A WA political insider emails:
What a week in WA it was.
It started with Labor losing the election on the Saturday 5 Sept. That night Labor leader Alan Carpenter looked forlorn as he came close to admitting defeat. Liberal leader Colin Barnett was smiling as he all but claimed victory. Half way through the ABC election coverage anchorman Kerry Obrien broke the news that the National Party might support Labor. On the panel Julie Bishop Federal Liberal Deputy Opposition Leader was incredulous. They wouldn’t do that. So the count continued with the Libs and the Nats being counted together as usual.
Next morning Alan Carpenter was all smiles again. He had had a meeting with his new best mate Brendon Grylls the Nats leader and a deal was on. Carpenter was “excited” by the prospect of working with the Nationals as he should have been because Labor had just spent four years in government shafting the Nationals reducing their seat numbers. Grylls was all smiles, he was having his 15 minutes of fame, he was the kingmaker.
Barnett was not particularly phased by all of this and in the end gave the Nationals a few pages of mainly rhetoric agreeing to their “Rotalties for Regions” policy but little more. Labor however produced a glossy publication and upped the ante by offering even more money. Now that was exciting. Treasury weighed in and said it was all a bit irresponsible. The week moved slowly on.
Brendon Grylls gave advise to Labor, keep my new best mate Carpenter or else. Labor Caucus gave Carpenter a standing ovation. Here was the man who was going to turn defeat into victory. Forget the massive swing after the unnecessary early election. Forget that the Libs, who had been a rabble 4 weeks before, were going to take the white cars and the drivers. No. Alan was going to deliver the impossible. Those Nats were an OK bunch after all. The painfully slow count confirmed the Libs and Nats had won and so the next Sunday everyone was waiting for the big announcement from the Nats. Would they go with Labor?
Now to some numbers. The Nats have a lot of new members in the Upper House from their fence sitting policies (see www.brendongrylls.com before it goes off the air) and so young Brendon had the numbers. But the lower house seats are all ultra conservative, in Wilson Tuckey country no less, and the MPs were getting lots of irate phone calls and imagining how they would go dodging the eggs and rotten tomatoes as they walked down the main street of some dusty wheatbelt town after voting with their arch enemies the ALP.
By now the Feds were getting worried. Imagine the fallout: The Libs are so rotten not even the Nats will join them. That was not going to help anyone. The Nats in WA have a chardonnay sipper as their President and she was all for going with Labor, but not the rest of the cockies. They would have none of it and so Brendon was rolled and the Nationals were back in the conservative camp.
Colin Barnett was all smiles and Alan Carpenter quit with a tear in his eye. The Nats had gone with the Libs even though the deal was inferior. Carpenter had given Labor two bad weekends instead of one, the Libs got to celebrate twice, Labor’s pains were twice as bad and the Libs smiles twice as big.
It’s hard to figure out who took who for a ride: Grylls was genuine, well you know, genuine in his disingenuousness, he would have gone with Labor; Labor was genuine, they would have done it; the Libs were genuine, they weren’t going to buy their way out; the farmers were genuine, they wanted nothing to do with it. I personally think the dunce was Carpenter. He should have known better. He didn’t know a sales pitch when he saw it and he should have clarified if Grylls had the authority which he plainly didn’t. Grylls was a genuine fake.
