This article is more than 3 years old

This article is more than 3 years old

Brendon Grylls, the leader of the Western Australian National party, who spearheaded a campaign to increase charges paid by Australia’s two biggest mining companies, has lost his seat to Labor.

Grylls is yet to make a formal statement but told Australian Associated Press on Tuesday that he had conceded the seat, saying: “I can’t come back from this.”

He thanked his supporters in a Facebook post, alongside a quote from Theodore Roosevelt’s Man in the Arena speech.

Labor secured a decisive victory in Saturday’s election, gaining 21 seats from Colin Barnett’s government and ousting four ministers, including Grylls, who was minister for housing.

The Labor candidate, Kevin Michel, who runs an airconditioning business in Karratha, the same Pilbara city where Grylls is based, told ABC Radio in Perth on Tuesday he always believed he could win the vast electorate, which was held by Labor until Grylls won it in 2003.

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“There’s a lot, there’s a big job for me to do. I have got very good mentors in the Labor party who will train me and guide me and mentor me along the way,” he said. “I think this job can be done.”

Grylls faced a sustained attack from the mining lobby, which conducted a $5m advertising campaign against his proposal to increase the special lease rental fee paid by BHP Billiton and Rio Tinto on their two biggest iron ore deposits from $0.25 a tonne to $5 a tonne.

The rate had been set when the state agreements were struck in the 1960s and Grylls, as leader of the National party, argued it should be increased to bring in an extra $3bn in revenue a year to shore up the ailing state finances.

But BHP and Rio, which together are the biggest employers in the 406,525sq km electorate, argued that the extra costs would make Pilbara iron ore uncompetitive internationally. The Chamber of Minerals and Energy in WA, which coordinated the advertising campaign, warned it would increase sovereign risk.

The political analyst Dr Ian Cook, from Murdoch University, said Grylls’s loss was “a great pity” and described him as one of the “great talents” of the WA parliament.

Grylls became leader of the National party of WA in 2005 and pushed for the party to be seen as a genuine alternative to both the Liberal and Labor parties, not just a party for farmers.

Unlike other Australian jurisdictions, the Nationals and the Liberal party are not in a formal coalition in WA.

Grylls led the Nationals in a campaign to introduce its flagship Royalties for Regions policy in 2008, securing a significant swing that brought them into government with the Barnett-led Liberal party. He had previously discussed the possibility of forming a government with Labor.

“He was in some ways one of the major hopes for some sort of shift to get us out of this trap that we are in for the tired two-party system that just reasserts itself after every election,” Cook said.

“I really didn’t want to see this outcome. He really worked his electorate and I think he represented his electorate effectively. He was a talent.”

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Despite the 9.4% statewide swing toward Labor, which swept it into power, Cook said Grylls’s loss should be attributed to the mining lobby, which ran an “endless” advertising campaign.

“Even in Perth, you couldn’t go without seeing it on every channel, it was just everywhere,” he said. “It was hammered, week after week.”

Official results for the seat, with just over 60% of the votes counted, show an 11-point drop in Grylls’ primary vote from 38.63% in 2013 to 27.74% on Saturday.

He won with an 11.47% margin in 2013. The two-party-preferred results from Saturday’s election have him on 47.95% to Michel’s 52.05%.

Michel, an Indian-born businessman, moved to Karratha in 2000, after 10 years working and travelling around Australia.

“I love the climate,” he told the ABC. “When I first came here I was amazed with the orange sand … it kind of captivated me.

“There’s something about the Pilbara. It either makes you stay or makes you go.”

Grylls told Guardian Australia last week he was confident despite pressure from the mining lobby. “I’m the member for the Pilbara, I wouldn’t have campaigned on it if I thought it would put my seat of the Pilbara at risk,” he said.

James Hayward, the president of Nationals WA, released a statement commending Grylls’ “political courage and fortitude”.

“Achieving big outcomes takes equally big risk – and finding representatives that are prepared to put themselves on the line to get better outcomes for the community can be a rarity,” he said.

“In the face of strong headwinds, including the most well-resourced negative advertising campaign ever seen in WA’s political history, Brendon led a strong fight on behalf of regional WA and didn’t back down.”

Hayward said Grylls had been a pivotal figure in WA’s political history and he would go down in history for introducing the Royalties for Regions program, under which 25% of mining royalties was spent on capital works in regional WA.