Western Australia

A governor representing the sovereign of Great Britain is Western Australia’s chief executive; however, the governor holds little real power. In practice, a premier chosen from the legislature and assisted by a cabinet is the head of government. Western Australia has a bicameral (two-house) legislature that is popularly elected. The upper house, or Legislative Council, has 34 members; the lower house, or Legislative Assembly, has 57 members. Western Australia is represented in the federal parliament by 12 members elected to the Senate and 14 members elected to the House of Representatives.

The coast of western Australia was probably visited by Spanish and Portuguese ships in the 16th century, though no record of their visits survives. In 1616 Dutch navigator Dirk Hartog landed on an offshore islet and became the first known European to set foot on Australian soil. Later in the century Dutch explorer and navigator Abel Janszoon Tasman surveyed the northern coast. The western coast was surveyed in later explorations. In 1826 a small group of British soldiers and convicts founded the first settlement in western Australia, though Britain did not take official possession of the land until Captain Charles Howe Fremantle issued a proclamation on May 2, 1829. Later that year, planned colonization began, mostly along the fertile, alluvial land of the upper Swan River. British financier Thomas Peel received large land grants for the first settlements, but ignorance of local conditions and scarcity of labor led the colony into difficulties in the early 1830s. By the 1850s, however, the arrival of convicts had eased the shortage of labor, and explorers had succeeded in finding larger tracts of good land. The expanding settlers conflicted, often violently, with the native Aboriginal people, marking the beginning of an uneasy relationship.

Major gold discoveries in the late 19th century were followed, in 1890, by a grant of responsible government to Western Australia. When Western Australia was granted independence from Great Britain in 1901, a large number of the population wanted to secede rather than federate with the other Australian states; Western Australia joined the federation nonetheless.

The state grew modestly until 1960, when the federal government lifted an embargo (ban) on exports of iron ore, sparking Western Australia’s mineral boom. Over the next two decades, conservative governments, led by the Liberal Party, increased investment in the state. In 1989 Western Australia became the first Australian state to be led by a woman, when Carmen Lawrence of the Labor Party became premier. The Liberal Party returned to power in 1993, largely due to financial scandals under Labor premier Brian Burke.

Western Australia was greatly affected by the High Court of Australia’s landmark ruling in the Mabo v. Queensland case (1992) and the federal parliament’s subsequent Native Land Title Act. The ruling and the act gave Aboriginal people the right to claim title to ancestral land if they could show a “close and continuing” relationship to it. Because mining companies and other interests in Western Australia feared the consequences of native title claims, the state tried to have the act declared unconstitutional. The High Court rejected the state’s challenge. By some estimates, as much as 40 percent of Western Australia could be subject to native title claims.