Australian federal election 2025: Live export debate and WA seats

Former WA National Party leader Mia Davies is hoping to make a switch from state to federal politics, as Keep the Sheep launches an advertising scare campaign.

Live export lobby Keep the Sheep is launching an advertising scare campaign against a re-elected Albanese Government across crucial Western Australian electorates ahead of next year’s election.

The new seat of Bullwinkel in WA’s wheatbelt, the affluent Perth electorate of Tangney and the outer metropolitan seat of Hasluck will be targeted with letter box drops and billboards warning voters of what a re-elected federal Labor government would mean, focusing on the group’s namesake issue of the phasing out of live sheep exports by 2028.

WA Farmers president John Hassell said Keep the Sheep had raised more than their $300,000 target, allowing the grassroots outfit to target at least three WA seats, and hopefully as many as seven including Cowan, Pearce, Swan and Curtin.

Mr Hassell – who is on the board of Farming Families and Communities WA, which created the Keep the Sheep campaign – said there was growing frustration over the live sheep export ban beyond the regions, and they planned on capitalising on that sentiment.

“We’re selling thousands of merchandise opposing it, that means it’s really resonating. People can see the effect this will have on communities. The water purchases in the Murray-Darling Basin will do the same thing. Collectively, this is a gamechanger,” Mr Hassell said.

Keep the Sheep was apolitical, Mr Hassell said, but did not support a number of federal Labor’s policies.

“We’re not supporting any one political party, we’re not putting up candidates. We’re saying this is a bad way to govern, it’s policy by populism,” he said.

West Australia is shaping up as a key battleground for the 2025 federal election.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese was in Perth on Monday just as Labor launches its own scare campaign against the Coalition, which he says will wind back WA’s generous carve out of the GST.

Mr Albanese said Labor would announce its own candidate for Bullwinkel this week.

Meanwhile the Nationals are ramping up their campaign to reclaim Western Australian territory, vowing to repeal the live sheep ban legislation if the Coalition came to office.

Former WA National Party leader Mia Davies has been endorsed as the WA Nats Bullwinkel candidate, with an aim to be the first representative from her party in Canberra since crossbench MP Tony Crook in the Gillard years.

“The last election was a Covid election — in WA, the popularity of then Labor premier Mark McGowan was sky high. That sentiment has shifted significantly at a state level and a federal level,” Ms Davies said.

“I felt 16 years in the state parliament was enough, that’s why I retired. Then the federal electorate boundaries were redrawn... the agriculture industry was under attack.

“It feels like WA, having handed the keys of The Lodge to Anthony Albanese has had nothing but economic pain. That’s why I want to get some balance back into decision making.”