Nationals WA preselect leader Shane Love to run for new Mid West seat at 2025 State election

There were no surprises when Nationals WA leader Shane Love was preselected last week, but he is now entering unknown territory in running for a newly created electorate. This year, Mr Love enters his 11th year in State politics, and he is looking to add another four-year term. In one of the party’s worst-kept secrets, the Opposition Leader was preselected for the newly minted seat of Mid West, pitting him in a likely battle with Nationals defector turned Liberal MP Merome Beard. Mr Love’s seat of Moore, which he has held since 2013, and Ms Beard’s seat of North West Central are being merged into the new Mid West electorate. “I have the expertise and the knowledge of the regions to actually prosecute the case for them,” Mr Love said last Friday while in Geraldton. The former farmer was elected to State Parliament after nine years as president of the Shire of Dandaragan. Ensuring regional WA is on the radar for the State Government is the core focus. With the full support of his peers, Mr Love is unsure of who will emerge successful from the Nationals’ preselection for the Geraldton seat, which will take place on March 23. Mr Love said three people had thrown their hats into the ring for the Geraldton seat, including former mayor Shane Van Styn. “There is a number of people who have put themselves forward. Each one of them, I’d be very pleased to see standing as that candidate,” Mr Love said. Mr Love said the decision would be left in the hands of the party’s State Council and would not comment on whether Mr Van Styn was a frontrunner. “But the fact is most people in Geraldton know who Shane Van Styn is, and that is something which the party will consider,” he said. Mr Van Styn’s public stature is something Mr Love said is “stating the obvious”. “He’s well known in other communities, of course he is, which are coming into the electorate such as Kalbarri, Mullewa and Port Gregory,” he said. Mr Love said the ideal candidate “is someone who has an understanding of where Geraldton sits as part of the region, rather than just someone who’s entirely Geraldton”. The new Mid West seat now includes Carnarvon, which is currently in the hands of Ms Beard’s North West Central electorate. Mr Love acknowledges he will likely be running against his former peer Ms Beard, who will be nominating for the Mid West seat with the Liberal Party once preselection opens. “I can’t speak for any other party, but I’m nominated to be a contestant for the seat of Mid West,” he said. Mr Love lists the Patient Assisted Transport Scheme as one of his core focuses, alongside re-establishing maternity services at Carnarvon hospital. He said a lack of long-term investment into workforce development was at the heart of the problem and he would look to swerve agency staffing in health care and introduce better education resources in the regions to have local staff in hospitals. The confidence Mr Love has in his party to take home the election is strong, pointing to the authority of Premier Roger Cook. “The mood has changed enormously in Western Australia. The huge popularity that Mark McGowan built up through the COVID era has disappeared,” he said. “You’ll see that he’s (Roger Cook) a much less authoritative Premier than than his predecessor. That’s a big change. And you can feel people wanting it to change.” Part of the confidence Mr Love has in his party is because of the separation between the other conservative party, the Liberals. “The fact we are absolutely grassroots politics. We’re not bound up with some sort of ideological standards that the major parties are, we’re here for the benefit of our community,” he said. Ms Beard’s defection last year and the Nationals’ decision to run candidates in metropolitan seats to boost their Upper House vote share following electoral reforms which removed regions from the Legislative Council, have created tensions between the traditional conservative allies.