockburn, where the field was heavily contested, Grace Redfern finished fourth out of eight with 10.1 percent of first preferences. With most other WA Socialists candidates winning between 7 and 10 percent of the vote in similar circumstances, it’s clear there’s an audience for socialist politics in WA.
We can’t be content, though, with a couple of thousand people reading our policy and voting for us. We need more active socialists to keep up the fight for all the things we argued for in this election and to continue to establish WA Socialists as a radical left alternative to the political mainstream.
