Peter Law: How the WA Liberals’ first post-election meeting has managed to ignore the key point

Gentlemen, welcome to Fight Club. The first rule of Fight Club is: You do not talk about Fight Club. The second rule of Fight Club is: You do not talk about Fight Club! Brad Pitt’s famous quote from the aforementioned 1999 movie might as well have been plastered at the entrance to the WA Italian Club in West Perth on Wednesday night. The venue hosted the first big gathering of WA Liberal rank-and-file members, plus the odd politician brave enough to front-up, since the party’s second election shellacking in 14 months. It was organised by policy committee chairman and Senate candidate Sherry Sufi as an opportunity for the Liberal faithful who volunteered their time at polling places — a thankless tasking when your party is on the nose — to provide feedback on the campaign. But such is the level of paranoia within the WA Liberal Party that Sufi had to pledge to party bosses that he would adhere to a pretty extraordinary set of rules for the forum to go ahead. This included no note taking, switching off all phones, limiting speakers to two minutes at the microphone and only allowing them to vent on policy matters, which meant discussion about personalities — and more specifically members of The Clan — was forbidden. It seemed the first rule of the WA Liberal Party is: You do not talk about The Clan. Unless you are Nigel Satterley, who now faces having his membership of the party’s Peppermint Grove branch ripped-up over a series of Tweets he posted during the election campaign critical of this self-anointed group of powerbrokers. The Satterley Property Group boss, who has also co-sponsored numerous events for WA Labor in recent years, including a fundraiser at his mansion with Mark McGowan, will become an unlikely martyr when his expulsion is confirmed later this year. Media were banned from Wednesday’s talkfest, so I am unable to report what was said — for now — but any post-mortem of the Federal election is irrelevant if it fails to confront that major reform of the party’s structure must be implemented to attract high-quality mainstream candidates, replenish the coffers with donations and inspire a new generation of volunteers. As I wrote in this column last month, the unpopularity of Scott Morrison and his politically crazy flip-flopping on Mark McGowan’s hard border was the biggest factor behind the swing to Labor in WA being triple the size of the national average. The loss of the western suburbs seat of Curtin to teal independent Kate Chaney was a phenomenon replicated in similarly wealthy, inner-city electorates in Melbourne and Sydney, reflecting a broader disconnect between the party and its traditional heartlands. How the seven teal seats are won back is a dilemma for new Federal Liberal leader Peter Dutton to overcome, and if he fails in that task it’s difficult to see how the Coalition can return to government in three or even six years’ time. The problems facing the WA Liberals, however, run deeper. Senior Liberal figures have publicly stated the party is at rock bottom in the west and the history books show this is no exaggeration. The Liberal-National primary vote in WA at this election was the lowest in history at 34.8 per cent. When Robert Menzies led the newly-formed Liberal Party to its first poll in 1946, primary support for the Liberal and Country parties in WA was 38.6 per cent. The loss of four seats to Labor and a fifth to Chaney handed Anthony Albanese a majority government and gutted the WA Liberal Party’s infrastructure. Labor now has 89 State and Federal electorate offices in WA, meaning they are entitled to 206 taxpayer-funded full-time equivalent staff. By comparison, the Liberals have 19 electorate offices and 58 FTE staff. And that’s before you begin counting ministerial staffing — not to mention Labor’s trade union backers. The West’s reporting on The Clan, an unholy alliance of politicians and party officeholders who put aside ideological differences to control pre-selections and appointments for their own benefit, shone a light on what was wrong with the WA Liberals. A review into the State election defeat that also criticised the faction has proven to be “utterly pointless” because not a single recommendation has been implemented, according to criminal barrister Mark Trowell, who co-authored the report. A proposal by State president Richard Wilson to overhaul the preselection process so every member gets a say in picking their local candidate will be considered next month and is an important first step towards rebuilding the WA Liberal Party. But if the same individuals continue to pull the strings in the background, how can anyone be convinced they are serious about changing? Peter Law is The West’s State Political Editor

Peter Law: How the WA Liberals’ first post-election meeting has managed to ignore the key point

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