It’s not just on GST revenue that Western Australia gives more than its fair share — thanks largely to the state Liberal Party, the state also produces more farce than it can consume locally. For the past three years, the WA Libs have been a kind of eerie inverted clown car: all the parts keep flying off, but rather than a comical number of jesters emerging, it’s basically empty. Never have so few generated so much embarrassment for so many.
The latest scandal to afflict a party that otherwise could barely field a full team for a social sports kickabout is the resignation of deputy leader Steve Thomas after it was revealed he’d used none other than Brian Burke, possibly the most famously disgraced premier in WA’s history, to facilitate meetings with high-profile businessman John Poynton.
Let’s total it up. Not only did Thomas have regular contact with a figure so utterly and thoroughly disgraced that successive Labor leaders have banned their colleagues from contacting him. Not only did he deflate one of Liberal leader Libby Mettam’s more effective attacks on the Cook government by admitting to having contacted Burke after Mettam had confidently asserted — after Burke’s involvement in COVID-19 support packages became known earlier this month — “I’m very comfortable in saying that there is no connection between Liberal Party members and Brian Burke”.
But to top it off, Thomas liaised with a Labor Party figure. He reached across the aisle for the very worst his opponents had to offer. There are the predictable questions about Mettam’s judgment and leadership — if she were to go, it would be the sixth time the party has changed leader since they were last in office. As it stands, Merome Beard, who quit the Nationals to join the Liberals last year and thus increased their lower house representation by a third in one move, is the only lower Liberal left who hasn’t at one point been leader. So… it’s her turn, we guess?
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