Election 2022: How the West was won — Labor’s WA strategy revealed

The plan that delivered the ALP’s decisive swing in WA was delivered by Scott Morrison almost two years ago.

WA Premier Mark McGowan and Anthony Albanese during the election campaign. Picture: Getty Images

The centrepiece of the strategy that would deliver the Labor Party the decisive swing that broke the Liberal Party’s stronghold in Western Australia was delivered by Scott Morrison and two of his most senior WA-based MPs almost two years ago.

The government’s early decision to side with Clive Palmer in his 2020 court challenge against Mark McGowan’s pandemic border restrictions was a perceived betrayal that the people of WA did not forget.

The government’s support for the border challenge was backed by Mathias Cormann and Christian Porter, the most senior WA-based Federal MPs at that time. That support, which was withdrawn not long after, gave Labor the ammunition it needed to portray the Prime Minister as a NSW-centric figure who did not care about WA and also cost the Liberals many of the credits they had accrued in WA by having Cormann and Porter in such prominent ministerial positions.

Businessman and United Australia Party founder Clive Palmer. Picture: Scott Powick

One Labor insider from WA told The Australian that the Palmer issue immediately became a core part of the party’s planning for the 2022 election.

“It provided basically the most proof that anyone could ever have in the arsenal that the opposing candidate has done wrong by the electorates we were trying to win,” the strategist said.

Labor’s unprecedented decision to hive off responsibility for the campaign in WA to the party’s state office meant the campaign could fully capitalise on the lingering resentment from that episode.

After decades of underperformance in the west at Federal elections, Labor adopted a radical approach to its campaign in the state.

The party chose to host its official campaign launch in Perth for the first time in modern history. It played perfectly to parochial West Australians and has been described as a “masterstroke” by Liberal insiders.

All Labor’s advertising in WA was created by the state office specifically for a WA audience that had proven its parochialism throughout the pandemic.

The party’s slogan, plastered around polling booths on Saturday, was “Anthony Albanese and Labor will stand up for WA”. The party’s campaign posters featured a photograph of Albanese sitting alongside WA’s wildly popular Labor premier Mark McGowan.

Albanese, during his numerous visits to WA, frequently described him and his Federal team as “WA’s partner in Canberra”.

Labor also opted to bring as many of its senior figures to WA during the campaign as possible. In addition to Albanese, the likes of Tanya Plibersek and Penny Wong were repeat visitors as Labor tried to show the depth of its team. In contrast, Morrison was the only non-WA figure to feature in the state during the campaign.

Beyond the Palmer legal challenge, the other gift to Labor in WA was the record deficit handed down in the Federal budget.

The contrast between that near-trillion-dollar deficit and the healthy iron ore and GST-fuelled state surplus announced during the campaign by McGowan gave WA’s economic conservatives another reason to abandon a Liberal Party they had historically always voted for.

The end result was an incredible 11 per cent swing to Labor in WA, a move that has delivered it at least four and perhaps five more seats in the state. The Liberals, who won 11 in WA in 2019, could end up with as few as four.