WA Liberal-National alliance on fire over gun reforms

The Cook government has driven a huge wedge between the WA Liberals and Nationals over the state’s gun reforms five months out from the next election.

The political bunfight broke out after Nationals and Opposition Leader Shane Love told a firearms and fisheries session in Bunbury last week his party would not form government with the Liberals unless they committed to scrapping regulations enforcing the Firearms Act changes.

WA Liberal leader Libby Mettam.Credit: Trevor Collens

The WA Nationals have opposed the reforms and a key election policy is to rewrite the reforms.

Premier Roger Cook jumped on Love’s comments in parliament on Wednesday, accusing Liberal leader Libby Mettam of risking community safety by not denouncing Love’s position and backing the gun laws.

“What we now know is a vote for the Liberal Party is a vote for more guns in the community. They will open the door to more guns, more violence and more preventable deaths and more crime,” Cook said in question time.

Mettam and opposition police spokesman Peter Collier arranged a snap press conference after question time to blast Love’s position and publicly urge him to rule out an alliance with Labor.

“We will not be entering into any horse-trading or doing deals with the national party ahead of the next election,” Mettam said.

“The Nationals have taken the wrong approach.

“The comments of Monday have created some unnecessary confusion in the community.”

“I believe we have the capacity to again work cooperatively in government, I’m making it explicitly clear what my expectation is, and that is that the Nationals would not consider forming government [with Labor].”

Mettam and Collier also sought to clarify they would not repeal or redraw the act but created more confusion when they admitted they would send it back to a committee and would consider amendments.

“We’ve been very clear on the record that we would not be undertaking to repeal the Firearms Act,” Mettam said.

Collier jumped in and said fundamentally his party agreed with the bill, but it wanted to send it to the legislation committee for analysis, which was rejected by Labor during previous debate.

“We will move another motion and to send it off to the legislation committee to see if there are any unintended consequences, and put forward then some legitimate, sensible amendments,” he said.

“There’s no ambiguity here whatsoever.”

Love described Mettam’s request that they commit to not forming government with Labor as “bizarre”.

“As Leader of the Opposition, I have spent the day on my feet in Parliament fighting against the gross self-interest and political overreach of the Cook Labor Government, as our team has done over the past four years,” he said.

“The idea that The Nationals WA would form government with the Labor Party is, quite frankly, bizarre.

“We remain unequivocal in our commitment to defeating Labor in the 2025 State Election.”

The gun reform furore has again revealed the shakiness of the Liberals and Nationals alliance, formed following the 2021 election bloodbath.

In March emails from Nationals MP Martin Aldridge were leaked that suggested the alliance was untenable.

The Nationals were also dealt a blow when North West Central MP Merome Beard jumped ship to the Liberals which balanced of the opposition parties to three a piece in the lower house.

That prompted Mettam to publicly state she should be installed as Opposition Leader – a request refused by Love.

The Liberal party also refused to do a deal with the Nationals to put them on a joint upper house ticket at the next election, which then prompted the regions-focused party to run candidates in metro seats.

The rewritten Firearms Act passed parliament in June with the Cook government labelling them the toughest in the country.

As part of the new laws, the number of guns is now restricted depending on licence type, licences will be mandatorily disqualified for serious offenders, including domestic violence perpetrators, and licence holders will be required to undergo regular health checks.

The laws have been met with significant opposition from farming and gun enthusiast groups.

Love was contacted for comment.