Former McGowan staffer Colleen Egan preselected for key WA seat

Former McGowan Labor government staffer Colleen Egan has been preselected for Thornlie, one of Labor’s safest seats.

Former NewsCorp journalist turned politician Colleen Egan in 2008.

Former McGowan Labor government staffer Colleen Egan has been preselected for one of the party’s safest state seats after the previous candidate dropped out.

Ms Egan will contest the suburban seat of Thornlie in Perth’s working class southeast corridor for Labor at the March state election, after Wungening Aboriginal Corporation chief executive Daniel Morrison-Bird withdrew as Labor’s Thornlie candidate last week. Mr Morrison-Bird was the choice of the powerful left faction’s United Workers’ Union.

WA Labor confirmed Ms Egan’s preselection in a media release on Wednesday, saying she grew up in Perth’s south-eastern suburbs as the youngest of seven children.

“While studying journalism at Curtin University, she lived in Gosnells and began work experience at the local paper, Comment News,” Labor said.

Ms Egan was a journalist for 25 years. In that time she worked for NewsCorp including The Australian, at the Perth Sunday Times and for Seven West Media’s The West Australian where she was assistant editor. In 2006 Ms Egan won a Walkley for her outstanding contribution to journalism in recognition of her work to free Andrew Mallard, a drifter who was wrongly convicted of murdering jewellery store owner Pamela Lawrence. The killer, Simon Rochford, later took his own life after a cold case review uncovered his partial palm print at the scene. At the time police honed in on him over Lawrence’s death, Rochford was already in jail for murdering his girlfriend.

As chief of staff for WA’s reforming attorney general John Quigley between 2017 and 2023, Ms Egan worked on legislation to fix the state’s fine default laws that had for years delegated judge-like authority to bureaucrats to issue arrest warrants. Those old laws captured the 22-year-old Aboriginal woman known for cultural reasons as Miss Dhu, whom police were sent to arrest so she could serve four days in a remote police lockup for minor infractions including being drunk in public. She died on her third day in custody from undiagnosed septicemia.

On Wednesday, Ms Egan said: “As a single mum with a mortgage, I understand the cost-of-living challenges faced by many families trying to balance the family budget”.

On January 6, Mr Morrison-Bird said he had decided not to contest the longtime Labor seat but did not offer a detailed explanation.

“I feel that I can’t give the personal commitment necessary at this time,” he said.

For nine years, Mr Morrison-Bird oversaw the transformation of the Wungening into a large government contractor. Wungening is credited with effective work with troubled Indigenous families. In one program, Wungening’s Aboriginal workers intervene to guide and advise parents who have come to the attention of child protection workers because they are homeless, living with domestic violence or need to change their behaviour. An assessment of that program found that in more than 90 per cent of cases, parents changed their behaviour or got the help they needed to avoid losing their children.