Roger Cook vows to help Anthony Albanese after latest WA landslide

Bruised Liberal strategists are trying to digest what their latest disastrous campaign means for the federal election.

WA Premier Roger Cook with wife Carly Lane at Wellard on Sunday morning celebrating Labor’s election win. Picture: Colin Murty

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West Australian Premier Roger Cook will use his massive election victory, his booming personal popularity and the increasingly strong resources of WA Labor to help Anthony Albanese sandbag crucial federal seats in the state.

As bruised Liberal strategists try to digest what their latest disastrous campaign would mean for the push to reclaim former Coalition seats at the federal election, Mr Cook declared he would swing behind the Prime Minister’s bid to return to power.

Speaking on Sunday morning after leading his party to the second-biggest win in state history, and Labor’s third consecutive landslide in the west, Mr Cook said he expected Mr Albanese to make a pitch to voters similar to the one that helped his government secure an overwhelming majority.

“I think Anthony Albanese has the similar vision for the country as we have for the state,” the re-elected Premier said.

“That is to make sure that manufacturing and great jobs based upon a strong manufacturing sector is part of what we want to achieve for the state. It’s part of what he wants to achieve for the country.”

The Liberals so far have secured only seven of 59 seats in WA’s lower house, falling well short of their internal target of returning to the 13 seats they had before Mark McGowan’s history-making 2021 triumph. The dismal result looks all but certain to cost Libby Mettam her leadership, although the party will have only a handful of MPs with no prior parliamentary experience from which to choose her replacement.

Mr Cook has had a tense relationship with federal Labor at times, campaigning against Tanya Plibersek’s Nature Positive laws, criticising the live sheep export ban and blaming Canberra for the pressures in WA’s health system.

Peter Dutton on Sunday acknowledged the “mixed” results in the state and tried to drive a wedge between Mr Cook and Mr Albanese, highlighting the Premier’s opposition to several Albanese government positions.

“Roger Cook has made a number of decisions that were in WA’s best interest whereas Anthony Albanese and Tanya Plibersek make decisions that will hurt WA, and that’s why Roger Cook has spoken out against some of the decisions around Nature Positive, which is an anti-mining bill,” Mr Dutton said.

But Mr Cook said he would be closely involved in Mr Albanese’s campaigning in the battleground state.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese during a visit to the Gallipoli Barracks in Brisbane on Sunday. Picture: Pool/Getty Images

Federal Labor successfully leveraged off the popularity of Mr McGowan in 2022, featuring the then premier in almost all of its election materials and advertising on its way to its best-ever result in the west.

Holding on to those gains in WA is central to Mr Albanese’s hopes of retaining majority government.

“Prime Minister Albanese has provided great leadership for this country, they’ve stabilised the economy, they’ve continued to create jobs, and they’ve got a vision for the country similar to ours with regards to manufacturing,” Mr Cook said.

“I’m very much looking forward to working on the hustings, doing my bit to see the re-election of an Albanese Labor government.”

WA Premier Roger Cook with wife Carly Lane celebrating Labor’s election win. Picture: Colin Murty

Some Liberal strategists say they have been buoyed by the magnitude of the swing against Labor in booths in safe Labor state seats across Perth’s outer metropolitan areas. They say they would need only a fraction of those swings to claim the new seat of Bullwinkel and potentially reclaim seats such as Pearce and Hasluck, both lost at the last election.

But the results show the Liberals still have problems in their traditional heartland seats, with the party failing to reclaim a majority of the wealthy metropolitan electorates that had been its backbone for generations. Labor’s vote held up better than had been expected in the state seats within Tangney, the Albanese government’s most marginal WA seat, and the Liberals made only relatively modest gains in booths within the must-win teal-held electorate of Curtin.

One Liberal insider said those colleagues finding a silver lining in the result were “deluded”.

“Frankly, our brand is trash,” he said.

While Labor’s primary vote fell more than 18 per cent from the extraordinary high of 2021, the Liberals could boost their primary vote by only 7.3 per cent. That same swing was picked up by the Greens and independents.

Mr Cook said the significance of the swings at the election was distorted by the magnitude of the 2021 win, in which Labor secured a phenomenal 60 per cent of the primary vote.

“The swings have been compared to 2021, and 2021 was obviously an extraordinary election. So it’s difficult to actually create an analysis on the basis of the last four years,” he said.

“What we see is that there’s going to continue to be strong WA Labor representation throughout the metropolitan area, in our outer suburbs and in regional WA.”

Ms Mettam, meanwhile, all but conceded her leadership was terminal in the wake of the defeat.

WA Liberal leader Libby Mettam gives her concession speech on Saturday. Picture: Paul Garvey

The Liberal partyroom is due to meet on Tuesday, when decisions are likely to be made about the leadership.

Ms Mettam is the only Liberal MP with previous parliamentary experience, but media personality and City of Perth lord mayor Basil Zempilas has long been seen as the heir apparent to the leadership. The deputy leadership could fall to either new Cottesloe MP Sandra Brewer or new Carine MP Liam Staltari, a former Young Liberal president who at 29 will be the youngest member of the WA parliament.

Ms Mettam declined to confirm if she would contest the leadership, but said whoever led the party must have clear air, the support of colleagues, and four years to do the job.

“This is about ensuring that whoever the leader is has the support of the Liberal Party and has the best chance at the 2029 election,” Ms Mettam said on Sunday.

“It is about looking at the gains we did make and why we didn’t make gains in the areas that we should have.”