1989 Western Australian state election

1989 Western Australian state election

← 1986 4 February 1989 (1989-02-04) 1993 →
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 20 6 Seat change 1 1 Popular vote 341,931 344,524 37,075 Percentage 42.46% 42.79% 4.60% Swing 10.54 1.47 0.89 TPP 47.62% 52.38% TPP swing 6.50 6.50
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.

This was the first election in WA contested by the Australian Greens Party.