Scott Morrison plans cabinet minister blitz in Western Australia after election drubbing

Scott Morrison and senior ministers will ramp up the Coalition’s presence in WA after Mark McGowan’s thumping win.

 

Scott Morrison and senior cabinet ministers will launch a blitz of Western Australia and ramp up the Coalition’s presence in the battleground state, after Mark McGowan’s thumping state election victory left the WA Liberal Party with as few as two seats and a major funding blackhole.

The historic election rout — with Labor on track to win 52 out of 59 lower-house seats — came on the back of Mr McGowan’s soaring popularity, led by his hard-line position on state border closures.

Mark McGowan with wife Sara and children Amelia and Alexander at Rockingham on Sunday. Picture: Colin Murty

Labor’s victory will likely strip the WA Liberal Party of its party status and hand the opposition leader’s job to Nationals leader Mia Davies, sparking concern the result could damage the ­Coalition’s chances in the state at the next election.

The election wipeout and the WA Liberal Party branch’s precarious financial position have also triggered speculation over whether the federal division would need to take over state operations.

Senior Morrison government and Liberal Party sources said on Sunday there would not be an intervention in the state branch, ­describing the Perth-based chatter as “overwrought”.

The Prime Minister, who commands high personal satisfaction ratings in Western Australia, played down the federal implications of Labor’s state election win, arguing there was a distinction in voters’ minds when they went to state and federal ballot boxes.

Mark McGowan says the landslide election victory is an endorsement of his decisions during the pandemic. Picture: Colin Murty

“You only have to go back to the 2001 federal election which saw in the same year a very, very negative result for the Coalition at the (Queensland) state election, where we got some 28.5 per cent of the vote only to then go and get 45.6 per cent of the vote in the federal election in the same year,” Mr Morrison said.

“Australians understand the difference between federal and state and I think this is a resounding endorsement of Mark McGowan’s leadership, which I didn’t find surprising.”

With border restrictions easing and the state election over, senior government sources said plans were advanced for Mr Morrison and senior ministers to launch a political blitz in Western Australia. The Australian understands Mr Morrison will travel to the state as soon as practical, with announcements likely to focus on defence, resources and the economy.

 

Liberal MPs painted the election as a personal victory for Mr McGowan and were confident that Mr Morrison’s standing in the state would help carry key seats and support fundraising ­efforts.

Mr McGowan, who secured an 82 per cent primary vote in his seat of Rockingham, said he considered the landslide election victory an endorsement of his decisions during the pandemic, including the toughest and longest border restrictions in the nation.

“I think people saw over the course of the past year that we were prepared to do difficult things when necessary,” Mr McGowan said.

“The hard border is something that worked. The hard border stopped the importation of the virus into Western Australia.”

Mr McGowan said he had positioned Labor to appeal to a wide cross section of people including workers, small businesspeople and subcontractors. He described his team as “very centrist, we are very middle of the road”. “That is what you have got to do in political life — you have got to appeal to everyone. You have got to work across the board,” he said.

 

Opposition Leader Zak Kirkup, who lost his seat, was blamed by party officials for delivering an even worse result than pollsters had predicted.

Three weeks before the election, the 34-year-old publicly conceded the Liberals had lost. Mr Kirkup also unveiled an ambitious green energy plan that was not well received in the mining and resources state.

Mr Kirkup said the party should have switched to a message about the danger of Labor having total control of both houses of parliament long before it decided to concede defeat.

“I think it will be convenient for people to blame the new energy jobs plan, rather than to accept the fact that actually we were up against a juggernaut in Mark McGowan,” Mr Kirkup said.

Anthony Albanese on Sunday said Mr McGowan’s victory as “good news” for federal Labor ahead of next year’s election.

“The fact that you have a branch of the Liberal Party essentially wiped off the map shows that they are going to struggle to run an effective campaign,” Mr Albanese said. “Certainly, their campaign in the state election was disastrous and it’ll be the same people who are running campaigns on the ground during the federal campaign sometime over the next year. The fact is, that many people have voted Labor for the first time. It shows they’re open to voting Labor and I take great encouragement from it.”

Scott Morrison and aged-care resident Jane Malysiak after receiving their second and final COVID-19 vaccination shot at the Castle Hill Medical Centre in Sydney on Sunday. Picture: Bianca De Marchi

With the WA Liberal Party division facing a significant slide in reimbursement from the WA Electoral Commission following its disastrous performance, some inside the party have called for a federal intervention. Liberal senator Dean Smith, the government’s chief whip in the upper house, said a federal takeover of the West Australian branch would be “strenuously opposed by every member of the WA Liberal Party”.

The retirements of former cabinet ministers Mathias Cormann, Julie Bishop, and Michael Keenan, coupled with mounting pressure on Attorney-General Christian Porter and Defence Minister Linda Reynolds have drastically shifted the West Australian powerbase. Mr Cormann was a linchpin for the WA Liberal Party in relation to both organisation and fundraising.

The Coalition is also facing the threat of losing a WA seat, with the Australian Electoral Commission on Friday due to release its draft redistribution plans for Western Australia. Liberal Party sources said the AEC redistribution, which would see WA lose a seat, could influence Mr Porter’s decision to run again at the next election, with speculation his seat of Pearce could be abolished.

 

Federal Liberal electorates Tangney, Canning, Durack, Moore, O’Connor, Curtin, Stirling and Swan overlap state seats swept by Labor on Saturday. Double-digit swings were also recorded by Labor in state seats in the marginal Coalition electorate of Hasluck and Pearce. Mr Morton, Assistant Minister to the Prime Minister and Cabinet, conceded the Coalition would have fewer resources to fight the next federal election in Western Australia. “On the ground … there are issues where we will have some lack of resources, or some reduced resources on the ground. But … I know that there’s people using their vote to endorse governments that have handled the pandemic well,” the former WA Liberals state director said.

A Liberal MP said Mr Morrison needed a “wake up call” on the government’s standing in Western Australia. Another said there were political problems in the government’s delay in deciding whether the site for the full-cycle docking of Collins class submarines would stay in South Australia or move to Western Australia.