Showdown In Boom Town

WHEN Alan Carpenter was still a television journalist on the political beat in Perth, he was fond of telling colleagues about an uncle who played football in the south coast town of Albany, where Carpenter grew up.

As team full-back, uncles duties included kicking the ball back into play each time a point was scored. In one match, however, uncles kicking was too feeble for the wind off the southern ocean, and the gale seized the ball and flung it back over his head and between the goal posts.

Carpenter would chortle at the anecdote. Despite his irascibility, the West Australian Premier has a sense of humour, although he doesnt publicly exhibit it anywhere near enough. The source of uncles embarrassment is as close as Australian rules gets to an own-goal.

Carpenter may have just kicked his own. He sought to justify his August 7 decision to call a snap poll for Western Australia six months ahead of schedule and with half the 30 days of campaigning saturated with Olympics media coverage as an opportunity to rid the air of early election speculation that his Labor Party had wilfully fuelled.

That the justification was as risible as it was calculatingly cynical was not lost on voters. Indeed, it compounded their perception that Carpenter, 51, is grumpy, rude and arrogant. If Labor clings to power tomorrow, it will not be due to voter appreciation of smart-alec manipulation of political process.

Labor was stung, even panicked, by voter response to the circumstances of Carpenters election announcement, and by Colin Barnetts re-elevation a day earlier to the Liberal leadership.

Just a few months ago, opinion polling put Labor on target to improve on the 17-seat majority that a repetition of 2005 voting would have delivered.

Labors improved fortunes would have been the legacy of a sweeping redistribution aimed at going some way to the principle of one vote, one value, in a state where bush voters, on average, effectively exercised two votes for every one city vote.

And Labor was helped mightily by the hole the Liberals dug for themselves by choosing, then persevering with, the unelectable Troy Buswell, dubbed Captain Sniffy for offending female staff members by sniffing the office seat of one, and by other oafish and boorish acts.

Labors plan was to lock in Buswell by calling the snap election the earliest ahead of time since 1905 but the Liberals struck first, wilting to pressure from heavyweights outside the State Parliament and retrieving Barnett from the imminent obscurity of retirement.

The impact was immediate.

Support for the Liberals surged as Barnett was reinstated and voters began, however tepidly, to turn their minds to their preferences for government.

Labor was spooked enough to selectively leak some of its own polling, suggesting a 7% swing against the Government. Curtin University politics professor David Black, who is now engaged in projects for the WA Parliament, reckons the Liberals need a 5% swing with the help of the Nationals (the two are not in coalition), or 7 to 8% without the Nationals.

But the surge appeared to retreat, with the West Australian newspaper, locked in an extraordinarily hostile battle with the Labor Government, last week declaring that polled voters were returning to Labor in a contest that was all but over. Barnett wasnt having a bar of it, and nor was Labor, whose panic was renewed because of fears that expectations of a Labor win would encourage a protest vote against the incumbent.

Its not all over, Barnett said.

People had written off the Liberal Party three weeks ago (before the Liberal surge). Im enjoying this.

Barnett is dour and publicly wooden, regarded by voters as aloof.

But he is experienced and capable, having served in senior ministerial roles during Richard Courts eight years as premier.

Barnett led the Liberals to defeat in 2005, when their chances were rated as fair, partly because he insisted on a promise to build a 3700- kilometre canal from the water-rich Kimberley to Perth, without sufficient detail or persuasiveness. That he was yesterdays man was illustrated by his intention to resign from Parliament at this election and make way in his seat of Cottesloe for the talented Deidre Willmott, whose impressive CV includes a stint as general manager of the Melbourne Commonwealth Games and whose prominence in this campaign offered an opportunity to redress some of the imbalance against women in West Australian Liberal ranks.

Labors worries about a protest vote are well grounded because this election is a tale of two economies those riding the states extraordinary resources-based boom, and those who missed the bus, or at least regard themselves as missing out. Thats why the Liberals are campaigning so hard on perceptions of a squandered boom and opportunities lost in cutting taxes, improving services and building public infrastructure.

Sure, the boom and its 6% annual economic growth and 3% unemployment rate have pushed up housing costs. And that hurts those who arent direct beneficiaries of the six-figure wages on offer in mining and gas projects. But complaint is overdone.

Even with the WA Council of Social Services claiming one in five West Australians 400,000 people needed recent welfare help because of the booms downside of a soaring cost of living, the Labor Government is not responsible for petrol price hikes and burgeoning grocery bills.

All Australians are affected by them.

