State Government

There are two 'Houses' of government in WA. (Queensland manages with one.) The Legislative Assembly represents the people. The Legislative Council represents regions, and is a legacy from the days when there was a single omnipotent Governor. It was thought he should be seen to be advised by leading citizens and set up an advisory council - and we still have its successor - not to mention an actual 'governor' as well.

Government of the Swan River Colony immediately after British occupation was the sole responsibility of the Lieutenant-Governor, James Stirling. However, Executive and Legislative Councils were soon set up to assist and advise him, and the governors who followed him.

Pamela Statham-Drew 2003:
[Stirling's 1832] Commission not only conferred authority and delineated his powers as Governor, it also authorised the appointment of councils to assist and advise him, each of four persons with the quorum for decisions being set at himself plus two. An Executive Council, authorised by the King, was to be in addition to a Legislative Council empowered by Parliament through the Order-in-Council officially constituting the colony. The Legislative Council was to comprise the Governor, the Senior Military Ofﬁcer, the Colonial Secretary, the Surveyor-General and the Advocate-General—exactly the same membership as the Executive Council. In an accompanying dispatch dated 28 April 1831, Lord Goderich took pains to explain the distinction between the two councils. They were both necessary because ‘the Royal authority was not competent, without the aid of Parliament, to create a Legislature except by popular representation, or to establish courts on lines that differed from those of Westminster’. But the Executive Council would convey assent, and do most of the day-to-day business. Proceedings of both were to be kept separate. Statham-Drew: 204.

Representative Government

Paul de Serville 2003:
Frederick Weld was appointed Governor of Western Australia in 1869, and one of his earliest duties was to consider a petition for representative government. Weld introduced a bill to enable twelve elected members to sit in the Legislative Council, along with the official and nominated members. It was passed in June 1870 and it inaugurated a new period in Western Australian history, twenty years of representative government. ...
The first twelve elected representatives were J. G. Carr and Luke Leake (Perth); Edward Newman and W. D. Moore (Fremantle); T. C. Gull (Swan); John McKail (Albany); J. H. Monger (York); Major Logue (Geraldton); George Shenton (Greenough); James Drummond (Toodyay); J. G. Lee Steere (Wellington) and J. G. Bussell (Vasse). It reads, according to Crowley, p. 69, ‘like a certified list of the colony’s leading gentry’. The nominees were S. P. Phillips, Maitland Brown and W. E. Marmion. The three officials were F. P. Barlee (Colonial Secretary); Malcolm Fraser (Surveyor-General) and R. J. Walcott (Attorney-General). G. C. Bolton and A. Mozley, Western Australian Legislature, 1870-1930, Canberra, 1961.

Hitchcock 1929:
In December, 1890, the first election under responsible government was held, the members elected to the Legislative Assembly for the Fremantle district being:—
Fremantle: W.E. Marmion ../people/moore.html (who received the portfolio of Minister for Lands)
North Fremantle: W.S. Pearse
South Fremantle: David Symon
W.D. Moore was appointed by the Governor to represent Fremantle in the Legislative Council as, under responsible government, the Council did not become elective until the population of the State reached 60,000 which did not come about until 1893. Hitchcock 1929: 71.

The member for Fremantle in the Legislative Assembly in 2023 is Simone McGurk, a former union official.

The member of the Legislative Council for the area containing Fremantle, called 'South Metropolitan', is Dr Brad Pettitt, a former head of the Sustainability program at Murdoch University.

References and Links

Bowe, William & Martin Drum 2012, 'The state and federal seats of Fremantle: past, present, and future', Fremantle Studies, 7: 77-91.

de Serville, Paul 2003, 3 Barrack Street: The Weld Club 1871-2002, Helicon, Wahroonga.

Hitchcock, JK 1929, The History of Fremantle, The Front Gate of Australia 1829-1929, Fremantle City Council.

Statham-Drew, Pamela 2003, James Stirling, UWAP.

Governors of Western Australia - in Wikipedia.

Premiers of Western Australia - in Wikipedia.

Freotopia

This page incorporates material from Garry Gillard's Freotopia website, that he started in 2014 and the contents of which he donated to Wikimedia Australia in 2024. The content was originally created on 4 May, 2018 and hosted at freotopia.org/organisations/govtstate.html (it was last updated on 24 April, 2024), and has been edited since it was imported here (see page history). The donated data is also preserved in the Internet Archive's collection.