Cook’s ministerial recipe gives a taste of WA’s future

By resisting wholesale ministerial changes, Roger Cook reduces the risk of inflaming the tensions from last week’s leadership battle

New WA Premier Roger Cook speaking at a press conference after the Labor Caucas meeting.

The cabinet reshuffle to be announced by new WA Premier Roger Cook on Wednesday will be minor, but it will tell us a lot about his government.

Cook will say that the limited changes are all about delivering a stable and consistent government in the wake of Mark McGowan’s shock resignation last week. Stability and continuity were, after all, central to his ultimately successful pitch to become Premier.

But by resisting wholesale changes, he also reduces the risk of inflaming tensions that still linger from the events of last week. Cook secured the premiership only after he turned his back on his lifelong political backers and decided to go against the wishes of his own sub-faction, the powerful United Workers Union.

UWU, which has more MPs in the Labor Pparty room than any other group and which up until now has wielded a strong influence over appointments, had backed Amber-Jade Sanderson over Cook, but the latter managed to draw support from the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union sub-faction and the party’s Right faction.

Keeping Sanderson in the health, rather than stripping his leadership rival of the high-profile portfolio, should help avoid nudging the party towards a factional civil war.

(It may also be the most effective way of keeping her lingering leadership ambitions in check, given Cook – her predecessor in health – knows first-hand how damaging the daily crises in health can be to one’s political ambitions. Cook probably wouldn’t be Premier today if McGowan hadn’t stripped him of health in late 2021.)

Moving Bill Johnston out of corrective services shows that Cook is determined to bring about real change in juvenile detention. McGowan’s harsh criticism of the children inside Banksia Hill and his description of foetal alcohol syndrome disorder as “no excuse” caused real angst for many Labor MPs, and Cook shapes as a far more sympathetic figure.

And plucking first-term Kimberley MP Divina D’Anna from the crowded ranks of backbenchers for a promotion to parliamentary secretary is a reflection of Cook’s genuine lifelong commitment to Indigenous Australians.

Aboriginal issues will be at the core of the Cook government in a way they weren’t under McGowan.