The inside story of the WA Lib Victory

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.

Shit, Grylls, or get off the Potty

The WA Nationals leader Brendon Grylls is taking his sweet time about deciding which party to join with to form government in WA. Each passing day is an insult to the people of WA and to the conservative cause nationally. Taking the WA Nationals into a coalition with the ALP will be a betrayal of conservative voters, one they will punish him for at the first opportunity.

This election result was above all else a vote against failed state Labor government.

In spite of Labor Premier Alan Carpenter trying every cynical trick in the book to hang on to power - a snap election ,using the Olympics to block the oppositions message etc - the people of WA decided last Saturday that they did not want Alan Carpenter as their Premier.

Despite the count proceeding at Zimbabwean pace (is Carpenter behind that I wonder?) every morning we read about the Liberals picking up new seats from the ALP. The ALP has lost their majority. In every election i have ever witnessed to date, this means that The government has been kicked out.

So now, very reasonably, the people of WA expect Labor out. Why are the people being denied?

In short, because it's business as usual in dodgy WA politics, and Brendon Grylls, for all his show of freshness and change, is playing it just like one of the boys.

WA is the state that gave us Brian Burke and Noel Chrighton-Browne (no I cant spell the has-been's name and i dont ever care to learn). These people have been kicked out of their various parties over a long and painful process of reform that does credit to both sides of politics. The clean-up of WA Inc has involved the hard work of anti-corruption commissioners and the vigilance and determination of all those involved in WA politics and public service. These gears have ground slowly but inevitably towards bringing WA's political reputation on a par with it's economic one - a shining example to the rest of Australia and indeed the world.

But it's not there yet, and the patience of the people of WA has run out.

Last weekend the people of WA voted for honesty. Liberal Leader Colin Barnett's whole platform was honesty and the voters responded well to it (in the brief time they got to hear it, thanks Carps). The people of WA are looking to the future. They want to get away from they frontier-style wheeling and dealing between vested interests they've had to put up with for years.

But what do they get? More of the same. This time from the Nationals.

Grylls has now admitted to speaking to Labor before the election about doing a deal to form government. Now he is calling for Carpenter to stay on as Premier. WTF???

The post of leader of the Labor party has got nothing to do with Grylls, because he is in the National party (duh). He should not be making demands like this, especially since they run so contrary to the obvious wishes of the WA people as expressed in a democratic election.

Why is this man so intent on sending the messages to WA people that their votes don't count? It begs the question, just how close is Grylls to Carpenter?

Grylls said before the election that he would not form a coalition with the Libs. But that's very different from having a plan to form a de-facto coalition with Labor. Had the people of WA known a vote for the National Party was a vote for the Labor Party they would have voted Liberal in larger numbers just to make sure they got rid of Carpenter.

I do not question the desirability of Gryll's "Royalties for Regions" proposal, nor his playing hardball to get what he wants for regions, just the way in which he is slyly using Conservative votes to shore up a Labor government.

The National party base is Conservative. They are hard-working law-abiding hippie-hatin' country-types. The thought of having in-effect voted for a latte-sipping Labor government would make them very angry indeed. Conservative voters want to vote for a conservative party. If Grylls has been more forthcoming with his intentions conservative voters would have voted for the other conservative party, the Liberals.

Grylls owes his voters. He owes them Conservative government.

Ok, sure. Grylls has been saying that that the Nationals will be a more centrist party under his leadership, but what does that even mean? Either you are centre-right or centre-left. When Kevin Rudd says stuff like this we all know he means the Labor federally will be more centre-left, rather than far-left as it was under Latham. He can say the words "economic conserative" all he wants. We all know he is centre-left.

When a National Party leader says he wants to be more centrist. We are entitled to assume he means centre-right. Because the Nationals ever since their conception have been Conservatives. For Grylls to be taking his Party into coalition with Labor is actually taking his party to the centre-LEFT as no centre-right person would dream of working with the professional whingers and rent-seekers of the Left.

Had Grylls been perfectly honest he would have said say he is taking his party to the left of centre, not the centre, because we are entitled to assume that means centre-right. Instead he was economical with this truth, and, it appears, about his closeness to Labor personalities like Carpenter.

So, WA Inc's shadow looms large. Carpenter has been voted out, yet he still clings to power. Today the Labor ministry announced their support for him. Nice one, Al. Maybe you should have put a bit more effort into getting the electorate's support, by say, not being a shit Premier.

But Carpenter is not the issue here. He's gone. It's time for Grylls to realize this (just let it go, man) and make his decision about who he will side with in the WA parliament. The longer he delays the more he tarnishes his name with the smear of old-school arrogant WA Inc-style backroom dealing. The longer he insults the people of WA by making them wait outside that backroom door for a decision from the big boys, the more they will punish him.