Cook the big winner, but WA Liberals not far behind

The new WA premier has his fingerprints all over the state’s troubled health system.

Mark McGowan and Roger Cook. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Sharon Smith

The biggest winner from Mark McGowan’s retirement on Monday and the frenetic party machinations of Tuesday is obviously Roger Cook. But WA’s embattled Liberals may be a close second.

With Mr Cook remarkably leapfrogging Amber-Jade Sanderson to the premiership, the remnants of the WA’s Liberals - infamously reduced to just two of 59 lower house seats in the 2021 Covid election - will have something to work with on three fronts.

Firstly, given Mr Cook was up until December 2021 the state’s health minister, the attacks by the Liberals and the Nationals on the state of the WA health system - one of the few issues on which they have been able to find some traction - will have added weight.

For all of WA’s extraordinary wealth, the state’s health system remains under severe pressure. Extraordinarily high ambulance ramping levels began under Mr Cook’s time as health minister and continued under Ms Sanderson.

Both Mr Cook and Ms Sanderson have fingerprints on WA’s gross over-ordering of rapid antigen tests. The cost of the RAT program blew out from an initial $3m to $580m, and the government is now spending millions renting warehouses to hold surplus tests that creep closer to expiry by the day.

Secondly, the factional machinations of Tuesday will make it easy for the Liberals to paint the new premier as a puppet of the unions.

The optics of seeing the state’s next premier decided not within the halls of the WA parliament but instead by factional meetings are not ideal. That was especially the case for Ms Sanderson, who won the endorsement of the United Workers Union-aligned MPs in a meeting inside the Unions WA headquarters in the Perth CBD.

Mr Cook owes his ascent to premier entirely to the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union’s decision to split from their UWU colleagues in the Labor left and back Mr Cook instead.

Mr McGowan was factionally unaligned and as premier he has been tougher on the unions than arguably any other Labor leader, maintaining contentious public sector pay freezes as part of his effort to restore the state’s finances.

The unions never fully loved Mr McGowan but tolerated him because of his electoral success. They will surely feel they are in a stronger position to exert some influence over Mr Cook.

Thirdly, the Liberals will also be able to distinguish themselves favourably from Labor by showcasing a much younger, female leader in Libby Mettam as the alternative to Mr Cook.

Within the Liberals is a recognition that a change in premier does not on its own solve the party’s problems.

But the shock developments of this week are a reminder of why the party needs to keep working hard to improve its performance, develop the discipline and attract the candidates it needs to become relevant in WA again.