The 1994 Fremantle by-election was held in the Australia

Australia

Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...

n federal electorate of Fremantle

Division of Fremantle

The Division of Fremantle is an Australian Electoral Division in Western Australia.The division was created at Federation in 1900 and was one of the original 75 divisions contested at the first federal election...

 in Western Australia

Western Australia

Western Australia is a state of Australia, occupying the entire western third of the Australian continent. It is bounded by the Indian Ocean to the north and west, the Great Australian Bight and Indian Ocean to the south, the Northern Territory to the north-east and South Australia to the south-east...

 on 12 March 1994. The by-election

By-election

A by-election is an election held to fill a political office that has become vacant between regularly scheduled elections....

 was triggered by the retirement of the sitting member, the Australian Labor Party

Australian Labor Party

The Australian Labor Party is an Australian political party. It has been the governing party of the Commonwealth of Australia since the 2007 federal election. Julia Gillard is the party's federal parliamentary leader and Prime Minister of Australia...

's John Dawkins

John Dawkins

John Sydney "Joe" Dawkins, AO , Australian politician, was Treasurer in the Keating Labor government from December 1991 to December 1993...

, on 4 February 1994. The writ for the by-election was issued on the same day.

Background

John Dawkins had held Fremantle for the Labor Party since 1977, and he had been a minister in the Hawke

Bob Hawke

Robert James Lee "Bob" Hawke AC GCL was the 23rd Prime Minister of Australia from March 1983 to December 1991 and therefore longest serving Australian Labor Party Prime Minister....

 and Keating

Paul Keating

Paul John Keating was the 24th Prime Minister of Australia, serving from 1991 to 1996. Keating was elected as the federal Labor member for Blaxland in 1969 and came to prominence as the reformist treasurer of the Hawke Labor government, which came to power at the 1983 election...

 governments, and had been Treasurer

Treasurer

A treasurer is the person responsible for running the treasury of an organization. The adjective for a treasurer is normally "tresorial". The adjective "treasurial" normally means pertaining to a treasury, rather than the treasurer.-Government:...

 since December 1991. When the Cabinet

Cabinet of Australia

The Cabinet of Australia is the council of senior ministers of the Crown, responsible to parliament. The Cabinet is appointed by the Governor-General, on the advice of the Prime Minister the Head of Her Majesty's Australian Government, and serves at the former's pleasure. The strictly private...

 rebelled against the budget he brought down in August 1993, Dawkins resigned from the Treasury and, after giving occasional signals of his rising disillusionment with political life, resigned from Parliament altogether.

The Labor party preselected former state Premier

Premier of Western Australia

The Premier of Western Australia is the head of the executive government in the Australian State of Western Australia. The Premier has similar functions in Western Australia to those performed by the Prime Minister of Australia at the national level, subject to the different Constitutions...

 Dr Carmen Lawrence

Carmen Lawrence

Carmen Mary Lawrence is a retired Australian politician; a former Premier of Western Australia and the first woman to become Premier of a State of the Commonwealth of Australia....

, who despite her party's defeat in the 1993 state election

Western Australian state election, 1993

Elections were held in the state of Western Australia on 6 February 1993 to elect all 57 members to the Legislative Assembly and all 34 members to the Legislative Council...

 still maintained persistently high ratings in opinion polls, while the Liberal

Liberal Party of Australia

The Liberal Party of Australia is an Australian political party.Founded a year after the 1943 federal election to replace the United Australia Party, the centre-right Liberal Party typically competes with the centre-left Australian Labor Party for political office...

 party preselected prominent businessman Geoff Hourn.

The campaign took place in the contest of tensions within the Liberal party over the leadership of Dr John Hewson

John Hewson

John Robert Hewson AM is an Australian economist, company director and a former politician. He was federal leader of the Liberal Party of Australia from 1990 to 1994 and led the party to defeat at the 1993 federal election.-Early life:...

, and parliamentary conflict over the sports rorts affair

Sports rorts affair

The "sports rorts" affair was the name by which Australian media and political commentators came to refer to events during the second Keating ministry in late 1993 and early 1994, where the then Sports Minister, Ros Kelly, was unable to appropriately explain the distribution of federal sporting...

 which had engulfed a Labor minister, and a tussle between the Senate and the Labor government over documents relating to media ownership changes.

Results

External links

• Fremantle (WA) By-Election (12 March 1994), Australian Electoral Commission
  Australian Electoral Commission
  The Australian Electoral Commission, or the AEC, is the federal government agency in charge of organising and supervising federal elections and referendums. State and local government elections are overseen by the Electoral Commission in each state and territory.The Australian Electoral Commission...
  
  
• Election figures (John Curtin Prime Ministerial Library, including polling places breakdown)