State Liberal leader Matt Birney has sold his stake in the successful Kalgoorlie-based spare parts retailer, Goldfields Auto Spares Pty Ltd (GAS), a business he co-founded 13 years ago as a 22-year old.
State Liberal leader Matt Birney has sold his stake in the successful Kalgoorlie-based spare parts retailer, Goldfields Auto Spares Pty Ltd (GAS), a business he co-founded 13 years ago as a 22-year old.
The exit is seen as further evidence of Mr Birney’s determination to focus on the Liberal leadership and attempt to topple Gallop-led Labor at the next state election due by 2009, though the market in the Kalgoorlie auto sector has become increasingly competitive in recent days.
The company will now be wholly-owned and operated by Mr Birney’s co-director and foundation partner, Darrall Black.
Mr Birney, a 2002 WA Business News 40 Under 40 Awards winner, and Mr Black launched GAS in the early 1990s. By the time Mr Birney had entered State Parliament four years ago its annual turnover was running at about $3 million.
The company has filled a large number of niche markets in the mining region’s automotive, industrial and commercial spare parts sector.
It gained prominence in Kalgoorlie with its castle-turreted premises on Boulder Road, a fleet of mini-Moke delivery vehicles in eye-catching colours and the use of slogans such as ‘Bloody Cheap Auto Parts’ and ‘All Parts for All Cars’.
GAS, which won the 1994 Goldfields Business of the Year Award sponsored by the Chamber of Commerce and Industry, secured the rights to distribute obsolete parts for older vehicles and specialised in supplying a range of low-cost products.
This was done, in part, by sourcing supply from Melbourne-based Rare Spares.
GAS’s client based extends across the entire eastern Goldfields region, with customers located as far north as Warburton and south to Esperance.
GAS’s turnover in its first year of operation was just more than $100,000. Four years later it had reached $1.9 million.
Competition in the Goldfields auto parts retail sector was and remains cut-throat with four other suppliers, including AutoOne (based next door to GAS), Coventrys, Repco and Super Cheap.
Mr Birney is son of former federal Liberal MHR, Jack Birney, who held the marginal New South Wales seat of Phillip for 11 years from 1975.
Mr Birney made history on two counts by winning Kalgoorlie from Labor in February 2001.
Kalgoorlie was the only seat the outgoing Richard Court-led team took from Labor and it was the first time the mining seat was to be held by a non-Labor MP.
Mr Birney is also founding partner of Essential Earth Kalgoorlie and Cunningham Sheds Kalgoorlie.
With Labor’s One Vote One Value Bill likely to successfully pass through the upper house early next month, most political pundits claim Mr Birney will be compelled to look for a blue ribbon metropolitan Liberal seat, since his Kalgoorlie seat may be scrapped or made unwinnable for the Liberals.
Selling his stake in GAS would consequently have been an understandable preliminary move to becoming a metropolitan-based MP with a strong chance of becoming a premier.
Initial polling has shown Mr Birney to have been well received by voters, a marked contrast to his predecessor, Colin Barnett, who was unable to show himself to be an acceptable alternative to Premier Geoff Gallop.
The welcomed polling results mean Mr Birney will be strongly placed to convince senior Liberal Party officials to back him in moves to coax a sitting member holding a safe seat out of parliament some time over the next year.
Parliamentary sources say that Mr Barnett, who holds the blue ribbon Liberal seat of Cottesloe, is unlikely to agree to make way for Mr Birney.
One Liberal insider said Mr Barnett was “in for the long haul”, meaning he still regards himself as a likely leader, especially if Mr Birney makes an error or was unable to find a winnable metropolitan seat.
