Leadership shake-ups, policy backflips, and who will rise to save the Libs? The WA politics news that shaped 2023

Then May 29 came.

McGowan quit – melting the minds of anyone with a passing interest in politics and blowing up the state’s political landscape in the process.

“The truth is I’m tired, extremely tired. In fact, I’m exhausted,” he said during that iconic press conference.

The former premier is probably getting a better sleep these days, with a better work-life balance provided by his four new employers and $270,000 a year taxpayer-funded pension.

Roger’s rise up the ranks

McGowan’s shock resignation from the party he led for 11 years pulled the cloth from Labor’s table and took all the cutlery with it.

An avenue to premier opened up for MPs who never thought would get that opportunity before they retired.

New life was breathed into the dormant union factions, who had been whipped into submission by the dominant former leader.

In the days that followed, media were run off their feet trying to keep up with who would land the top job.

Initially, it seemed Health Minister Amber-Jade Sanderson had secured the gig when she bounced out of a United Workers Union MP-aligned meeting and proudly declared she had received majority support from her colleagues.

This was a signal to the rest of the Labor factions to fall into line – but they did the very opposite.

Cook pulled a Steven Bradbury and secured support from the party’s right faction, along with the left faction’s metalworkers-aligned MPs.

A favourite moment of that whole saga was watching metalworkers MPs avoid media questions after they sealed Sanderson’s fate.

Particular credit must go to Jandakot MP Yaz Mubarakai, who looked like a deer in headlights as cameras rushed towards him and he instinctively put his phone to his ear.

It would have been the perfect ruse, had his phone lock screen not been on full display.

Monumental backflips

Unfortunately, Cook did not get a honeymoon period.

With changes to the Aboriginal Cultural Heritage Act coming into effect on July 1, pressure mounted from the state’s farming sector for the government to either delay or scrap the new laws.

On August 8, Cook stood alongside Aboriginal Affairs Minister Tony Buti and chose the latter option, scrapping laws that were more than five years in the making.

However, this year’s most impressive acrobatics were not reserved for Labor.

With the heritage act furore bubbling away, the Nationals and Libby Mettam smelt a good opportunity and sensationally reneged on their support for the Voice to parliament.

The WA parties were lonely Voice supporters on the conservative side of politics in Australia, and their backflips helped seal its fate out west.

Tall tales of a Liberal saviour

McGowan’s exit blew the whole 2025 election wide open, but it remains nigh on impossible for the Liberals and Nationals to wrest back control of government due to the sheer number of MPs and staff members in Labor’s ranks.

However, some sections of the Liberals believe one man could emerge from the shadows and achieve the impossible.

He is circling the Liberal party tank and, by 2025, the voting public may not be voting for Mettam as the alternative premier.

This prospective leader is very tall, a famous media personality, and WA-based.

We are, of course, referring to Perth Lord Mayor and Seven West Media veteran Basil Zempilas.

Publicly, Zempilas is emphatic that he is focused on his mayoral duties, having recently been re-elected, but behind the scenes, he has been getting his ducks in a row for a run at the blue-ribbon seat of Churchlands.

He will be forced to show his hand within the next two months as preselection nominations close for that seat.

The other stuff

There were plenty of weird, wonderful and shocking things that filled the political landscape this year.

We had a good old-fashioned defection when the Nationals’ North West Central MP Merome Beard joined the Liberals. By gar, it’s been a while. In fact, another recent memorable switching of allegiances was when Beard’s predecessor, Vince Catania, defected from Labor to the Nationals in 2009. Maybe there’s something in the water in Carnarvon.

The Perth Mint provided several headaches for retiring mines minister Bill Johnston, but inspired one of the state’s great “live-mic” moments.

Johnston also had to deal with riots at Banksia Hill and appalling conditions at the Unit 18 youth wing of Casuarina Prison, until that responsibility was shunted to Paul Papalia.

Tragically, the state experienced its first-ever death in youth detention in October.

The government managed to get both the gun lobby and demersal fishers offside and, in doing so, the public learned what a demersal fish was.

We also saw a statewide hunt for a tiny radioactive capsule and thousands of people from around the globe tested the limits of Exmouth’s sewerage system during a rare total solar eclipse.

Interestingly, one of WAtoday’s best-read stories of the year, with hundreds of thousands of hits, was not about a leadership challenge or the repealing of significant legislation – it was about the eclipse.

This suggests the public is more willing to burn their retinas by staring directly at the sun than take any interest in West Australian politics.

See you next year.

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