On Friday, August 26th, I paid a visit to the St Louis Estate retirement village in Claremont.  I can honestly say it is one of the most beautiful retirement facilities I’ve ever seen, and I enjoyed my visit immensely.

When I accepted the role of WA Liberal Leader, I committed to continue my outreach and advocacy for the people of Cottesloe.  As part of my continued efforts in the community I represent, I make a special effort to visit aged care facilities and retirement villages (as well as schools, sports clubs, volunteer groups such as SLSCs, businesses and others).

In this instance, I wanted to connect with an age group in my electorate that I believe had swung heavily for Labor in the recent election despite many of them being lifelong Liberals.  So, I took this visit as an opportunity to inform them of the work the Liberal Party continues to do in WA and take the time to address their concerns.

I was surprised to learn that many of my constituents in the room did not consider COVID to be their primary concern. Instead, I received far more feedback on the WA Liberal Party’s recent election wipe-out and how we’d work to fix it.  The questions that stood out the most to me were those to do with the future of mining in our state, the rising levels of crime and the significant increase in Perth & Peel’s homeless population.

I won’t sugarcoat the visit as entirely positive.  While everyone was extremely polite, it was easy to notice that many felt let down by my Party.  This group made it undeniable that, while COVID was a major issue in the last election, we have a lot of work to do beyond the pandemic to win our core voters back.

I sincerely appreciated the honesty, openness, and civility of the residents of St Louis Estate, and I hope they’ll allow me to visit again soon.

Sincerely,

Dr David Honey MLA

WA Liberal Leader & Member for Cottesloe