First-term MP Jackie Jarvis and Wanneroo MP Sabine Winton have been elevated to Mark McGowan's WA cabinet.
They will take the places of retiring party veteran Alannah MacTiernan and outgoing Water Minister Dave Kelly, who announced last week he would be stepping down from cabinet at the request of the premier.
The pair were elected at a special caucus meeting held at Parliament House in Perth this afternoon.
A decision on the allocation of portfolios, which largely rests with Mr McGowan, will be made tomorrow.
It is understood Education Minister Sue Ellery has asked to be moved to a different portfolio before retiring from politics at the 2025 election.
Speaking ahead of the meeting, the premier let on little about his plans, but did say he expected the new team would be the one he took to the next election.
"But you never know, someone might announce they want to leave or something that I'm not aware of at this point in time, but I would expect that's the case," he said.
Boost for female numbers
When he announced his retirement, Mr Kelly said he was asked to leave cabinet to make room for more women.
"We have 50 per cent female MPs in our ranks, and I'm very keen to ensure we promote more women into cabinet roles, so that's one of my tasks to make sure we do that," Mr McGowan said.
Today's changes mean the new cabinet will be made up of 11 men and six women.
When asked whether he supported 50:50 gender representation in cabinet, senior minister David Templeman would not be drawn.
"We have a caucus now that has a record number of women, parliament that has a record number of women, we're very proud of that," he said.
"Those are all good trends for making sure that our parliament reflects our population."
Educator turned parliamentarian
Sabine Winton worked as a primary school teacher for 27 years before replacing the rabble of the schoolyard with the rabble of parliament at the 2017 election as the member for Wanneroo.
Over the last year and a half, she has served as the parliamentary secretary to the premier, adding parliamentary secretary to the deputy premier to her jobs last December.
Since February she has chaired the steering committee guiding planning for the Aboriginal Cultural Centre, to be built on the banks of the Swan River.
Ms Winton migrated to Australia with her parents from Germany at the age of 8, before moving to WA two years later.
She is aligned with the powerful left faction of the party.
From cabernet to cabinet
Jackie Jarvis's surname might be familiar to some from the winery she ran with her husband just outside Margaret River.
Since planting their first vineyard in 1998, Ms Jarvis worked as a public servant in a variety of roles, including spending nine months as Alannah MacTiernan's policy adviser in 2017.
She spent a number of years as deputy chair, and then chair, of the Rural, Regional, Remote Women's Network of WA, and served on the board of the Forest Products Commission for nearly seven years.
Ms Jarvis made the jump to politics at the 2021 election, filling a variety of parliamentary roles in the time since.
Last year she told state parliament how she had been warned in 2014 that then-deputy prime Minister Barnaby Joyce had a history of groping women – a claim Mr Joyce denied.
New secretaries named
What was not expected is the promotion of five new parliamentary secretaries, who support ministers in their duties.
Hannah Beazley, Jags Krishnan, Meredith Hammat, Pierre Yang and Jodie Hanns will bring to 15 the number of parliamentary secretaries.
Those promotions will cost taxpayers an extra $50,000 a year in total – a cost the premier said was worth paying.
"The workload of the ministers is enormous, so making sure that they have the support of parliamentary secretaries is very important," he said.
"It's actually a great experience and a great builder of capacity of MPs to have that experience who may then go on to become ministers in the future. It's actually a worthwhile investment."
'Raft of ministers failing': Honey
But the decision was criticised by Liberal leader David Honey.
"We've got a whole raft of ministers failing and yet we don't hear that there are going to be any significant moves of people who should be moved from their portfolios," he said.
He pointed specifically to Bill Johnston, who has been subject of constant criticism over conditions in the state's youth justice system, and community services minister, Simone McGurk.
Factional jostling
Today's appointments have taken place against a background of factional jostling, which is only set to intensify as the next election nears.
The departure of Ms MacTiernan, who is independent but notionally of the right, would normally mean a replacement from so-called Progressive Labor, such as David Michael who had been tipped for a promotion.
But both Ms Winton and Ms Jarvis are from the party's left faction – further reducing the already limited power of the right.
Of the new parliamentary secretaries three are left-aligned while two, Dr Krishnan and Ms Beazley, are from the right.
