Business News looks inside the Liberal WA election campaign and recent years in opposition, from the pandemic, to strategy, leadership, internal ructions and more.
Business News looks inside the Liberal Party WA election campaign and recent years in opposition, from the pandemic, to strategy, leadership, internal ructions and more.
Zak Kirkup believes his personal story could have resonated with voters if given a chance.
But the former Liberal leader, who had just four months to campaign before this month’s state election, has been left to wonder if anything could have dented Premier Mark McGowan’s popularity.
Mr Kirkup told Business News his personal story was a net positive for the party.
That includes his attendance of a public school in Midland and work as a volunteer paramedic.
“I think it would’ve been something that really resonated,” he said.
“If we had more time, we could’ve fleshed it out more.”
Mr Kirkup said commentary from Labor strategists after the election supported that view.
Broadly, he felt the election result did not show voters hated the Liberal Party, just that they loved Mark McGowan.
However, he believed there was a heavily embedded perception the Liberal Party WA would not have dealt appropriately with COVID-19.
Mr Kirkup was optimistic some seats could be saved up until election night.
Nevertheless, it was always shaping up to be a harsh evening.
New Liberal leader David Honey felt things looked incredibly dire during the first days of pre-polling in his district of Cottesloe.
Dr Honey had captained a booth in the electorate for three decades before becoming the member in 2018.
“I’ve never seen anything like it in my electorate,” Dr Honey told Business News.
“We had person after person coming in ... wanting to reward Mark McGowan.”
Ironically, these negative responses to the Liberals’ overtures turned around after Mr Kirkup revealed on February 25 that he did not believe the party could win, Dr Honey said.
“It was like a switch being flicked,” he said.
“All of our votes on polling day were stronger than the pre-poll and postal.”
That indicates the final weeks of the campaign may have brought voters back onboard, although it may also reflect Labor urging supporters to vote early.
Views among members and former members of the parliamentary Liberal team who spoke to Business News differed on how severe the projected loss was going to be in the lead up.
Dr Honey said the indication in July had been that every seat would be lost.
Two other people familiar with polling suggested the position had not been as bad as publicly believed, and it had worsened since November.
David Honey. Photo: David Henry
Either way, the aftermath of March 13 leaves the Liberal Party WA with only two seats in the Legislative Assembly.
The clearest reasons for that result are the COVID-19 pandemic and Mr McGowan’s successful response, a view unanimous among many Liberals who spoke to Business News.
Political parties of all persuasions were hammered in Western Australia.
One Nation’s primary vote was reduced to a quarter of its 2017 level, the Nationals’ vote share fell from 5.4 per cent to 4 per cent, and the Greens dropped from 8.9 per cent to 6.9 per cent.
But not every political leader fighting COVID-19 around the world has achieved a 17.7 per cent swing on first preferences.
In Queensland’s October vote, the Labor government received a 4.1 per cent primary swing, while the Liberal National Party picked up 2.2 per cent, both at the expense of One Nation.
It is possible, therefore, the challenges for WA’s Liberals ran deeper than the pandemic.
The laundry list most cited in the media include criticisms of religious candidates and powerbrokers, debate about the new energy jobs policy and early concession, and criticism of some members’ work ethic.
Issues perhaps overlooked are the opposition’s inability to run either a consistent critical or negative campaign against Mr McGowan’s team, and a misreading of the electorate’s mood on the need for a safe and low-risk government.
The lack of criticism of the government was crucial, Legislative Council member for South Metropolitan region Nick Goiran said.
“At no stage during the four years in opposition were we anywhere near aggressive enough to be even properly described as an opposition,” Mr Goiran said.
However, he said it paled in comparison to the pandemic.
“[COVID-19] was so overwhelmingly the primary factor it’s not funny,” Mr Goiran said, citing Terry Redman’s loss of Warren-Blackwood for the Nationals.
An example of where pandemic management and campaign strategy intersected was Mr Kirkup’s first commitment as leader, which was to be in lockstep with Labor on responding to COVID-19.
