From doormat to dominant: the unexpected ascension of ‘Sneakers’ McGowan

Mark McGowan has transformed from a dogged, bland politician to become the face of unprecedented election result, but he is now at odds with the Prime Minister and the business sector.

The authoritative, determined Mark McGowan who has come to national prominence over the past 18 months is a very different man to the one who was previously only tolerated by his Labor colleagues. Picture: Colin Murty

Before he was the chief roadblock in Scott Morrison’s plans to reopen the country, before his handling of the pandemic and his needling of NSW made him a hero in the west and infuriated the east, Western Australia Premier Mark McGowan struggled to be liked within his own party.

For much of his early career, he carried the derogatory nickname of Sneakers – such was the extent of his brown-nosing of senior Labor figures, the joke among his party colleagues went, that his shoes were the only part of him that remained visible.

Today, he has transformed from a dogged if somewhat bland politician into one of the most dominant premiers the country has seen. His parochialism and success in keeping WA Covid-free won him an unprecedented result at the March state election, but he is now finding himself increasingly at odds over the path out of the pandemic with both the Prime Minister and the nation’s business sector.

Qantas chief Alan Joyce on Thursday flagged that Perth’s direct flight to London – a landmark route the WA government had spent $15m to secure – could move to Darwin as a direct result of McGowan’s hardline border.

That drew a sharp rebuke from McGowan, who noted that WA’s success in keeping its economy going had generated the tax that helped prop up Qantas through the pandemic and called on it to “show some understanding and gratitude” for what the state had done.

The Qantas skirmish is one of the most tangible examples yet of the longer-term consequences that could stem from McGowan’s successful if draconian management of the crisis.

His recommitment in recent weeks to interstate border closures and lockdowns even when vaccination rates hit 80 per cent, and to targeting zero Covid in WA, triggered anxiety from the mines of the Pilbara to the boardrooms of St George’s Tce, and to city hoteliers and tourism operators battling interstate cancellations.

It was a kick in the guts to those with loved ones outside WA, and surprised even some in his own party.

The backlash underscores how difficult it will be for McGowan to balance his desire for zero Covid in the community – which has been so central to his popularity – with an eventual reopening.

The pandemic has given Mark McGowan the chance to display his leadership. Picture: Colin Murty

Changed demeanour

The authoritative, determined McGowan who has come to national prominence over the past 18 months is a very different man to the one who was previously only tolerated by his Labor colleagues.

Mick Murray was a Labor MP alongside McGowan for 20 years until his retirement at the March election, and the former sports minister still marvels at McGowan’s transformation. “Before, he was a bit of a nervous Nellie, but he has changed his demeanour,” he said. “He is confident, he is willing to take people on, he is not cue-carded like most of the party is.

“That’s endeared him to Western Australians. But it’s not hard to get Western Australians riled up about the east coast, either.”

While the pandemic has given McGowan the chance to display his leadership, it has also capped a gradual but noticeable image makeover: the glasses that were a staple early on are seldom seen, and his old habit of clasping his hands and rubbing his thumb during press appearances has been ­replaced by an assertive hands-on-hips power stance.

And as long as West Australians have no desire to travel east, the state is a pandemic-era utopia. There have been little to no restrictions on movement or venue capacities, masks have been required only briefly on the other side of Perth’s three short lockdowns, and the economy – almost single-handedly thanks to the state’s mining sector – is booming.

Unemployment is the lowest in the country. Perth’s Optus Stadium looks certain to host this year’s AFL grand final.

Captain’s call

McGowan’s navigation through the pandemic has been a clear success; navigating out of the pandemic will be far more complex.

Arguably more than any other leader in Australia, the 54-year-old former navy lawyer has been the polarising political figure of the pandemic. His willingness to slam the state’s borders shut and his broadsides at other states – NSW in particular – have won him unprecedented popularity at home, but he has come across as an arrogant upstart in states that seldom give much thought to the west.

Mark McGowan and Kim Beazley at Rockingham Senior High School polling booth in 2005. Picture: Jackson Flindell

He has had a significant impact on the national debate about the crisis, and has demonstrated an ability to both spur the country into action and inflame political tensions.

“No WA premier has appeared on the 6pm news bulletins into Sydney like Mark has,” says one federal MP who has seen first-hand the animosity McGowan has stirred in some of his Canberra colleagues. “He has jumped on to their radar in a way you’d never see from a WA premier.”

McGowan has channelled WA’s deep-seated parochialism despite being born and raised in NSW (his mother was a schoolteacher, his dad a wool classer) and having attended university in Queensland.

He arrived in WA only as an adult when taking up a role at the HMAS Stirling naval base on Garden Island.

