Decimated WA Liberals put target on Mark McGowan

The Liberal remnants of WA’s opposition appear to believe the best hope of turning around the party’s fortunes rest in taking the fight directly to the state’s all-conquering Premier.

WA Liberal leader Libby Mettam. Picture: Facebook

Two years after experiencing the biggest election defeat in Australian political history, the Liberal remnants of Western Australia’s opposition appear to believe the best hope of turning around the party’s fortunes rest in taking the fight directly to the state’s all-conquering Premier.

Such was Mark McGowan’s popularity in the lead-up to his 2021 election win that the Liberal opposition deliberately shied away from attacking him ­directly.

That backfired spectacularly, with the Liberals winning just two of 59 lower house seats and ceding opposition status to the Nationals.

On the anniversary of that spectacular rout, Liberal leader Libby Mettam – who replaced her sole lower house colleague David Honey as leader earlier this year – said she believed West Australians increasingly saw Mr McGowan as “out of touch”.

“This Premier has come in with an extraordinary mandate to govern, but we have a broken hospital system, we have an increase in violent crime, we have cost-of-living crises right across this state, and we have a Premier who’s increasingly out of touch with the challenges facing West Australians,” she said.

“Seven of the 10 worst performing emergency departments in the nation are in WA. We have a Premier that likes to boast about a budget surplus, but is mean-spirited when it comes to supporting struggling West Australians.”

News that Jim Chalmers had formally launched a review into the 2018 deal that saw WA win a far larger share of its GST revenue was also seized on by the opposition as a test for Mr McGowan.

NSW and Victoria, in particular, have been scathing of the deal – negotiated between Mr McGowan and Scott Morrison when the former prime minister was treasurer under Malcolm Turnbull – which guarantees WA at least 70c for every dollar of GST it raises.

Without that floor, WA’s share would have fallen to less than 10c in the dollar because of the enormous amounts of royalties flowing to it from the iron ore mines of the Pilbara.

Opposition Leader Shane Love said Mr McGowan needed to fight against the voices on the eastern seaboard calling for WA to lose its current share.

“What we need is for our Premier to be standing up to Anthony Albanese and Jim Chalmers and making sure Western Australia’s fair share of the GST does not dissipate as a result of the inquiries he’s now launching,” Mr Love said.

The McGowan government has also been under fire over ongoing scandals surrounding the state-owned Perth Mint.

The Australian Transaction Reports and Analysis Centre, the federal financial intelligence agency, last year launched an investigation into the mint over longstanding governance failures that may have led to widespread breaches of anti-money laundering laws.

The ABC’s Four Corners program last week reported that the mint had also sold gold to the Shanghai Bullion Exchange that had been diluted to below Shanghai’s minimum standards.

Mr McGowan has said it was extremely unlikely the gold in question would need to be returned and noted that the Shanghai exchange had bought substantial amounts of gold from the Mint since the dilution was detected.

The opposition is calling for a royal commission into the saga.