Mark McGowan reaches the highs of politics after surviving the lows

With Mark McGowan ascendant, WA voters saw Zak Kirkup’s warnings of Labor ‘total control’ as opposition weakness.

WA Liberal Opposition Leader Zak Kirkup on Friday. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Tony McDonough

For weeks, Liberal leader Zak Kirkup has been imploring voters to consider the risks of Labor gaining “total control” of WA’s parliament. Voters listened to those warnings, and emphatically voted for Labor anyway.

The result of Saturday’s election is of truly historic proportions.

Before today, the Liberal Party’s worst-ever election result was 13 seats — posted four years ago when Colin Barnett was dumped from power. So severe is the carnage that the party’s lower-house numbers are almost certain to fall into single digits.

McGowan’s handling of the pandemic – and particularly his closure of the state’s borders, which have proved especially popular in parochial WA – meant the election was always going to be impossible for the Liberal Party.

Kirkup’s decision to acknowledge the inevitable and focus on trying to save as many seats as possible carried plenty of logic. The warnings about total control resonated better than any of the 57 policies announced during the campaign.

But his concession appears to have sat uneasily with the public. Despite his repeated insistence that he wasn’t giving up, voters struggled to see it any other way.

For McGowan, the emphatic victory is his crowning achievement.

The NSW-born former navy lawyer has tasted the lows of politics, most notably when Labor was tipped out of office in 2008 and when he led the party to a heavy defeat in 2013.

There were plenty of people in his own party who doubted his ability ahead of his 2017 election win, with some of them attempting a failed coup to replace him with former federal MP Steve Smith.

After today, however, he will be the man who led Labor to its most resounding-ever win.

He will begin his second term as Premier with government coffers that are pumped full of iron-ore royalties and an unparalleled mandate.

The challenge will come when the uncertainty of the pandemic – and the wonders it has done for his popularity – permanently fades.

While McGowan doesn’t have strong ties with the unions that underwrite the party, plenty of his parliamentary colleagues do.