Mark McGowan was a young man in a hurry who learnt how to bide his time

Then WA premier Alan Carpenter and his Environment Minister Mark McGowan announce the approval of Alcoa's expansion plans for its Wagerup plant in 2006.

The powerful men who helped Mark McGowan in politics had potent experience. He has always known how to find them. And he knew how to wait.

McGowan was in his navy uniform in 1996 when he went to state parliament in West Perth to see Labor’s Centre-Left faction powerbroker, Julian Grill. He was 28, planning to get married to his ­girlfriend Sarah and wanted pre­selection for the safe Labor seat of Rockingham, where he worked as a lawyer at the Garden Island Naval Base.

“He impressed me. I offered him advice and I organised a lot of support for him,” Grill recalls.

Grill talked to factional rival Kim Beazley, then the deputy prime minister, and convinced him to support McGowan. Beazley soon became McGowan’s mentor.

This was a jump to the right inside Labor that suited McGowan’s more conservative instincts, though it likely cost him a seat at Geoff Gallop’s first cabinet table. McGowan had been an effective frontbencher in opposition and the new premier rated him highly but Left forces are said to have strenuously objected to him being made a minister in 2001 when Labor came to power. Gallop made McGowan his parliamentary secretary instead. The young man in a hurry waited four years.

Then Attorney General Jim McGinty with McGowan in a Stirling Street cafe in 2008.

In 2005, Gallop rewarded McGowan with the portfolio or tourism, racing, gaming and liquor licensing. He was finally a minister – albeit it a minor one – nine years after entering parliament.

“He didn’t necessarily have the numbers in caucus at that point to be made a minister but he showed all the signs that he would be a good one,” Gallop says.

McGowan decided he was going to do something memorable by transforming Perth into a cosmopolitan city. He announced an end to bizarre wartime-era ­alcohol restrictions, triggering a brawl with the Australian Hotels Association. At the time, only pubs could sell a glass of wine or beer without food. It was illegal for a restaurant to sell an alcoholic drink to a customer without a meal. The West Australian published a photograph of the empty streets of Perth at night under the front-page headline Dullsville.

With Bob Hawke at Perth Town Hall.

McGowan ultimately won over the AHA and small bars flourished. The AHA got more members out of it and everyone was happy, including senior Labor figures who saw a minister cutting through and turning foes into friends. McGowan was made minister for the environment, then education, and he was on his way.

After Labor lost the 2008 election, McGowan again waited. He let former treasurer Eric Ripper take the role of nightwatchman then, four years later, McGowan was elected unopposed as state opposition leader. McGowan served five years in that often joyless job. By the time the WA public had tired of Liberal premier Colin Barnett in 2017, McGowan was ready. Almost three years to the day after he became premier, McGowan’s moment arrived in the form of a pandemic. The voting public came to see him as their protector and they loved him for it.

McGowan announcec he is quitting politics. Picture: Colin Murty

By March 2021 and the next election, McGowan was the most popular premier in Newspoll history, with a satisfaction rating of 88 per cent and a lead over Liberal Zak Kirkup on the better premier measure of 79-13. McGowan got married the same week he was elected to the WA parliament 27 years ago. There was a funereal mood among the MPs standing around him on Monday as he announced his retirement. His wife Sarah, however, looked delighted at the prospect of life after politics.