WA election: five things you need to know

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2017/mar/06/wa-election-five-things-you-need-to-know

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The Labor party is going into Saturday’s election in Western Australia with a eight-point lead in the polls, according to a recent Galaxy poll.

If the 54-46 two-party preferred split is echoed at the ballot box on 11 March, it would imply an 11% swing towards Labor, enough to pick up 12 lower-house seats and win the election. But, even if that result is not borne out, the election could radically change the state of the Western Australian parliament.

Here are five things you need to know about the election.

1. One Nation could win the balance of power in the upper house

One Nation’s polling in Western Australia has slipped from 13% when the election campaign began to 9% on Saturday, according to a Galaxy poll commissioned by PerthNow. A ReachTel poll conducted for Fairfax Media a week earlier had the party polling even lower, at 8.5%.

But, under a preference deal struck with the Liberal party, even on that reduced vote the party could get as many as three MPs elected to the legislative council and hold the balance of power.

Pauline Hanson arrived in Perth on Sunday for a week-long campaign to shore up her party’s vote, hoping to echo the rock star reception she received in January.

Pauline Hanson arrived in Perth, hoping to echo the rock star reception she received in January

Under the deal the Liberal party is giving preferences to One Nation ahead of the National party in the upper house, in exchange for One Nation preferences in the lower house. It prompted criticism from within One Nation’s ranks: its candidate for the lower house seat of Kalamunda, Ray Gould, quit on Friday after saying the deal ruined One Nation’s chances and two other lower house candidates were disendorsed for “failing to meet party standards” after speaking out against the deal.

Pauline Hanson arrived in Perth on Sunday for a week-long campaign to shore up her party’s vote, hoping to echo the rock star reception she received in January. She plans to include the Pilbara, home of the lower-house seat of the Nationals leader, Brendon Grylls, in the trip.

Grylls holds the seat with an 11.5% margin and won a personal vote of 38.6% in the 2013 election. His One Nation rival, David Archibald, a geologist and climate change denier, is Hanson’s best chance for a lower-house seat in the election.

Archibald’s campaign took a hit when an article he wrote for Quadrant resurfaced, describing single motherhood as a “lifestyle choice” by women “too lazy to attract and hold a mate, undoing the work of possibly 3 million years of evolutionary pressure”.

However, Hanson appears unconcerned, suggesting the party is polling as high as 26% in the Pilbara and saying she is confident of winning the seat.

It is unclear what impact her comments on Sunday about downed Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 might have on the WA vote. The state lost 11 people on that flight, including the Maslin children.

2. There’s no money

Western Australia has a $3bn deficit and net debt is predicted to peak at $41bn by 2020. A fall in the iron ore price, contraction of the mining boom as large-scale projects transition from construction to operation, and a three-year lag in the GST distribution model combined to wipe out the $196m surplus the Liberal-National government had when it campaigned for re-election in 2013.

The Liberal party has said it would address the state’s dire financial situation by selling a 51% stake in the state-owned electricity company Western Power for $11bn, which would allow it to wipe $8bn off state debt and fund infrastructure projects.

The National party supports the sale but Labor and the Greens do not. One Nation is also opposed, which could prove complicated if it wins the balance of power.

Labor has announced a debt reduction plan that includes a proposal to allocate 50% of iron ore royalties to paying down state debt, provided WA’s GST allocation rises above 65c in the dollar and the iron ore price increases to more than $85 a tonne.

Both major parties have also campaigned on striking a “fairer” GST deal for WA and both have been rebuffed by their national counterparts. The Liberal and National parties have also proposed separate payroll tax changes to support small business.

However, the most talked about economic policy comes from the Nationals, who have proposed charging the two largest mining companies more for WA iron ore.

3. The National party is a wildcard

The National party has a “tricky” relationship with the Liberals in Western Australia, Grylls has said, and the preference deal between the Liberals and One Nation added another strain.

