Start date March 12, 1994 | ||
The 1994 Fremantle by-election was held in the Australian federal electorate of Fremantle in Western Australia on 12 March 1994. The by-election was triggered by the retirement of the sitting member, the Australian Labor Party's John Dawkins, on 4 February 1994. The writ for the by-election was issued on the same day.
Background
John Dawkins had held Fremantle for the Labor Party since 1977, and he had been a minister in the Hawke and Keating governments, and had been Treasurer since December 1991. When the Cabinet rebelled against the budget he brought down in August 1993, Dawkins resigned from the Treasury and, after giving occasional signals of his rising disillusionment with political life, resigned from Parliament altogether.
The Labor party preselected former state Premier Dr Carmen Lawrence, who despite her party's defeat in the 1993 state election still maintained persistently high ratings in opinion polls, while the Liberal party preselected prominent businessman Geoff Hourn.
The campaign took place in the contest of tensions within the Liberal party over the leadership of Dr John Hewson, and parliamentary conflict over the sports rorts affair which had engulfed a Labor minister, and a tussle between the Senate and the Labor government over documents relating to media ownership changes.