By Warwick Stanley
How did it all go so wrong for Premier Alan Carpenter and the Labor Party in Western Australia?
According to one Labor insider this week: ``A healthy majority, a booming economy, a terrible opposition and he's lost the election ... there's something wrong''.
As he sees it, the ALP has a ready scapegoat for the disastrous election campaign that led to the party's notional 17-seat majority being cut to a minority in the new parliament.
``Carpenter took the decision to go to an early election,'' he said.
''(WA Attorney-General Jim) McGinty was strongly opposed to calling the election.
``He wasn't asked, but once his opinion was known Carpenter went ahead and called it.
``McGinty didn't know about it until his staff were called by the media.''
The same source said Mr Carpenter had also acted alone in deciding to pursue a campaign against uranium mining in the fortnight before the election.
``They advised him not to,'' he said.
``He was the one who insisted on using uranium.
``Do you think anyone cares about uranium?
``Do you think families trying to pay their grocery bills care about a pound and a half of uranium, a bit of yellowcake.
It is my responsibility, ultimately the outcome of the election, from my point of view.
``Why would you talk about uranium?
``It works out as health, education, law and order, taxes, cost of living, all that ... that's what people care about.''
If the anecdotes are accurate, Mr Carpenter was correct to take full responsibility for the six per cent swing against his party at Saturday's election.
In his first public mea culpa following the poll, he told ABC TV's 7.30 Report on Monday: ``I accept total responsibility for the reaction that we got back from the public''.
``It is my responsibility, ultimately the outcome of the election, from my point of view.''
It is certainly not the outcome Mr Carpenter expected on calling the snap election on Thursday, August 7, five months before one was due.
While the timing appeared opportunistic and cynical, with former opposition leader Colin Barnett having been re-elected to the job just a day earlier, it was also widely viewed as politically astute.
At his first press conference as leader since leaving the job after the 2005 election, few thought Mr Barnett could live up to his vow to return from imminent retirement and seriously challenge the Carpenter government.
The words he used - ``I am in this to win it'' - were seen by media as the opening salvo of an old warhorse who knew he was short on ammunition.
``You're a bit rusty, aren't you?'' asked one reporter, after Mr Barnett had misnamed a TV reporter he had known for years.
Complicating matters, Mr Barnett at first refused to ditch his plans for a Kimberley-Perth canal to fix the capital's water problems - the issue which had helped scotch his chances at the 2005 election.
Then he announced that Troy Buswell - he of chair-sniffing, bra-snapping and squirrel-gripping fame - would be in his shadow cabinet as treasury spokesman.
The Olympics were about to get underway - widely seen as another bonus for a government trying to deprive its opposition of political oxygen in the first two weeks of the campaign.
But just three days after the election was called, the opposition saw its first small flicker of light at the end of a four-week tunnel.
A nine per cent swing against the Labor government in the Northern Territory was met with disbelief around the country.
Mr Carpenter did not dismiss the result, saying it showed his party ``nothing can be taken for granted'', but he said the issues in the NT were different and he did not expect the swing to be replicated in WA.
For the first two weeks of the four-week campaign, the ALP appeared to be holding its ground, announcing a number of attractive new policies that it had obviously been holding back for an election, and pointing to a dearth of opposition policy.
But as opinion polls and internal party polling confirmed a swing against the government, Mr Carpenter shifted his strategy to claim underdog status.
Australia had a history of shock defeats, he said. Look at what had happened to Wayne Goss in Queensland, Jeff Kennett in Victoria and Richard Court in WA.
``Nobody expected them to lose, but they lost,'' he said.
The Liberals marked the halfway point of the campaign with a raucous, balloon-laden campaign launch, encouraging their throng of supporters to wave banners and plastic clappers and greet Mr Barnett like a first Australian president.
Just a day later, the Channel Nine ``worm'' in the leader's TV debate gave the result to Mr Carpenter, but as the ratings revealed, hardly anyone had watched.
From this point, Labor's campaign appeared to lose direction and run out of steam.
On August 26, in an obvious pitch for the green vote, Mr Carpenter announced Labor would ban uranium mining by legislating against it, while reaffirming Labor's ban on genetically modified crops.
Liberal campaign workers were joyous.
Mr Barnett, with a $400,000 injection of campaign funds from the WA Chamber of Commerce and Industry, was given the opportunity to home in on the government's record on health, education and law and order.
It was a simple message - name three things the government had done while it was in office?
The government failed to counter with an adequate response or defence of its record, and now Mr Carpenter is close to joining Messrs Goss, Kennett and Court in the annals of Australia's shock political victims.
Former federal government minister and opposition leader Kim Beazley was among very few political commentators to see it coming.
Despite the one-vote, one-value legislation which the Carpenter government had managed to push through parliament, shifting six country seats to the city and giving the party its notional 17-seat majority, Mr Beazley said Labor would do well to hang on in a traditionally conservative state.
On August 20, he wrote: ``To win any time in WA requires the ALP to perform a double somersault with pike and a few twists thrown in''.
``The Liberals have trashed their brand name with their leadership shenanigans.
``On past performance you would have to expect that if the parliament had run to next February, they would have closed down on Colin Barnett a second time. There would have been an awful six months in between.
``They will hold together until September 6.''
Mr Beazley today said he was sorry ``WA's demography reasserted itself'' and that his forecast had been borne out.
He said he was also sorry Mr Carpenter had not taken his advice to go to the polls earlier, when Mr Buswell was making headlines around the world.
AAP