Western Australia’s Liberal Party remains locked in a lengthy rebuilding process under new leader Basil Zempilas, with the most recent published state polling showing Labor holding a commanding 56-44 two-party-preferred lead, barely changed from the party’s landslide victory at the March 2025 election. The result underscores just how steep a climb the Liberals face in restoring themselves as a genuinely competitive political force in the state.
Zempilas took over the WA Liberal leadership after Libby Mettam resigned following the 2025 election defeat, citing a lack of support from her party room to continue in the role. His task, rebuilding a party reduced to a handful of lower house seats after consecutive landslide election losses, is widely regarded as one of the most difficult jobs in Australian state politics.
A Party Reduced to the Margins
The scale of the Liberal Party’s decline in Western Australia has been stark. Following the 2021 election, the party was reduced to just three lower house seats, an almost unprecedented collapse for a major party, before a modest recovery to seven seats at the 2025 election still left it only narrowly ahead of the National Party for official opposition status. The most recent polling data suggests little further movement has occurred in the months since, with Labor’s primary vote holding at a level that would translate into another overwhelming majority if an election were held today.
Premier Roger Cook continues to substantially outpoll Zempilas on preferred premier measures, according to the most recent published polling, reflecting both the strength of Labor’s position and the challenge facing any opposition leader attempting to build personal recognition and trust against an incumbent premier presiding over a strong state economy.
Why the Rebuild Is So Difficult
Political analysts point to several structural factors compounding the Liberal Party’s challenge in WA. The state’s resources-driven economy has continued to perform strongly under Labor, consistently delivering budget surpluses and low unemployment that make it difficult for an opposition to prosecute an economic mismanagement case against the government. At the same time, the sheer scale of the Liberal Party’s parliamentary depletion after consecutive landslide losses has left it with a thin bench of experienced MPs and shadow ministers, making it harder to build a credible, visible alternative government in the eyes of voters.
Zempilas, a former Perth Lord Mayor and media personality before entering state politics, brings a higher public profile than some previous WA Liberal leaders, a factor some strategists believe could help the party gradually rebuild recognition and support over a multi-year timeframe, even if a dramatic single-term turnaround remains highly unlikely given the scale of Labor’s current majority.
Where the Opposition Sees Opportunity
Despite the daunting overall numbers, WA Liberals have sought to identify specific areas of vulnerability for the government to prosecute in coming years, including cost-of-living pressures, government advertising spending, and concerns about public sector workforce growth and associated budget pressures. Minor party gains, including One Nation’s recent Secret Harbour by-election win, have also been cited by some Liberal strategists as evidence that voter discontent exists within the electorate, even if that discontent has so far tended to benefit minor parties rather than translating into Liberal support specifically.
The Long Road to 2029
With the next scheduled WA state election not due until March 2029, Zempilas and his shadow cabinet have time to attempt a genuine rebuild, but the current polling numbers suggest that task remains, at best, a multi-election project rather than something achievable in a single term. Whether the WA Liberals can replicate anything resembling the federal Coalition’s periodic swings back into competitiveness, or whether the state’s deep Labor dominance proves more structurally entrenched, is likely to become one of the more closely watched storylines in Australian state politics over the coming years.
Lessons From the Federal Coalition’s Recovery
Some WA Liberal strategists have pointed to the federal Coalition’s history of recovering from heavy election defeats over multiple terms as a template of sorts, arguing that sustained, patient rebuilding focused on candidate quality, local campaigning and policy development tends to produce better long-term results than attempting a dramatic, rapid turnaround that risks overpromising and underdelivering. Others within the party have pushed for a more assertive, higher-profile opposition strategy, arguing that a longer wait-and-rebuild approach risks ceding the political contest to minor parties rather than restoring the Liberals as the primary alternative to Labor.
How that internal debate over strategy and pace plays out within the WA Liberal party room is likely to shape not just Zempilas’s own leadership tenure, but the broader trajectory of the party’s rebuilding effort heading toward the next state election.
For WA voters, a genuinely competitive two-party contest arguably serves the broader democratic health of the state, providing stronger scrutiny of government decisions regardless of political persuasion. Whether Zempilas can deliver that competitive dynamic, or whether WA settles into an extended period of one-party dominance more akin to some of its own past electoral cycles, remains one of the more significant open questions in the state’s political landscape.
