Mark McGowan weighs power and politics

Mark McGowan will face his first test over how to use the power given to his government when he decides on resources to allocate to the remnants of his political rivals.

WA Nationals leader Mia Davies. Picture: Colin Murty

Mark McGowan will face his first test over how to use the power given to his government at the weekend’s West Australian election when he decides on resources to allocate to the remnants of his political rivals.

The Liberal Party, which is on track to emerge with just three of 59 lower-house seats, looks all but certain to lose opposition party status to the Nationals when McGowan’s government is formally sworn in on Friday.

The Nationals are ready to become the official opposition party, which will mean their leader, Mia Davies, will be entitled to ministerial-style resources including up to a dozen staff.

She will also move into the formal opposition leader’s office within Parliament House.

The current staff in the opposition leader’s office are set to be out of a job by the end of the week.

The abysmal showing by the Liberals at the weekend is set to see their reimbursement from the WA Electoral Commission — of about $1.98 per vote received — fall off a cliff.

Both the Nationals and the Liberals will end up with more than five MPs across both houses of parliament, meaning they will qualify for “small party status” and the funding and resources that come with that.

But there are real fears within both the Nationals and Liberals that their meagre ranks will make it all but impossible to assess legislation and tend to parliamentary and electorate duties without extra funding.

Mr McGowan, whose Labor Party will control both houses of WA’s parliament for the first time, has the discretion to direct extra funding to minor parties, something former Liberal premier Colin Barnett did when the Greens picked up a lower house seat during his government.

Martin Drum, a senior lecturer in politics at WA’s University of Notre Dame, said the government needed to consider whether both minor parties had the resources they needed to properly scrutinise legislation.

“That is one of the most fundamental parts of parliament,” he said. “You could also argue that it helps the government, because raising questions should help make for better legislation and negate the need for revisiting those issues later.”

Extra funding for minor parties could also help counter future criticisms that Mr McGowan’s government was misusing its ­numerical advantages.

“One way to obviate the ­notion of a single-party state and the criticism he might get from that is to be magnanimous in terms of resources,” Mr Drum said.

The Liberals must also appoint a new leader, which could happen as early as this week.

The party will wait for clarity around whether Sean L’Estrange holds his seat of Churchlands before its upper house and lower house members meet to decide the leadership. On Tuesday afternoon, he was leading Labor candidate Christine Tonkin by 129 votes, with just under three-quarters of the count completed.

There is no standout leadership candidate among the Liberals’ two confirmed lower house MPs. Libby Mettam was deputy leader under Zak Kirkup, while David Honey is a metropolitan-based MP who could contrast the regional focus of the Nationals.

There is growing pressure on the Nationals and Liberals to better work together and pool their resources.

The two parties are not in a formal coalition in WA.