Short answers, pulled from the story.
The West Australian traces its origins to The Perth Gazette and Western Australian Journal, the first edition of which appeared on the 5th of January 1833. It is the second-oldest continuously produced newspaper in Australia. It was relaunched under its current name on the 18th of November 1879.
The West Australian is owned by Southern Cross Media Group, which also owns The Sunday Times. The paper was previously owned by Seven West Media, which itself evolved from West Australian Newspapers Holdings after acquiring the Seven Media Group in April 2011.
Average weekday print circulation fell to 145,000 from a prior 157,000 over a period that saw the paper record a nearly 25 percent profit drop in June 2016. Combined cross-platform readership for The West Australian and The Sunday Times reached 4.5 million per month as of February 2022, including subsidiary websites.
The West Australian leans conservative and endorsed the Coalition at every federal election from 1922 to 1969. It endorsed Labor at the 2017 and 2021 state elections and the Coalition at the 2019 and 2022 federal elections. A 2022 editorial described the paper as "economically conservative, but socially progressive".
In February 2005 former prime minister Bob Hawke called the paper "a disgrace to reasonable objective journalism". In May 2007 attorney-general Jim McGinty called it "the nation's most inaccurate and dishonest newspaper" and demanded the editor be sacked. The paper's editorial stance also shifted sharply against the McGowan government on the 20th of January 2022, after interstate border restrictions blocked Seven West Media Chairman Kerry Stokes from returning to Western Australia.
The West Australian claims 84 percent market penetration in Western Australia, the largest share of any newspaper in Australia. It is the only locally edited daily newspaper published in Perth.