The honeymoon period is over: What’s in store in WA politics in 2026

The honeymoon period is well and truly over in WA with the election in the rearview mirror and MPs settling in to the uphill slog to the 2029 election.

With the election settled, the start of 2026 looks very different to 2025 and each party faces unique challenges as we move into the guts of the Parliamentary term.

The new opposition has deployed a far more effective strategy, which has exposed chinks in Labor’s armour.

Labor

A favoured line of attack is Labor’s spending priorities, i.e, “you won’t spend money on (education, health, housing) but you will spend millions on (Burswood Racetrack, rugby league).”

The Burswood Racetrack and ferry have whipped up white-hot community anger from their respective communities.

The projects will be thorns in Labor’s side for the foreseeable future, but the Cook government is banking on both projects being completed well before the 2029 election, and them being raging successes.

The ferry is scheduled to open in late 2027 while Perth Park, as the racetrack and amphitheatre are now known, will be open for the 2028 Supercars season.

The key issue for the Cook government to overcome this year will be how it breaks the news that Perth Park will no longer cost $217 million as it promised ahead of the March election.

All public commentary to date suggests it is still on track for that price tag, but in today’s inflated construction market, there is absolutely no way it is still going to cost that.

Another issue dogging Labor is health and housing.

Ambulance ramping hit records above 7000 hours this winter flu season and maintenance issues at its ageing hospitals have created a perfect storm in health.

In response to pressure from the opposition over its management of the health portfolio, the government has announced $64.6 million in extra hospital maintenance and refurbishments to get on top of the ageing infrastructure.

It has also set aside $1.5 billion to complete three major health projects up until the next election: an entirely new hospital at the Peel Health Campus, purchasing the Mt Lawley Hospital from St John of God and adding a new ward and ED to Royal Perth Hospital.

Peel and RPH won’t open in the next year, so Labor will still be dealing with a constrained system, and if the next winter flu system is also a shocker, it could end up in more horror headlines.

WA’s skyrocketing population growth and heated construction market continue to drag on any progress made in housing.

The public housing waitlist is stubbornly high at more than 23,000 applicants and 7800 priority applicants and while the government is making inroads by, as Housing Minister John Carey frames it, being bold, it just can’t build the homes at the rate it needs to.

Expect more left-of-centre announcements like the purchase of the Fraser Suites hotel.

There remains a ticking time bomb in Perth’s southern suburbs as Hakea continues to be rammed with prisoners who are triple-bunking in cells with some men sleeping centimetres from the shared toilets, according to prisons inspector Eamon Ryan.

On Christmas Eve some guards were injured in an “incident” at the remand facility. The government’s worst nightmare would be for a guard to be severely injured or worse at Hakea when all the warning signs were there.

It’s clear the state needs a new adult prison, but with an expansive infrastructure program on the cards, including an expansion of Acacia and the Unit 18 replacement alongside Banksia Hill it will take years to open, leaving the government exposed in the near term.

The Cook government and WA Police have a good relationship with the state’s Jewish community but as the fallout of the Bondi massacre continues, they will feel more pressure to do more to stamp out any anti-Semitism in the state. This will include agitation from the opposition and the Jewish community to support a national royal commission into Bondi and anti-Semitism.

It’s just four years until 2030 when Labor has promised to end coal-fired power in the state.

There are still monumental hurdles to overcome, including building transmission lines to support more renewables on the grid as well as building or supporting private capital to build their own.

Opposition

Unbridled by the need to make any actual decisions, being opposition is a comfortable position to be in and with a bit of experience under his belt now, Zempilas’ job for 2026 is to keep at the government, find more chinks in their armour and hammer them.

Zempilas will need to win over the hearts and minds of those in the state who either aren’t impressed or downright detest him.

A big cohort he needs to prove himself to is women and social progressives, of which there are many in his own electorate.

He needs to continue to walk the tightrope between pleasing his own voters on issues like climate change and social justice while appealing to the conservatives in his own party.

Expect some more public stoushes with Canning MP Andrew Hastie.

He also needs to start building the foundation this year for his party’s 2029 campaign. That means sorting out a workable model for a Nationals and Liberals formal coalition which will not be easy given the Nationals got dudded by the Liberals on upper house seats at the last election.

He will also need to address his party’s penchant for preselecting awful candidates that do nothing but detract from the Liberals’ campaign.

Greens

There was much ado made about the Greens holding the balance of power in the upper house after the March election but in the end, Labor didn’t require it.

It’s hard to foresee any legislation that will require their support this year either, but you never know – a year is a long time in politics.