Perth’s freshly re-elected lord mayor Basil Zempilas has confirmed the worst kept secret in West Australian politics – that he is bidding to be elected as a state Liberal MP.
The announcement was made in an exclusive interview given to the newspaper owned by his Channel Seven paymasters.
Zempilas said he would seek Liberal preselection in the affluent western suburbs seat of Churchlands.
The garrulous sports presenter is being touted as the messiah to help lead the WA Liberal party out of the political wilderness.
But the switch toward higher office – barely three months after being re-elected mayor of Perth while also remaining on billionaire Kerry Stokes’ Seven West Media’s staff – has triggered controversy.
After months of rumours, Zempilas – who earns $186,000 a year as lord mayor – was forced to show his hand this weekend due to the requirement that nominees for preselection must be party members at least 30 days prior to the 28 February deadline.
“It’s clear to me now that [politics] is in my blood. I love it,” he told the West Australian on Saturday.
“I’m not a candidate for the [Liberal] leadership. I’m not in contention for the leadership. I am in contention for preselection for the seat of Churchlands. If I’m successful, my only job after that will then be to try and win the seat of Churchlands for the Liberal party.”
If preselected, Zempilas would reportedly remain lord mayor of Perth until the election is called in early 2025 and then seek a leave of absence during the election campaign, allowing him to return to his mayoral office if he was defeated.
In recent weeks, Zempilas admitted he had met with the former WA Liberal premier Colin Barnett and made commitments to headline a Liberal fundraiser dinner at the Ritz-Carlton in February. His action fuelled Labor barbs.
“Basil Zempilas just three months ago said he was going to be the City of Perth lord mayor for the next four years and now just three months later, he turns his back on the people of Perth,” the WA Labor premier, Roger Cook, said on Thursday. “He needs to front the people of Perth and explain why he has now changed his tune.”
Zempilas has claimed he wasn’t aware the $500-a-seat private business dinner – organised by the WA Liberal Women’s Council months ago – was a Liberal fundraiser.
‘How would it look?’
The City of Perth is home to 30,000 residents and covers the CBD and surrounding suburbs. Its code of conduct states that councillors must “identify and appropriately manage any conflict of interest” while keeping private, commercial or political interests separate from council roles.
“He’s not attending a fundraiser, he’s the headline act and he’s headline act as lord mayor so it’s clear that he’s using the lord mayor position to fundraise for the Liberal party,” Labor’s deputy premier, Rita Saffioti, said earlier this month. “That’s something for the City of Perth to examine.”
Zempilas did not respond to questions from Guardian Australia but has told Nine newspapers the dinner didn’t breach any code of conduct.
He could continue to don his mayoral chains as a Liberal candidate but the WA Local Government Act dictates he must relinquish the council role if elected to parliament.
Elected MPs are free to continue holding additional private jobs in WA, including media positions.
Throughout his time as mayor, Zempilas’s high-profile gig at Seven has included anchoring Telethon, sports commentating and writing a column in the Seven-owned West Australian newspaper that covers issues he deals with as lord mayor.
Before Zempilas confirmed his preselection tilt, the University of Notre Dame political scientist Prof Martin Drum said being a journalist and a candidate for a political party would be untenable because of issues of bias.
“Lots of people go to and from the two. There is no rule stopping you from being a journalist and Liberal party candidate, however, how would it look?” Drum said.
“Once a Liberal party candidate, every utterance he makes as mayor of Perth will be considered in that lens, as someone who is tied to the Liberal party. Every utterance he makes as a journalist, or a Channel Seven personality, will also be understood as him being an endorsed Liberal party candidate. It would change the way people perceive him.”
While the multiple roles might anger many, including Labor, it could be a boon to the political wannabe, the University of Western Australia political analyst William Bowe said.
“I don’t think the average person will see it [Zempilas’s media role] as any great outrage. They are used to politicians being in the media,” Bowe said.
But he says it raises obvious ethical questions for Seven about the impartiality of one of its highest-profile journalists. Wearing multiple hats was politically problematic too, Bowe said.
“If he is going to be running for parliament, then they [Labor] might say that you are not paying attention to your job as lord mayor so why should voters trust you.”
Barnett told Guardian Australia he met with Zempilas about six months ago and the pair discussed a potential move into state politics.
“I encouraged him, I think he is a very talented person and would be a good member of parliament,” he said. “So he is considering standing for the seat of Chuchlands.”
In 2020, the West Australian covered Zempilas’s mayoral “safer, cleaner and friendlier city” campaign and his subsequent win against the former ABC journalist Di Bain by 284 votes.