The two parties are not in a formal, permanent coalition in WA and entered into the current arrangement following a hung parliament in 2008. That allowed the party to leverage support for its Royalties for Regions policy, under which 25% of mining royalties are put aside for regional development. It proved wildly popular and has funded $6.1bn worth of projects.

Grylls was Nationals leader in 2008 and pitched the party at disaffected conservative voters, the same group now being courted by One Nation.

“He really was working to try to position the Nationals as not just the regional wing of the Liberal party, and doing a really good job,” Murdoch University senior political lecturer Dr Ian Cook says. That fell away during Terry Redman’s leadership from 2013-15, Cook says, with Redman acting more like a traditional Coalition partner.

Grylls retook the party leadership in August with a proposal to increase the special lease rental agreement paid by mining companies BHP and Rio Tinto from $0.25 a tonne, the rate negotiated in the 1960s, to $5 a tonne.

It would be the first ever increase to the rate and Grylls says it would generate $7.2bn over four years. That figure was challenged in a Deloitte Access Economics report commissioned by the Minerals Council of Australia, which said the proposal would raise only $2.3bn and would cause 7,200 job losses, shrinking the Australian economy by $2.9bn a year. Deloitte also argued that, under current GST arrangements, the additional revenue for WA would be just $300m a year, prompting industry-funded television ads with big red arrows showing money draining from WA to New South Wales and Victoria.

BHP has changed the screensavers of computers in its operations in Port Hedland, which is in Grylls’s Pilbara electorate, to say: “Increasing WA’s iron ore royalties by $5 would make them seven times higher than our biggest competitor in Brazil.”

Political commentator Harry Phillips says: “To me the biggest factor in this election is what happens if [Grylls] is re-elected with all these changes being pushed by him. He would be incredibly powerful.”

4. Both major parties have a leadership problem

Colin Barnett's experience is respected but it’s probably not a particularly positive force.

Colin Barnett has been premier since 2008, making him the longest serving current political leader in Australia. That experience has not helped in the polls, which have him significantly behind Labor’s Mark McGowan as preferred premier.

“He [Barnett] probably won’t have a very big personal vote at this stage,” Phillips says. “His experience is respected but it’s probably not a particularly positive force.”

Barnett was planning to retire from politics when he retook the Liberal leadership in 2007 and later promised to retire after winning in 2013. The latest retirement plan is for the 66-year-old to step aside for the deputy leader, Liza Harvey, at some point after Saturday’s election, whatever the outcome. The pair have been campaigning as a double act and there are no obvious challengers to the succession plan.

McGowan is also unlikely to pull a significant personal vote but for a different reason.

“He has been there a long time and tends not to make bad mistakes but he is not particularly charismatic,” Cook says.

In 2016 he was considered so uncharismatic that stoic former federal minister Stephen Smith took a tilt at the leadership in the belief he could bring some much needed pep.

There is an upside for voters to McGowan’s lack of charisma, Cook says: “They have really focused on policy.”

5. Perth freight link is still unpopular

The PerthNow Galaxy poll that predicted a Labor win also canvassed opinions on McGowan’s proposal to cancel the Perth freight link and redirect the money to other transport projects. It found 42% supported cancelling the project, with 38% opposed and 20% undecided.

Chief among those transport projects is Metronet, Labor’s longstanding (and expensive) plan to extend train lines and introduce a new circle line to disrupt the city’s hub-and-spoke train network.

Malcolm Turnbull warned last month that federal money promised to the Perth freight link could not be transferred to other projects.

The Liberal party has committed to pushing through on the project, which caused protesters to chain themselves to heavy machinery as clearing of the first stretch of the road, dubbed Roe 8, began through the Beelier Wetlands.

It recently committed to building a tunnel for part of the next stage of the $1.9bn road, Roe 9, which would otherwise have ploughed through Perth’s southern suburbs to get within range of the Fremantle Port.

The final stage of the road, Roe 10, which would actually connect the new freight link to the port, has not been confirmed.