Mr Kirkup tied the Liberals’ position to the chief health officer’s advice, as the party sought to walk back from voter outrage about its changing stance on border closures.
Mr Goiran said he understood the move, and Mr Kirkup had brought great energy and effort to the campaign. However, that decision had been wrong both politically and from a governance perspective, he said.
There were plenty of questions that needed to be asked about COVID-19 restrictions, with inconsistencies around stadium capacity restrictions one example, Mr Mr Goiran said.
Border battle
Aside from the premier’s popularity, other possible factors gained attention following the election.
One was Christian members of the Liberal Party WA attracting negative press, most notably former Baldivis candidate Andrea Tokaji, who linked 5G to COVID-19 in an article on a conservative website in 2020.
The counter-position, put forward by conservatives such as lobby group Advance Australia, was that the new energy jobs plan had been too far left (politically) and damaged the party’s base.
Then there’s commentary about the influence of powerbrokers.
Those views miss the importance of one number: 10.5 per cent.
That was the two-party preferred swing predicted towards the Labor government in an Utting Research poll in late May 2020.
It was before green energy or religion were an issue, in the weeks after COVID-19 restrictions were beginning to be eased in WA.
In mid-May, then leader Liza Harvey had called for interstate borders to be reopened, at least to South Australia and the Northern Territory.
One poll may not have caused alarm, they vary wildly.
For example, a poll from October 2019 found Ms Harvey was ahead with female voters and could win an election.
On COVID-19, Ms Harvey had moved before Mr McGowan in March, calling for intrastate travel restrictions, border closures and action to relieve utility bills.
“Not only should we have retained that position, we should have aggressively prosecuted it,” one Liberal parliamentarian said.
But the flip-flopping on the border was hard to defend, they said.
Another critic said the call to reopen borders was the moment voters went from giving the government credit to actively turning on the Liberals, and was unhappy other parliamentarians were not consulted on the move.
Supporters of Ms Harvey argue her position was more nuanced than simply reopening movement from every state, had been misunderstood, and her advocacy of the policy had been used by others in the party to undermine her.
There were also divisions within parliament house.
Among some Liberal politicians who spoke to Business News, one camp criticised their internal adversaries as too controlling and secretive, while another accused the former group of being lazy and incompetent.
There’s little merit to naming names but it bears highlighting that there was no love lost between many on Harvest Terrace.
It’s also clear these animosities affected policy development and collaboration at the highest echelons of the parliamentary wing of the party.
It is understood Ms Harvey took advice to stand aside in the aftermath of the Queensland election result, with the argument being a new leader could improve the party’s standing substantially.
November surprise
If politics were cricket, the Liberals were chasing a near-impossible total and by November were running low on remaining overs.
The party sent Mr Kirkup to the crease, in the hope he would slog some fours and sixes to bring scores closer.
It’s widely agreed he brought energy to the campaign, but some Liberals argue the strategy contributed to the loss of wickets.
Mr Kirkup started the campaign in an almost presidential fashion, with hats emblazoned with his hairline and the slogan ‘Kirkup 2021’, while scoring major media attention.
That strategy changed by late February to warnings about potential total control for Labor.
Until that point, there was almost no negative campaigning, highly unusual in modern politics.
Mr Kirkup and Dr Honey said focus groups showed negative campaigning against Mr McGowan was not resonating.
Mr Kirkup said it was impossible to even build the foundation for a negative campaign when people held the premier in such high regard.
When they did belatedly adopt a negative campaign, it focused on the Labor Party having ‘total control’, rather than the premier.
The question will forever remain unanswered as to whether the lack of a negative campaign helped keep Mr McGowan’s popularity inflated
Mr Kirkup gained substantial media traction following a personal interview on his mental health, and later, talking about homelessness.
On the evening of January 31, Perth returned to lockdown, bringing COVID-19 back to centre stage.
Mr McGowan’s approval rating was 88 per cent in the aftermath, despite issues with hotel quarantine, according to Painted Dog Research.