Labor polling, however, long detected a perception of Carpenter as arrogant. It was fitting. He has stood on party toes left, right and centre, manipulating the demise of colleagues while centralising power in his office (at least the power he can wrest from the Attorney-General and Health Minister Jim McGinty who is portrayed as the power behind the throne). Backbenchers are denied access to Carpenter, who treats them with disdain.

But he has fought a bruising campaign against the elephant in Labors room, Brian Burke, the disgraced former premier who reasserted immense influence in the party and in West Australian business with his unique approach to the art of political lobbying.

Voter resentment of Carpenter didnt bubble over, however, because they regarded Paul Omodei, a likeable enough plodder, and Buswell, with his social indiscretions, as having less claim to the premiership.

That changed with Barnetts recall, and Carpenter retreated to the politics of insignificance. On one campaign day, when Western Australia looked to losing a $25 billion LNG project to the Northern Territory, Carpenter announced closure of the drinkers bar at Parliament House.

This week, therefore, Labor again went into a scramble over the selective leaking of its opinion polling. It showed that five seats Albany, Kingsley, Ocean Reef, Riverton and Swan Hills had swung dramatically to the Liberals in the space of just a few days. And the same polling showed 61% of voters expected a Labor win, and just 18% a Liberal victory.

Thats a recipe for a brutal protest vote. The end of the age of incumbency, commenced by last Novembers federal election, may yet be about to accelerate.

LINK - WAtoday.com.au

THE ELECTION ROUNDABOUT

2005 February 27: Colin Barnett resigns as Opposition Leader after losing the state election to premier Geoff Gallop.

March: Matt Birney elected Opposition Leader.

October: Liberal deputy leader Paul Omodei resigns from the front bench.

Troy Buswell appointed his replacement.

2006 January 16: Geoff Gallop announces he is resigning, citing a personal struggle with depression.

January 25: Energy minister Alan Carpenter, the 49-year-old father of four, becomes Premier. He promises a more hands-on approach to the job.

March: Omodei takes over from Birney in a Liberal leadership spill.

2008 January: Troy Buswell takes over as Opposition Leader.

April: Buswell admits sniffing the chair of a female staffer in 2005. He had previously admitted snapping a Labor staffers bra.

August 4: After surviving two leadership spills in May and June, Buswell resigns as leader following reports of dismal internal polling.

August 6: Colin Barnett elected unopposed as Opposition Leader.

August 7: Carpenter calls the state election for September 6. with AAP

THE ISSUES

CORRUPTION

Investigations by the Corruption and Crime Commission (CCC) have claimed several scalps from the Carpenter ministry. Many of the investigations have related to links with disgraced former premier Brian Burke. The CCC was close to handing down a report on MPs connections to Burke when the election was called.

THE ECONOMY

May 2008 budget papers say the West Australian economy has delivered an average 5.5% growth every year since 2001-02, higher than any state or territory. The Government has used bumper royalties from the mining boom to fund a $26 billion infrastructure program this financial year. The Opposition says Labor has squandered the boom, and should have delivered tax cuts. The Chamber of Commerce and Industry (CCI) says both parties lack an articulated vision for WA.

POWER SUPPLY

An ongoing disruption to the states gas supplies following an explosion in June at the Varanus Island gas plant has also caused job losses in several companies and put a $6.7 billion dent in business forecasts, according to the CCI. The Government has also split public electricity company Western Power into four entities to compete in the commercial electricity market, a move the Opposition says has cost $740 million. One of the offshoots, Verve Energy, is set to lose $183 million this financial year, on top of previous years losses.

URANIUM MINING

There are eight major uranium deposits in WA but Labors policy does not allow uranium mining, only exploration. The Liberals want to see the deposits mined, but both parties are opposed to a nuclear waste dump being established in the state.

EDUCATION

Labor has faced ongoing challenges from the education sector and the states main teachers union over pay and conditions and the controversial outcomes-based education policy. It has promised an extra $310 million on maintaining and building schools.

The Opposition has promised to spend $300 million to build 14 new public schools.

HEALTH

The Governments long-promised 1000-bed hospital for Perths southern suburbs was costed at $700 million. It is now more than $1 billion over budget. The Governments $4.5 billion health budget includes six other capital works projects.

THE KIMBERLEY CANAL

The Kimberley water canal project was popular with some sections of the electorate in 2005. After the election, a report commissioned by the Labor government put the cost of the 3700-kilometre canal to Perth at $14.5 billion. The Government said it would lead to water bill increases of 250%. Barnett has not ruled out going back to the canal project.

WAtoday.com.au and AAP