WA Premier Roger Cook takes aim at Basil Zempilas and Liberals as election race begins
Roger Cook has slammed Basil Zempilas as a ‘corrosive’ influence who would topple Liberal leader Libby Mettam at the earliest opportunity.
West Australian Premier Roger Cook has marked the official start of the state’s election race with a blistering attack on the Liberal Party’s star recruit Basil Zempilas.
Ahead of visiting WA Governor Chris Dawson to sign the writs for next month’s election, Mr Cook slammed Mr Zempilas as a “corrosive” influence who would topple Liberal leader Libby Mettam at the earliest opportunity.
Mr Zempilas, a prominent media personality who has been the City of Perth lord mayor since 2020, is running for the seat of Churchlands – one of a host of former Liberal strongholds lost in the historic rout of 2021 that left the party with just two of 59 lower house seats.
While he brings much-needed star power to the embattled party, he does have leadership ambitions and has long been seen by many within the party as a future Liberal premier. He has denied any involvement in a failed attempt late last year to install him into a leadership role from outside parliament, although his then-campaign manager, Cam Sinclair, had commissioned the polling that set the challenge in motion.
Mr Cook has up until now been largely restrained in his comments about Mr Zempilas’s candidacy, instead leaving attacks to other Labor ministers and backbenchers, but on Wednesday he seized the opportunity to criticise the high-profile candidate.
The Premier said it must have been “humiliating” for Ms Mettam to attend the official launch of Mr Zempilas’s campaign on Tuesday night, given his link to her leadership instability and the presence in the room of Mr Zempilas’s leadership backers.
“She would have had to have sit there while they had their smirks on their faces; she knew that they were working tirelessly back in November and December to try to topple her as leader,” he said.
“They tried to do it in a cowardly way. She identified this, she called them out as cowards in the shadows by commissioning this poll, leaking it to the media, trying to undermine her.”
He said he expected the leadership turmoil to return if and when Mr Zempilas entered parliament.
“Do you think they’re going to stop trying to topple Libby as leader of the Liberal Party? These guys are corrosive. They’re in there for their own interests,” he said.
“We know Basil’s in it for himself and we know that the moment he gets the opportunity, he and his little band of cowards in the shadows will topple Libby as leader.”
Several protesters carrying placards attacking Mr Zempilas’s record stood outside the campaign launch in an event Mr Cook said had been co-ordinated by WA Labor. While he said he was not involved in organising the protest, he supported their message and said Mr Zempilas should expect “a bit of rough and tumble” during the campaign.
“I endorse anyone that’s going to hold Basil Zempilas to account for his past actions,” he said.
Ms Mettam repeatedly refused to be drawn when asked about the Premier’s comments, telling reporters she was not focused on political pointscoring.
“My focus in on a better future for Western Australians, and today it’s about delivering better healthcare for Western Australians and addressing the mismanagement we’re seeing in our hospital system,” she said.
Mr Zempilas, meanwhile, accused Labor of basing its attacks on him on “outright lies”.
“You would think at the start of the election campaign the Premier would be more interested in selling his vision for the state rather than spreading Labor lies on signs carried by Labor agents,” he said. “He needs to forget about me. He is obsessed with me, Labor is obsessed with me.”
The Liberals enter the election campaign as rank outsiders, with betting agencies offering odds of between $12 and $15 for a Coalition win. However, both Mr Cook and Ms Mettam are refusing to publicly contemplate that the result is a foregone conclusion.
The Liberals’ campaign is centred on the cost of living, health and law and order – three areas where Ms Mettam believes the government has fallen short.
“We’re focused on our priorities, which is both fixing a broken health system, addressing law and all that, issues, building more homes for Western Australians, addressing cost-of-living pressures,” she said.
“During the largest boom the state has ever seen, we have seen Western Australians fundamentally not see the delivery services that they should expect from a government.”
Mr Cook, meanwhile, said he and his party were not taking the election for granted. While the party has rolled out several major election commitments, it is also targeting what it says is the inexperience of the Liberals team.
“WA might have the strongest economy in the nation, but we have the laziest Liberals in the nation,” the Premier said.
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He said the government had not raised with him the idea of raising the spending cap on individual candidates despite a report over the weekend that Special Minister of State Don Farrell was considering raising the cap from $800,000.