‘We’re not promising the world’: The unflappable Libby Mettam on getting things done rather than fancy stuff

Most voters heading to the early polling booth in Dawesville on Friday morning masterfully dodged Liberal leader Libby Mettam and her party faithful handing out how to vote cards – but one gentleman stopped to gas bag.

Mettam and the state secretary of the WA Electrical Trades Union Adam Woodage talk for a few minutes before he heads inside to vote.

From afar the chat seemed jovial and afterwards I ask Mettam whether she convinced the union boss to vote Liberal this election.

“No, but he says he might consider the upper house,” she jokes.

Unflappable Libby

Unionists and irate early voters are nothing for the Liberal leader who has developed diamond-tough skin through one of the toughest periods of her party’s entire history.

Left with just two seats in the lower house after the 2021 election demolition, the wall of Labor MPs could have ruined her, but she persevered and is just days away from a political reset at the 2025 WA election.

WAtoday joined her for a morning on the hustings last Friday, where she crisscrossed the city in an attempt to reverse her party’s fortunes.

We meet in Piara Waters at the CY O’Connor bottlo drive-thru where Nova’s Natalie Locke and Shaun McManus interview her.

Libby Mettam with Nova presenters Nat Locke, Shaun McManus and Ross Wallman.Credit: Ross Swanborough

Locke probes her past life as a journalist at the ABC and her time at WAAPA before teasing her that she better not take their jobs.

“I might be giving you a call on the 9th of March, you never know,” Mettam jokingly says before getting back onto message.

“But I’m certainly focused on being the premier of WA, I think I can make a real difference.”

David and Goliath

If the 2021 election result – where Labor obtained 60 per cent of the primary vote – was historic, then the miracle needed for Libby to assume the role of premier would be unlike anything ever seen in a modern democracy.

A Newspoll in February suggested a two-party result of 56-44, meaning Labor would be knocked back to the result it recorded in 2017.

However, this result was – at the time – Labor’s best state election ever.

Party insiders from both Labor and Liberal have predicted the Liberals could win anywhere between 7 and 15 seats – still well short of the 30 seats needed to form government.

The task ahead is not lost on Mettam, but she remains undeterred.

“I recognise that we have a David and Goliath battle in terms of resources, but I also understand that it is in the people’s hands,” she says.

After the Nova interview, we jump in Mettam’s Toyota Prado to head south to Dawesville.

Poor Prado

Mettam was elected member of Vasse in WA’s South West in a byelection in 2014 after the resignation of former Transport Minister Troy Buswell.

Vasse’s distance from Perth has been hard on her Prado, which has clocked up 400,000 kilometres but Mettam, who grew up in Geraldton and Kalgoorlie, doesn’t mind the long commute.

She says it’s amazing what you can get done on the road thanks to hands-free technology.

Libby Mettam with Dawesville candidate Owen Mulder at the Dawesville early voting station.Credit: Ross Swanborough

“I’m determined to not see the regions as a weakness. I think being from the regions is an absolute strength and you know that distance is just something you have to accept,” she says.

We arrive in Dawesville around 9am where the plan is to hand out how-to-vote cards with the candidate Owen Mulder.

Mulder is pleased to see her and is eager to tell me about Labor’s failure to act on its 2020 promise to upgrade Peel Health Campus.

Health focus

Health is Mettam’s strongest topic given her background as shadow health minister.

She gets visibly excited reciting promises made like planning to build a new Royal Perth Hospital, adding 500 transitional beds to the system, beefing up preventative measures like the Ear Bus and establishing a Royal Commission into the health sector.

One of her more controversial promises is to retain the health portfolio if she becomes premier.

Health Minister Amber-Jade Sanderson says it is too big a portfolio for the premier to hold.

Mettam leaves the door open to appoint an assistant minister of health.

“We would do what is required to ensure that it works but those sorts of matters, and the detail on the portfolios is obviously something that would be considered after the election,” she says.

