State Scene - Numbers still favour Nats

they deserved cabinet spots.

But the Nationals, with just a 5.3 per cent voter base, had that balance of power and used it.

Between swallowing that bitter pill and November 1995, a group of disgruntled Liberals studied voting patterns and concluded the malapportionment complained about by the likes of Jim McGinty was also clearly hurting the Liberals.

Just then the Commission on Government, following the WA Inc inquiry, recommended electoral reforms, which the disgruntled Liberals drew to the attention of colleagues.

They then began pushing in the McGinty direction because they had believed they could gain at the overfavoured Nationals’ expense.

All this happened behind closed doors. There were very few leaks.

But this much has emerged: Jim McGinty and new Labor leader Geoff Gallop learned of the conservative camp’s unrest. They even visited one Liberal backbencher’s home to secretly discuss the possibility of several Liberal MPs crossing the floor in support of an Opposition Labor and dissident Liberal OVOV bill that was actually drawn-up.

However, in the end all the conspiring come to naught.

That backbencher discovered he was one vote short of being able to ensure the joint OVOV bill became law.

The parliamentary Liberals have two wings – an urban one and the so-called ‘push from the bush’ which, like the Nationals, doggedly backs rural electoral weighting.

So the matter faded away. But not before a face saving joint party room conference agreed to OVOV, though with 20 per cent margins.

The addition of that proviso meant things were marginally better than the situation as it was stood.

However, Labor would have backed it because it was the thin edge of the wedge and moving their way.

After the 1996 election the increasingly luckless Liberal MLA for Alfred Cove, Doug Shave, oversaw electoral affairs. Rather than instituting the November 1995 coalition’s formula he delayed and stonewalled, so nothing happened, meaning the Nationals again won out.

Gradually the issue was overshadowed by the crucial mortgage brokers’ fiasco in which Mr Shave became ministerially enmeshed.

This means that, in the unlikely event of a Barnett-Trendorden government emerging in February 2005, the Nationals will again be able to bargain hard for more ministries than their voter base warrants.

And Mr Barnett, like Mr Court, will have to grin and bear it.