Seven West Media did not respond to questions about its staff also being parliamentary candidates or politicians.
Bowe said earlier this week that the burning question was whether the WA Liberals would pull “a Campbell Newman trick of presenting him as the leader even though officially speaking he isn’t really” if he wins the preselection battle.
Newman was the Liberal lord mayor of Brisbane when he led the Liberal National Party to power in Queensland 12 years ago – winning the state seat of Ashgrove in the process.
“I think they probably will do the Campbell Newman routine with Basil Zempilas. They will do some research and I think it will show that his name recognition is just so high compared to [current] Liberal leader Libby Mettam or Roger Cook that there’s extra seats in the bag if they do this,” Bowe said.
Before the former Labor premier Mark McGowan’s post-Covid red wave swept the state in 2021, Churchlands was always a blue-ribbon Liberal stronghold, taking in a swathe of well-heeled coastal suburbs from Scarborough to City Beach and inland to Glendalough.
The Liberal incumbent Sean L’Estrange was ousted by a margin of 1.6% by Labor’s Christine Tonkin at the last election.
Bowe said he is “not in any doubt that the Liberals will win back Churchlands at the next election”.
A controversial record
Now in his early 50s and a father of three, Zempilas grew up in the electorate he wants to win, attending the prestigious Hale School alongside the former federal attorney general Christian Porter. He still lives in Churchlands in the leafy suburb of Floreat and was only eligible to contest the Perth mayoral election because his property portfolio contains a Northbridge apartment.
As lord mayor, his policies are more likely to impress the big end of town rather than those less fortunate.
Zempilas has always been a fierce champion for activating Perth’s CBD and bringing people back into office buildings to keep cafes alive as the area faces competition from suburban shopping centres.
Council minutes reveal he increased, by the thousands, the number of people attending an Elizabeth Quay family fun fair and fireworks in 2023 and spruiked a Christmas lights trail and twilight food market that attracted crowds.
The City of Perth also committed to redeveloping the beloved, but tired, Waca cricket ground, agreeing to put $25m towards a $100m redevelopment.
But while the city is being rejuvenated, Zempilas has been criticised for his response to the closure of a homeless women’s shelter during the government’s 16-day campaign to stop domestic violence.
Across the nation, WA suffers from the highest rate of women approaching homeless services because of family and domestic violence.
In March 2021, the City of Perth shelled out $2m on a two-year trial to turn a community centre into an emergency after-hours safe haven at the Rod Evans Centre in East Perth. Women experiencing homelessness are at high risk of violence and sexual assault on the street, and the haven gave up to 30 women a night a much-needed reprieve.
With complaints from neighbours about unruly behaviour, the haven closed its doors before Christmas, but not before the topic became a political hot potato.
Labor ministers claim they offered top-up funding to stop the centre closing, but council didn’t provide a proposal. The city says the state’s offer of $3m was “too little too late”. In the end, Zempilas brokered a deal to move the service to a facility in Northbridge run by Uniting WA.
Zempilas has raised eyebrows more than once so far in his mayoral tenure. In October 2020, Perth woke to a guerrilla art installation outside the Art Gallery of Western Australia that quoted a column Zempilas had written in the West Australian where he argued homeless people should be forcibly removed from the city.
“I make no apologies for this, the homeless need to be moved out of the Hay and Murray Street malls and the surrounding areas,” he wrote.
“The look, the smell, the language, the fights – it’s disgusting. A blight on our city and the single biggest impediment to progress and rejuvenation.”
Zempilas was forced to backtrack on his comments, later saying he wanted to turn car parks into safe places for people experiencing homelessness and make the city a more welcoming environment.
But a few weeks later and just out from Perth’s largest LGBTQ+ festival, he was back in the hot seat and forced to apologise for making transphobic comments on radio 6PR.
In a chat about an LGBTQ+ boxing tournament, Zempilas stated it was “wrong” for someone to identify as a gender that was different from their anatomy.
He offered the excuse that he had “forgotten” he was lord mayor at the time – a job he had landed just a fortnight earlier – and apologised.
On Friday, Zempilas wrote in the West Australian: “We hear lots about the need to respect those who don’t feel comfortable celebrating Australia Day on January 26 but what about the people who do want to celebrate Australia Day today. Where is the respect for them?”
This weekend, Zempilas has finally announced his political ambitions. If the lord mayor does find his way into parliament it may not only cost Labor seats but the City of Perth tens of thousands of dollars to hold a special election.
