It’s third time plucky for brave Beazley

After eight years and three frustrating campaigns, Hannah Beazley is finally a political certainty.

Labor candidate Hannah Beazley handing out how to vote cards in her electorate of Victoria Park. Picture: Colin Murty / The Australian

Hannah Beazley’s quest to enter politics has spanned eight years and three frustrating election campaigns — but this time, the 41-year-old looks a certainty.

Polling now suggests that Ms Beazley will on Saturday finally begin what her famous family considers “the highest form of public service” when she succeeds retiring West Australian Treasurer Ben Wyatt in the safe Labor seat of Victoria Park.

WA Labor is capitalising on near adulation for the Premier by badging candidates as “Your local Mark McGowan representative”.

This campaign is an unfamiliar experience for Ms Beazley, who has fought and lost two difficult campaigns. In the state seat of Riverton in 2013, she was up against popular Liberal incumbent Mike Nahan who later became WA treasurer and opposition leader.

When Ms Beazley — the daughter of former federal Labor leader Kim Beazley — turned to federal politics in 2019, she gained ground against the Liberals’ Steve Irons, but two years of campaigning was not enough to unseat him.

This time, voters are “effusive”, she said. “It is fantastic and really hard to wrap my head around. There is a real positivity.”

After a landslide win in 2017, Labor already holds 40 of the 59 seats in the WA lower house and 14 out of 36 upper house seats.

Voters, grateful that WA rode out the pandemic with relatively few deaths and a strong economy, appear to be in the mood to return the McGowan government with an increased majority.

Several former Liberal strongholds are at risk of falling on Saturday. Labor is the favourite to snare the Riverton seat that eluded Ms Beazley all those years ago, while both Scarborough (held by ex-leader Liza Harvey) and Dawesville will fall if polling holds true. Such an outcome would see the seats held by the Liberals’ last three leaders — including incumbent Zak Kirkup — all lost.

Ms Beazley is not the only ­famous surname of WA politics contesting this election. Scott ­Edwardes — the son of former WA attorney-general Cheryl Edwardes and Ms Harvey’s ex-chief of staff Colin Edwardes — has been campaigning aggressively in the seat of Kingsley, currently held by Labor on a 1.2 per cent margin.

Demography looks set to work against him. The northern suburbs in and around Kingsley have a disproportionately high population of British expats, many of whom have family in the UK who have suffered through the pandemic, meaning they are more likely to recognise Mr McGowan’s management of the crisis.

The overwhelmingly positive signs for Labor must be some comfort to Ms Beazley that it will be third time lucky. Yet she says that even within her own household, nobody is celebrating early.

Nine-year-old son David, who remembers his mother’s crushing 2013 defeat, is especially cautious.

“He is saying ‘Mum you haven’t won before’,” she said. “He said to me: ‘I am very hopeful but I won’t believe it until I see it’.”