Meanwhile, Labor rolled out its own negative campaign in February, attacking Mr Kirkup’s purported lack of experience.
“In this type of environment people, were looking for a safe pair of hands,” one Liberal told Business News.
“[His selection as leader] played into the Labor government’s hands.”
Mr Kirkup counters that any leader would have struggled to fight off the negative perception of the party that had become ensconsed.
If it was the case that people were looking for a safe pair of hands, the final weeks of the campaign would not have helped.
The ambitious new energy jobs plan captured attention.
But the promise to close Synergy’s coal power plants by 2025 and move to net zero government emissions by 2030 needed to be faultlessly defended, and it was not.
The Liberal campaign struggled to rebut attacks about cost and power reliability, and then was thwarted by critical internal leaks.
A senior Liberal labelled the policy a political strategy.
Labor had locked up the left and the Liberals needed to solidify their base, rather than touting a radical policy attempting to steal the narrative of the election, they said.
Mr Kirkup’s view was that the Liberals needed to shift the election narrative to big issues about the future.
Liberal member for the South West region, Steve Thomas, slammed the energy policy to journalists after the election result.
Mr Thomas said it may not have cost seats in the South West, but it did destroy credibility.
“It absolutely threw the South West candidates under the bus,” he said.
But Dr Honey said the swing in the seat of Collie-Preston was lower than most other places in WA, estimated at 3.4 per cent.
Responsibility for the plan is disputed.
Two Liberals said Dr Honey only saw the details days before it was announced, but at least one of those two said he had nonetheless approved of it.
Another senior source said he had been pushing a similar policy for months, although Dr Honey has said that did not include the early closure of coal power.
Dr Honey had been strongly advocating the potential of hydrogen and green manufacturing, including in an interview with Business News weeks before the plan was announced.
Costings for the energy plan and other promises were released two days before polling closed in a press conference described by Labor as shambolic.
Shadow treasurer Sean L'Estrange responded to questions saying he would not run through a full spreadsheet of details.
Supporters argued he was set up and told not to take a full spreadsheet into the press conference, while others suggest he was trying to distance himself from some of the policies and came unstuck.
Regardless, it opened further attack lanes for Labor about inexperience and a lack of credibility.
Hall Chadwick’s strict letter saying it had merely checked arithmetic, rather than the details, did not help in this regard.
But it’s important to note many Liberals are extremely complimentary about Mr Kirkup’s energy and work ethic.
Power to the party
Mr Goiran and former Liberal upper house leader Peter Collier are often tagged as the party’s WA powerbrokers, along with former federal finance minister Mathias Cormann.
Post-election media criticised their impact, although Mr Kirkup and others believe that is overstated.
One influential party member (not a parliamentarian) observed that, only two years ago following the federal election, there had been high praise for the state’s Liberal Party and no-one had been arguing it was dysfunctional then.
Mr Collier has consistently said he did not make any calls on Mr Kirkup’s behalf during the November leadership bid, although some colleagues have said that was unnecessary as it was clear who his preference was.
Mr Goiran has maintained he did not get personally involved in pre-selections, other than his own, and also talked up the credibility of candidates in south metro, such as Nicole Robbins in Bicton, a local councillor and teacher.
While Dr Honey has warned against Liberals ascribing the result to individual frustrations, he has signalled a keenness to reform the party.
That will start with a review.
Former party presidents have reportedly signed a letter calling for a fully independent review of the election.
Prior to that, one Liberal ex-parliamentarian who spoke to Business News said it was critical such a review was independent.
The party needed to modernise and recalibrate its engagement with new members, they said.
There were no processes to ensure incumbent members were working hard, and members often had uncontested, easy, pre-selections, they said.
Interstate divisions of the party have adopted a plebiscite approach to pre-selections.
In that model, all local members vote, rather than the existing system of branch delegates, random members and state-wide delegates.
A past proposal to do so in WA was defeated, however.