Do it for her

As we start driving toward Mandurah for her daily press conference, Mettam excitedly shows me a video of her seven-month-old granddaughter Remi sent by her daughter Bianca who lives in Wollongong with her partner.

Remi and Bianca attended the Liberals’ campaign launch earlier this month to the delight of Mettam.

She says despite the distance, her daughter sends her daily videos, which are a “good leveler” and remind her of why she got into politics in the first place – to make Australia a better place for the youngest Australians.

Getting to know Libby

Mettam’s husband Johnathan is a winemaker at Grace Farms and 3 Oceans so she knows her South West wines well. 

She says after her partner’s wines (of course) she really likes the Fraser Gallop Parterre Chardonnay.

Libby is also a keen jogger and most days, even during the campaign, is up at 5am to exercise.

However, she’s had to hang up the shoes for a little while after hurting her hamstring. She says she hasn’t had time to go to the physio during the campaign to fix it.

Mettam’s other daughter Sophia and her partner will be with Mettam on election night as will her husband, winemaker Johnathan, though she says he will need to head back the next morning for harvest.

“He’ll be getting up very early in the morning and heading straight back down south to continue the harvest because the grapes can’t really wait,” she says.

The dopamine hit doesn’t last long as Mettam arrives in Mandurah and stands alongside candidate Kaye Seeber where she rehashes already public policies for seniors.

Like the past few days she is grilled on her party’s refusal to release its costings until the last week of the campaign.

She then fields more questions about controversial candidates and laments the lack of resources she is dealing with.

Best friends

It’s a poignant point driven home half an hour later as we are stuck in congestion on the Kwinana Freeway heading 77 kilometres north to the Scarborough Beach Road polling booths.

We see a large billboard looming over the freeway featuring Labor’s negative “Don’t Risk the Liberals” ad featuring her and Churchlands candidate Basil Zempilas’ face and an L plate.

She scoffs at the ad, not because of the messaging but because of Labor’s massive ad spend.

As we near the next polling booth, I try to press Mettam on Zempilas and the leadership coup she crushed in the last week of parliament last year.

Libby Mettam at a press conference with Mandurah candidate Kaye Seeber.Credit: Ross Swanborough

It was the first time in her leadership that her unflappability gave way to sheer political cunning where she called out “cowards in the shadows” that arranged polling that was used to destabilise her leadership in the party.

Zempilas’ campaign manager facilitated that polling for a mystery businessman whose identity remains unknown.

Zempilas maintains he had no knowledge of his lieutenant arranging the polling.

Whatever animosity Mettam felt for those within her party back then is now gone.

“It was frustrating not being able to talk about issues that mattered to Western Australians because it was a great distraction,” she says reflecting on that week.

“I’ve moved past all of that now. I certainly kept what I knew very close to my chest, and I’ve moved on.”

Churchlands candidate Basil Zempilas greets Libby Mettam at the Scarborough Beach Road polling booth.Credit: Ross Swanborough

By chance, Zempilas is at the polling booth handing out how to vote cards and he greets her with a hug and kiss before singing her praises to me and lashing Labor’s negative attacks on the pair.

“All of their negative stuff has backfired. We’ll find out in eight days just how much,” he says.

Keep it simple

Ultimately, Mettam says her pitch to voters is a simple one.

No “bread and circuses” and focusing on the basics – fixing WA’s health system, cost of living support, tackling crime and boosting housing stock in the worst housing crisis the state has ever seen.

She attacks Labor’s plan to build a racetrack at Burswood seven times throughout the morning, saying it highlighted their disconnection from what the public wants.

“We’re not promising the world,” she says.

“West Australians are not interested in the fancy stuff.”

Regardless of their promises, Mettam has a huge mountain to climb this Saturday and given she is starting from such a low base defining what can be considered a successful result is fuzzy.

I ask her how many seats she would consider success and am met with a characteristically benign response.

“It is to form government. That’s what I’m focused on. I get it every day”.

I say I hoped I could break her.

“Just about,” she jokes.

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