Borers, a ‘businessman’ and 35 kilometres of train line: The political headlines of 2024
There is never a “normal” year in West Australian politics, but with an election looming after eight years of Labor government, 2024 was filled with particular intrigue.
From sports broadcasters entering the political fray to tiny beetles destroying the city’s urban tree canopy, we look back at the stories that had us laughing, cringing – and scratching our heads.
Perth Lord Mayor and parliamentary aspirant Basil Zempilas.Credit: Trevor Collens
Basil’s big year
After more than a year of speculation, in January former Seven sports and 6PR broadcaster and Perth Lord Mayor Basil Zempilas finally announced his intention to run for the WA Liberals at the 2025 election.
It didn’t go exactly to plan, however, with a viral misunderstood hot-mic snafu threatening to sour his much-anticipated announcement.
What has followed has been an increasingly bitter public stoush with the Cook government over a safe night space in Northbridge, the East Perth primary school and everything in between.
The relationship degraded to the point that Premier Roger Cook decided to avoid legally required biannual City of Perth committee meetings with the lord mayor because of the changed “dynamic” of their relationship.
Zempilas’ year ended in some controversy when polling – arranged by a “mystery businessman” – touted him as a potential vote-winner for the Liberals if he led the party emerged, leading to a failed coup of current party leader Libby Mettam.
Zempilas’ campaign manager Cam Sinclair, who facilitated the polling through his marketing business, copped the brunt of the blowback, and he stepped down from the Churchlands campaign in the wake.
The as-yet-unnamed businessman remains at large.
WA Labor considers Zempilas a polarising figure who may work to their advantage in March, but whichever way you look at it, he is a lightning rod of intrigue and has better cut through with the public than Mettam.
A quick scan of WAtoday articles this year shows Zempilas’ name appearing in 59 stories, compared to Mettam’s 58.
Prisons and health plagued with problems
Despite the money and effort being pumped into WA’s hospital and prison systems, there remains a flow of horrific and concerning stories.
Less than a year after Cleveland Dodd took his own life in Casuarina Prison’s youth detention wing Unit 18 another teenager died in Banksia Hill.
The incident reignited anger over the conditions detainees and detention officers were subjected to in the youth detention system.
On the health side, two particularly heart-wrenching cases out of Joondalup Health Campus caused significant public concern.
Sandipan Dhar died in March after a fight with undiagnosed leukaemia.
His father Sanjoy Dhar pleaded with staff at both his GP and Joondalup hospital to get him a blood test in the days before his death, but they were unsuccessful.
His death will now be the subject of a coronial inquest.
On that same weekend, Suzan Al Hulow and Ali Al-Khafaji’s baby son Amir died in utero while in the care of the public hospital on March 22.
The hospital says the care she received that weekend was clinically appropriate.
The year of retirement
In addition to the smattering of retirements announced in 2022 and 2023, 14 Labor MPs, two Nationals MP and one Liberal announced their retirements ahead of next year’s election.
There are a total of 22 MPs leaving parliament at the next election –more than one-fifth of the total number. With several seats likely to change hands, the makeup of parliament will look very different after March.
Landsdale MP and Labor stalwart Margaret Quirk, who is being replaced by Cook’s current chief of staff Daniel Pastorelli, offered up one of the most entertaining valedictory speeches in the dying days of parliament.
“Finally, people have taken to asking me what I intend to do in retirement … I rather like the way that President Barack Obama put it when asked, ‘Do you have a bucket list?’ He replied, “Well, I have something that rhymes with bucket’,” she said.
The ribbon-cutting at Ellenbrook Station with WA Premier Roger Cook, Transport Minister Rita Saffioti and former premier Mark McGowan.Credit: Connor McGoverne
All aboard!
This year was special for Transport Minister Rita Saffioti, who got to open 35.5 kilometres of new rail lines this year, see off some locally built trains, and rename the entire train network after Labor’s political brainchild.
Sheltered by robust iron ore royalty payments, the Cook government has weathered most of the criticism over Metronet’s cost blowouts which – for the stage one projects – have doubled from the original $3 billion price tag to more than $6 billion.
All up Metronet, will cost WA more than $10 billion when accounting for expansions to the vision added over Labor’s years in power.
The Yanchep extension opened in July, connecting the city’s far north, but it was the Ellenbrook line, which opened earlier this month that Saffioti was most proud of.
“People understand there’s been cost increases. Whether you put an oven into your house, put a patio up, you buy a car, or you bought a house, there’s been cost increases,” Saffioti said at the opening of the Ellenbrook line.
“But what was the alternative? Not to deliver it? There’s just no way in this world we weren’t going to deliver.”
Borer, Burke and builders
Plenty of issues consumed political oxygen this year, but WAtoday readers, these three topics resonated.
Despite being first detected in Fremantle in 2021, this was the year the shot-hole borer really found its wings.
It has forced the destruction of nearly 4000 trees in Perth and resulted in a ban on the movement of wood and garden materials outside the Perth metro area.
It has also been a major political headache for the WA government with Zempilas using the phrase
“COVID for trees” to drive the issue home.
Speaking of causing havoc, former premier Brian Burke detonated a bomb in the Liberal party this year when it was revealed that then-shadow treasurer Steve Thomas had been talking to him about Collie’s coal problems.
This would have been fine, if Thomas’ leader Mettam hadn’t been in the middle of a crusade against Labor ministers, after it was revealed Burke had contacted their offices on behalf of the building and live entertainment industries.
The controversy led to Thomas having his treasury portfolio stripped from him.
Finally, of course, who could forget the Nicheliving saga that has consumed the lives of more than 200 customers for two years as they waited for the company to build their homes?
The furore culminated in director Ronnie Michel-Elhaj engaging in a tussle between veteran Seven reporter Geof Parry and the government stepping in to offer a $40 million lifeline to affected West Australians who just wanted their homes built.
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