Unfiltered, unapologetic Alannah among the last of dying political breed

There wouldn’t be a journalist who has covered politics in Western Australia in the past 20 years who didn’t at some point cop a bollocking from Alannah MacTiernan.

The first time I spoke with her, I was a rookie reporter at The West Australian, following up a scoop from legendary newshound Mark “Bulldog” Drummond.

Alannah MacTiernan has retired.

This was circa 2004, and he’d got a hold of secret government plans for the redevelopment of East Perth around the WACA Ground and Gloucester Park trotting track.

The question of the day was whether the Government might force the trots to move, and I was tasked with putting the questions in the minister’s office to write the “follow”.

It was mid-afternoon when the phone rang.

“Gareth? Look, it’s Alannah MacTiernan here. Do you people over at the West just sit around and ask yourselves, ’How can we f--- over the government today?”

Gulp. Um, good afternoon, Minister?

I told this story in the office on Tuesday afternoon and straight away two colleagues said that Alannah - like Madonna, her fame is such that she needs only go by one name – was the first politician to ring them in their careers too.

It was how she did business.

Direct. Unvarnished. Unapologetic. And with conviction.

It is why she was both beloved and at times reviled.

The thing about Alannah was her substance, and her passion.

But by the end, always respected, even by her opponents.

On Monday, Alannah announced her retirement from politics at year’s end.

Yes, really this time. No third (or is it fourth? Fifth?) act.

It has been a remarkable career, beginning at the old Perth city council in 1988, before the Richard Court government carved off Vincent, Cambridge and Victoria Park.

In 1993 it was on to the Legislative Council in the state parliament, and then in 1996 the Assembly.

She was the Minister for Transport, Planning and Infrastructure in the Gallop Government, the peak of her political powers and place of her signature achievement, the Perth-Mandurah rail line.

After the Carpenter government’s ouster in 2008, she briefly threw her hat in the ring to lead the Opposition but withdrew when it became apparent she did not have factional support. Caucus preferred Eric Ripper.

In 2009 and in opposition she stepped away from state politics to have a crack at Canberra.

Her 2010 political dogfight with wily Liberal marginal seat warhorse Don Randall for the south-eastern suburbs seat of Canning, which took in her state patch of Armadale, was one of the most fun campaigns I have ever covered.

Mactiernan during Question Time at Parliament House in Canberra in 2014.Credit: Photo: Alex Ellinghausen

In the end, Randall withstood a 2.2 point swing to prevail, regarding it as the proudest victory of his political career. Why? Because he had never faced an opponent as tough as Alannah.

But that was hardly the end of her. The following year she got herself elected as mayor of inner city Vincent.

The Canberra itch was not yet scratched and after publicly flirting with the notion for months, ended up replacing the retiring Stephen Smith in the federal seat of Perth at the 2013 federal poll which saw Kevin Rudd dispatched by Tony Abbott.

The Opposition backbench was a lonely and at times frustrating place to be after so long wielding executive power and she retired after a single term.

Then came the second chapter in state politics, deployed as Mark McGowan’s secret campaign weapon in Perth’s northern suburbs in the 2017 state election campaign that made him Premier.

The thing about Alannah was her substance, and her passion.

It’s easy to regard cynically a three-decade political career, but Alannah was no time server.

She was there to get things done, and she cared about policy.

Even if that conviction put her at odds with her stakeholders – or herself in hot water.

At the time of that F-bomb conversation in 2004, MacTiernan was up to her neck in the Mandurah rail project.

Alannah MacTiernan with Mark McGowan and Amber-Jade Sanderson.

It was the state’s most expensive infrastructure project ever and she was squaring off against the hard nosed boss of Leighton Contractors Wal King over the troubled city tunnel section of the project

King insisted the job was hit with technical problems and wanted the government to pay more.
Alannah was telling him publicly and privately to get stuffed and the whole thing ended up in court, but it was great fodder.

After she acknowledged once losing her licence for drink-driving, Geoff Gallop stripped her of her road safety responsibilities in her transport portfolio, and The West’s legendary cartoonist Dean Alston – who already poked fun at her distinctive hairstyle of the time – began drawing her with a wine glass.

Once, she complained: big mistake. Alston never drew her without the wine glass for two decades hence.

As a local government and urban affairs reporter in that period, all of the issues I covered ran through her portfolio, whether it was the contentious Perry Lakes redevelopment, oceanfront highrise battles, or anything to do with housing or planning or transport.

She could bite your head off if she thought you were wrong or unfair – and at times perhaps we were.

At one point I unearthed a story about how the pilings used in construction of the rail tunnel were going to be reused as a towering public art project adorning the tunnel’s dive structure on the foreshore.

The newspaper ran the story under the headline, “ALANNAH’S PILES”. The “sculpture” never eventuated.

But she also invested time in you if she thought you were serious about policy and curious to learn.

She invited me for coffee at a cafe in Claisebrook to explain the origins of the original East Perth Redevelopment Authority while sketching her vision for the future of a denser, more connected Perth.

She was a champion for alternative construction materials in new homes, believing Perth’s love affair with double brick was costing first home owners too much.

She was unapologetic about advocating for public and affordable housing in apartment developments in “ritzy” suburbs and the waterfront.

And she championed density, which made her public enemy no.1 in the leafy western suburbs – and at times butted heads over sprawl with the likes of powerful housing interests like Nigel Satterley.

The history is why I found Satterley’s comments the other week to WAtoday’s Hamish Hastie – who reported on the fact Alannah had accepted $10,000 worth of footy tickets in Satterley’s corporate box – so amusing.

“These events are purely social occasions,” a Satterley flack-catcher said. “Alannah is a long-term friend of Nigel.”

Not always.

She was a bete noire for another tycoon, Len Buckeridge, when she cancelled his Kwinana port contract and tussled over his brickworks.

MacTiernan announcing the government had terminated a funding agreement with Carnegie Clean Energy.Credit: Fairfax Media

As Planning and Infrastructure Minister under Gallop in the 2000s she kickstarted a process to shift WA’s main container port from Fremantle to Cockburn Sound.

Nearly 20 years later it remains Labor policy but has not yet progressed beyond the planning stage.

As Agriculture Minister under McGowan, she was greeted by farmers first with suspicion and then hostility.

She never wavered from her view that the live export industry was animal cruelty, then declared an outbreak of foot and mouth would not be a catastrophe, instead arguing the decimation of export markets might result in cheaper meat and dairy for local consumers.

That, it is believed, cost her some skin with McGowan, but on Monday he paid tribute to “an extraordinary political career”.

Through it all, she worked hard – including through chemotherapy for breast cancer in 2019 – and played hard along the way too.

She says she’s not cut out for retirement, and will “no doubt find something meaningful to do because there are so many issues that I’m interested in”.

The rest of us who watch politics will lament the departure of an authentic, unfiltered character unafraid to speak her mind, among the very last of that dying breed.

Cut through the noise of federal politics with news, views and expert analysis from Jacqueline Maley. Subscribers can sign up to our weekly Inside Politics newsletter here.