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This is the time when all the political pundits, including myself, wonder what really lies behind WA Premier Mark McGowan’s stunning decision to call it quits.
It just doesn’t compute.
Mark McGowan said he was exhausted.Credit: Rift Photography
One commentator already questioned how a political leader with an approval rating north of 60 per cent, a majority in both houses of parliament and the feeblest of opposition – made up of just six MPs in a lower house of 59 – could be so tired and exhausted they needed to escape?
In the game of politics, McGowan’s ability to win and keep winning couldn’t have been any stronger.
His decision to pull the pin on a political career dating back more than two decades triggers a tectonic shift in both state and federal politics.
It turns an absolutely hopeless situation for the Liberal Party into something more palatable across the political landscape.
McGowan may only have been one man, but that one man was also the government, such was the reliance from within for McGowan to be the one who would step up, speak clearly about a difficult political issue and turn a potential scandal into a one-day wonder.
Only last week, a Liberal insider told me internal polling pointed to the party clawing back just one seat at the 2025 state election. That was Churchlands, which was lost to Labor on a double-digit swing in 2021.
Not even the once Liberal heartland seat of Nedlands was in danger of being taken back from Labor, according to my source.
“Not while Mark is in power,” was how they summed it up.
Sure, the gloss was coming off, and McGowan appeared to be growing grumpier by the day at press conferences.
The decision came as a shock to most people. Credit: Ross Swanborough
But when you pants your opposition two elections running and end up with 53 of the 59 seats in parliament, you have plenty of political capital to play with two years out from your tilt at a third term.
From the outside, he could easily have contested the 2025 election and become the longest serving premier in the state’s history by beating David Brand’s 11 years and 335 days in the top job.
Which brings us back to the premise at the start of this column. Why is he giving it all up?
He says he’s just burnt out and unable to muster the enthusiasm, stamina and determination to campaign again.
Having gone through the tedium of Covid meetings, press conferences and confrontation on a day-to-day basis would have taken its toll.
But there must be a part of McGowan saying to himself just get out while you’re on top. Leave now with a political legacy that’s very difficult to challenge.
Also, there have been some battles in recent times that have worn him down. For example, playing the hard man over the Banksia Hill juvenile detention centre crisis.
Surely, even the compliant MPs in the WA Labor caucus would be uneasy about his no sympathy, no excuse mandate against teenagers locked up with fetal alcohol spectrum disorder.
It is the Labor Party, after all. His right of centre, no nonsense approach to the issue in the same year he and his party are telling voters to give Aboriginal people a voice has been jarring.
Old school talkback radio callers, who would definitely not agree with the premier on a range of issues, were in lock-step with McGowan’s lock them up rhetoric.
I doubt he would agree, but McGowan was definitely coming across as a my-way-or-the-highway style of political leader and that can turn the tide pretty quickly.
On Monday, former Labor minister Alannah MacTiernan said on radio that McGowan had taken on so much responsibility for the government, including the role of treasurer, that his “I’m exhausted” comment rang true.
She also said with the job of premier can come unsavoury innuendo and rumours about aspects of your life.
Perhaps, after six years at the helm, McGowan had just grown tired of all of the above, including the commentary that goes hand in hand with politics.
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