Member for Perth has resigned, however his last day is not yet for some time.
Historically a fairly safe Labor seat, having being held by ALP since the early 80s, though the last 10 years suggest the competition has been close, with ALP holding by 2PP/preferences (according to Wikipedia).
Who do we have in Perth? Is anyone interested in contesting it?
I pinged @Fletcher on IRC to get his thoughts.
@poedgirl contested for Canning at its 2015 by-election and is directly next to (south of) Perth. Might be an idea to wonder if her circumstances have changed since as far as residential location is concerned.
Be a bit of a waste if we didn’t follow through by contesting WA Senate. We’d want to be confident that we’re in a position to do that.
Edit: Oh, and Murphy says it’ll be pretty much the same time as Congress…
Election timeline:
There are a little over 40 polling places, and we’d need to cover 20 on the day to have a presence in front of half the population. So that’s the core minimal requirements - someone to be the candidate, 20 Perth-based Pirates to volunteer on the day (and maybe at prepoll), and a couple of thousand dollars.
Reports are that the Liberals won’t bother contesting this one.
Update: not Fremantle either. They’ll be focusing on the state seat of Darling Ranges.
Though I’m pretty sure it’s not explicitly referenced in the Party preselection process, obviously we should make sure any candidate would not trigger section 44 of the Constitution.
Is there a candidate yet?
Nobody’s said they’d like to run. For that matter, we haven’t decided whether we ought to run.
As I’ve said upthread, our decision should be contingent on being able to mount a credible campaign and then back it up by running in WA in the general (which is looking more like it’ll be next year now, but could still be as early as August).