Young gun Ben Wyatt pulled the trigger too soon

THE WA Labor Party was all set to decide next week whether or not to elect a new leader.

The incumbent is Eric Ripper, a former deputy premier and treasurer in the Geoff Gallop and Alan Carpenter governments. The challenger was Ben Wyatt, a young indigenous newcomer to the state parliamentary Labor Party who has long been touted as a future leader.

But yesterday Wyatt pulled out of the leadership spill he called for, facing up to the public humiliation that few of his colleagues wanted him to lead the WA Labor Party at just 36 years of age, even though Ripper's preferred-premier ratings are in the teens and Labor's two-party vote has bottomed out. The manner in which Wyatt handled the challenge is a sure sign he isn't ready to lead.

But as interesting as Wyatt's botched leadership tilt is, more interesting is the indigenous Wyatt family history in WA politics.

Wyatt's father, Cedric, 70, sought preselection for the Labor Party in the senate but failed. After that he was preselected by the Liberals to run for Kalgoorlie at the 1996 election, but didn't win the seat. Ben's cousin Ken Wyatt, 58, is the new Liberal member for Hasluck in the House of Representatives. His emotional maiden speech late last year, dressed in traditional Aboriginal costume, received a standing ovation from both sides of politics.

Pinpointing what drew the older generation of Wyatts to the conservative side of politics while Ben has embraced the Labor Party is difficult. Pragmatism and opportunity may be the simplest answer.

Ken Wyatt's website proudly claims he has never received the patronage of the Labor Party or the trade union movement, suggesting a disdain for the collective actions Labor prides itself on.

But Ken Wyatt wasn't a long-term member of the Liberal Party before winning preselection for a Labor-held marginal seat: the Liberals just gave him an opportunity.

In an interview in early 2009, Ben Wyatt said of his father: "He has a big, deep suspicion of government, even though he worked as a senior bureaucrat in Aboriginal affairs departments for years."

Given that Labor is the traditional party of big government, Wyatt Sr may have been drawn to the creed (if not the reality) of smaller government spruiked by the Liberals. However, he has also confirmed that he switched from the ALP to the Liberals ahead of 1996 because he was given a chance to contest a seat.

In an interview after Ripper promoted him to opposition treasury spokesman following Labor's 2008 state election loss, Ben Wyatt said: "While Dad's a crash-or-crash-through sort of person who's had a lifetime of fighting, I'm prepared to wait for the right moment to effect change." It turns out he picked the wrong moment to try to effect a leadership change, and he crashed rather than crashed through.

The younger Wyatt's interest in becoming a Labor MP started when he was a child, at a time his father was still a Labor man, flowing from his family's friendship with controversial WA figure Julian Grill, a former minister in Brian Burke's government, and a man who helped shift support behind the young Wyatt.

That strong political connection may help to explain why Ben chose the Labor Party. But it would be a mistake to conclude his decision was entirely pragmatic.

Wyatt studied politics at the London School of Economics and Political Science in between working as a lawyer. During that time he was exposed to ideas that helped shape his support for third-way politics: the idea of left-wing governments shifting to the right on certain issues to maintain popular appeal without losing core commitments to social justice.

For an indigenous man torn between Liberal and Labor connections, it seemed like a good fit.

There are a lot of firsts when indigenous Australians choose politics as a career. Cedric Wyatt was one of the first Aboriginal candidates to run for a lower house

seat. Ken Wyatt is the first to be elected to the House of Representatives. Ben Wyatt is the first to be elected to a metropolitan seat in the WA parliament.

The Wyatt family has done a lot to lift the role of indigenous people in Australian politics, which says as much about the low number of Aborigines who run for parliament as it does about one family's achievements.

Few in WA expect Labor to win the next election, which means Wyatt's colleagues may have done him a favour by refusing to support his leadership tilt.

The political landscape is littered with the corpses of young leaders who extinguished their political careers early by rising into the leadership too soon. John Brogden in NSW, Matt Birney in WA and Mark Latham federally are just three obvious examples.

Wyatt still has a bright future, but he has damaged himself by trying to lead at too young an age. Perhaps Cedric and Ken, who turned to politics later in their lives, would agree.