The base is directly across the water from Rockingham, an oceanfront southern suburb best known as a low socio-economic area of burnouts and welfare. Rockingham has been home to McGowan, his wife, Sarah, and their three children since he left the navy upon his election to office in 1996, although he was recently spotted inspecting multimillion-dollar homes in the fashionable inner north suburb of Mt Lawley.

McGowan was a captain’s call by Kim Beazley for the seat of Rockingham, and his appointment left a lingering distrust towards him from those in the party who thought it should go to long-term Labor stalwart Kate Doust.

He was a surprise omission from the Gallop government’s first ministry, which some say left a chip on his shoulder.

Mark McGowan as a boy. He only came to Western Australia as an adult.

He got his shot at the leadership when he was one of the few willing to step up and fix the party after the messy defeat of Alan Carpenter in 2008, but he was roundly belted by Colin Barnett in the 2013 election, and just months out from the successful 2017 election was the target of a leadership challenge from former federal defence minister Stephen Smith.

Those setbacks have all helped McGowan grow as a politician. Supporters and detractors alike describe him as persistent. He has also proven adept at the crucial task of keeping his caucus disciplined and compliant.

His appetite for being in the news cycle, according to those who know him, is eye-catching even by a politician’s standards.

“He loves being the dominant person, he loves the Mark McGowan show,” says one MP.

“We knew that in (the election of) 2017, when it was all about Mark McGowan’s plan, and that was dialled up to 11 in 2021.”

The outcry of the past two weeks over McGowan’s plans for ongoing border restrictions and lockdowns has highlighted the difficult choice he now faces: either to maintain WA as a hermit kingdom indefinitely, or set a path that will eventually see the virus enter a vaccinated community that has learnt to value zero Covid above almost anything else.

Doing the latter – which must be inevitable at some point – would almost certainly come at a cost to his sky-high standing.

Political traits

McGowan was once a political nemesis of Paul Everingham, who first moved to Perth in the early 2000s as the WA Liberal Party’s executive director, but for the past 18 months the pair has been in almost weekly contact as Everingham – now chief executive of the Western Australian Chamber of Minerals and Energy – acted as the go-between for the Premier and the miners that have underpinned WA’s economy throughout the pandemic.

Everingham sees similarities between McGowan and former prime minister John Howard and former Queensland premier Peter Beattie when it comes to their ability to learn from their time in opposition and read the mood of the public. “When you’ve been on the receiving end of the political wilderness, you learn what’s hard, what’s not, who is important and who is not,” Everingham says.

“I know Howard very well and I know Beattie pretty well, and McGowan has some political traits of both of them and particularly on how to have a pretty good read of what’s important to most people.”

Mark McGowan as opposition leader in 2015.

Everingham’s comparison with Howard is meant as a compliment. Others believe McGowan is at risk of suffering the same hubris that brought down both Howard and the man McGowan replaced as WA premier, Colin Barnett.

Both men would hate the comparison, but people from both sides of politics in WA see similarities between McGowan and Barnett.

The Liberal leader enjoyed a period of sustained widespread popularity in WA, and smashed McGowan in the 2013 poll.

Following the departure of his treasurer Troy Buswell, and with a lack of top-tier talent behind him, Barnett became a dominant and controlling figure and earned himself the nickname of the Emperor.

McGowan lost his trusted treasurer Ben Wyatt to retirement at the March election, and then gave himself the Treasurer role.

Mick Murray says while he sees the similarities, he believes McGowan will be able to see when sentiment turns against him.

“Barnett still believed he could be premier and he was the only person in WA who believed that,” Murray says.

“McGowan’s political smarts will tell him when it’s time to go. If the boat starts to sink and it needs a new captain, he will jump.”

Critical test

As McGowan continues to refine WA’s path out of the pandemic, he doesn’t need to look far to see how swiftly things can change.

In 2021 you are only as good as your last Covid test, as Gladys ­Berejiklian’s rapid fall from the woman who saved Australia into the woman who destroyed Sydney shows.

Everingham says the next six months will be critical not just for McGowan but for all of Australia’s political leaders.

“Because WA is a trade-­exposed state, coming out of it and enabling the free movement of people and goods and services is critical to the success of the state’s economy,” he says.

“He has protected his citizens extremely well – no one can contest that. The complexity and trickiness of the next stage is that as we start to open up, the idea of zero Covid in the entire Australian community is just not feasible or realistic.”

Murray puts it more bluntly.

“It’s what he does next that is the difficult thing,” he says.

“We haven’t been exposed to any great degree, so if he makes a mistake, he is in the shit.”