State Scene

OCTOBER 2002 is likely to be remembered in WA Labor circles as the month Premier Geoff Gallop started following in the footsteps of his Oxford University pal, high-profile British Prime Minister, Tony Blair.

Ever since September 2001, Mr Blair has cut a statesmanlike swath across the international stage.

In October, Britain’s opinion-setting weekly, The Economist, said: “There’s something rather heroic about Tony Blair at the moment.

“Heroic and wrong, some would say; heroic and right, this newspaper would contend.”

Since winning the February 2001 election, Dr Gallop has opted for a remarkably low profile; deliberately I’m told.

Can you imagine Labor’s ever media conscious ex-leader Brian Burke going so long without media attention?

Even today Mr Burke is seeking ways of coming in from the cold. Not so Dr Gallop.

He’s been biding his time, knowing he needs only perform well and he’ll tip the electoral scales in February 2005.

And his low-key approach seems set to lead Labor into another term, irrespective of Electoral Affairs Minister Jim McGinty’s tortuous contortions on the endless one-vote-one-value front.

In October 2002 we saw first signs of Dr Gallop moving towards the front row in public pronouncements.

He firstly spoke out against media-hungry Mr Burke, who had addressed a construction workers’ rally, telling him to “stay out of WA politics”.

That wasn’t shooting from the hip.

Dr Gallop knows Mr Burke’s community acceptance remains miniscule so he’s safe telling his former leader to butt out.

The same applied to his comments about Perth Lord Mayor Peter Nattrass, who has questions to answer regarding his access to classified police information containing an opponent’s criminal record.

That’s hardly elevated the standing of Dr Nattrass and the Lord Mayoral office in people’s eyes, so Dr Gallop was again on safe ground.

High-profile comment three dealt with water, an issue that it’s difficult to lose electoral backing on as long as one looks dour and pushes the, “we’ll all be rooned said Hanrahan” line. And that’s precisely what Dr Gallop did.

Clearly he’s receiving shrewd and measured advice on when or when not to speak out, and what line to take. However, all these comments were easy free kicks.

But it’s the fourth pronouncement he should be commended for – the one in the tough Blair mould. Who knows, perhaps Dr Gallop has even been on the blower to Number 10.

Straight from the chin after the tragic October 12 Bali bombings he warned of likely threats to WA’s steadily expanding offshore oil and gas facilities, most of which are fixed to the shallow seabed off the Pilbara coast.

Together these capital assets are worth billions of dollars.

Gas and condensate produced now represents a huge component in WA’s export earnings and workforce structure.

And that includes crucial backward and forward linkages into WA’s extraction-based economy.

Dr Gallop is correct. These offshore structures are sitting ducks for any determined enemy like, say, followers of Islamo-Fascist Osama bin-Laden.

His warning was undoubtedly influenced by the incident in early October off the Yemeni coast, in which the French super-tanker Limburg was crippled by just one small explosive-laden zodiac. An ominous weapon indeed in a suicidal maniac’s hands. Is there anything stopping international gangs doing likewise to Pilbara’s fixed platforms? Good question. But the situation is far graver than Dr Gallop indicated.

Zodiacs and Indonesian-based fanatics would be a deadly combination that could retard WA’s economy in a way the Bali tragedy hasn’t and couldn’t.

What Dr Gallop never highlighted in his Blair-style Pilbara pronouncement was the fact that parts of Indonesia, indeed, the South-East Asian archipelago, are havens for modern-day pirates that local governments have been unable to entirely eradicate.

These bandits of the sea are only interested in money and loot, not politics or ideology.

However, if a determined ideological group was to begin paying them not to board and rob ships, but rather to attack them, then that may well be welcomed.

The 20,000-island South-East Asian archipelago stretches across the shipping lanes between the Pilbara and Australia’s four major East Asian trading partners – China, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan.

Ships plying between their ports and the Pilbara are carriers and tankers, laden with liquefied natural gas, grain or ores, the lifeblood of WA’s economy.

Protecting the fixed oil and gas assets off the Pilbara, as essential as that is, thus only partially meets the newly emerged terrorist challenge. Such protection will need to be extended, I suspect, meaning perhaps all the way between Port Hedland and East Asia, possibly with even joint Australian, Chinese and Japanese naval escorts.

Dr Gallop never put it so, but he’s at least begun alerting Western Australians of likely tough times ahead, as Mr Blair has been so doggedly and bravely warning the world about terrorism for the past 13 months.