Amber-Jade Sanderson has long been seen within Labor circles as the most likely eventual successor to Mark McGowan.
But those assessments were typically made in the expectation McGowan would be walking away after the next election.
His sooner-than-expected retirement means Sanderson will have a tougher case making the argument she deserves to leapfrog more senior colleague Roger Cook to the top job.
If Sanderson is to become premier, she will do so without having served a full term as a minister. It’s a deficiency Cook could well seek to exploit if he decides he wants to be the one to take on the role.
Both Sanderson and Cook enjoy the backing of the United Workers Union, the dominant force within the WA Labor party room. The UWU’s numbers in parliament make it all but certain that the union will decide who becomes premier.
Early indications are that a majority inside Labor favour Sanderson.
Both candidates will have to defy the curse of the health portfolio, which has proved fatal to premiership ambitions of generations of WA politicians. No one has ever gone on to become premier after serving as health minister, a phenomenon largely considered to be a product of the plague of pressures and problems in the portfolio.
Sanderson, who like McGowan was born in NSW, proved her credentials when she was responsible for shepherding the government’s voluntary assisted dying bill through parliament. She was elevated to minister in the wake of McGowan’s record-breaking 2021 election, and in December 2021 she was promoted to Health Minister.
Cook was supposed to be on a plane to the US on Monday. He joined his ministerial colleagues on stage midway through McGowan’s resignation news conference, suggesting a hurried reshuffling of his schedule.
He has been Deputy Premier since McGowan became Premier in 2017. Before that he was deputy opposition leader from 2008.
Since being stripped of health, he has enjoyed comparatively cushy portfolios of tourism; state development, jobs and trade; and science. Cook’s final year as health minister was brutal. Ambulance ramping surged to record levels on his watch, doctors and nurses complained of chronic understaffing, and the death of seven-year-old Aishwarya Aswath after hours of waiting for help at the Perth Children’s Hospital came to embody the health system’s issues.
Conditions inside WA hospitals haven’t got much better under Sanderson’s stewardship, and like her predecessor she has had to spend her time putting out spot fires across the system.
Should Labor and the UWU wish to look further afield, Transport Minister Rita Saffioti is a well-credentialed candidate.
She does not, however, have the factional alliances of her rivals for the top job.
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