Centipedal motion

Libby Mettam’s days are numbered. If she isn’t gone before the WA election in a few weeks’ time, and after Basil’s botched coup last year it is hard to see another mechanism by which she could be deposed before then, she certainly will be afterwards. But at least she’s doing it on her own terms. When The West Australian ran a barely veiled insurrection attempt on behalf of its golden boy Baz in November, Mettam stood firm. Despite The West mustering unreleased, anonymous polling – commissioned, it transpired, by Basil’s campaign team – and planting it on the front page of the paper repeatedly until the Liberal leadership came to a head, she called their bluff. Refusing to bow down and be cowed by the front page of the paper, Libby called a spill quickly, won the numbers and headed off the challenge before it could claim her scalp. Immediately thereafter, it all unravelled after it transpired that the numbers The West was running, conveyed by a still “unnamed business figure”, were basically gerry-rigged by Team Zempilas to deliver the verdict they desired – a trigger to challenge for the leadership before the election campaign kicked off. It was an extremely transparent ruse, which anyone who cared could see straight through, but it was only a few days of turmoil before it all blew through while Mettam remained. Her reputation was enhanced, while The West’s was left looking like the dying legacy media it is.

Compare that with our deeply weak Prime Minister. Several times over the past year, Albo has tried to deliver a fairly basic thing – legislating new environmental laws that he won a decisive mandate for at the last election and had already begun to roll out. In the May 2023 Budget, Labor committed $121 million to create a federal EPA “to restore trust to a system that badly needs it”, in the words of federal Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek. As we’ve documented previously, Seven West Media got into gear, rolling out a running campaign against Nature Positive on the front pages of The West and The Nightly from late 2023 at the same time as they sharply applauded WA Labor’s version of nature law reforms that turned the dial in the opposite direction. 

We’ll keep the recap quick: Albo reckons he needs WA to stand any chance of re-election, he’s terrified of a scare campaign run by the WA resources sector via Seven West, and he’s toed the line in increasingly humiliating fashion. In September, when the federal EPA was listed for debate, The West Australian ran a dual front page branding Albanese an “enemy of the state” – eight hours later, the legislation had been pulled from the Senate for another sitting, as Roger Cook assured business leaders the federal government could feel WA “coming en masse.” By November, The West was running “RIP Nature Positive” on a literal tombstone on the front cover after Albo overruled Plibersek’s written agreement with the crossbench as Cook bragged he was “hunting in packs” with WA business execs. The formula felt pretty stale even by then – the more The West phoned it in, the quicker Albo fell over to performatively prostrate himself before them while Cook simpered to the nearest CEO about how they had it all sewn up.

Which brings us to this weekend’s performance piece, which distils the process down to a fine art that is so deconstructed it almost disappears on the tongue. The state political editor who ran the numbers behind Basil’s tilt at the top job in November (the same day as The West last kneecapped Albo over Nature Positive) was once again the mouthpiece for some extremely overcooked books. This time the business lobby behind it, the Chamber of Commerce and Industry, at least put their name to the “secret” report they had funneled straight into The West’s hot little hands, but its findings about increased power bills and housing costs are no more serious than the last lot of figures. Instead, they merely perfected the human centipede of bullshit fed by industry to The West to WA Labor to the Feds in record time - before the day was out, The West was reporting that the PM had already crumbled and Nature Positive was gone for good from this term of government, banished to some never-never after the election.

Now, as an issue this is unsurprising: the reforms are impractical, the politics makes little sense, and it was probably only listed on paper for the sitting period starting tomorrow without much prospect it would pass. But as an illustration of the almost complete surrender by this Prime Minister to paper tigers in the media and smoke and mirrors from industry, it was highly instructive. If Libby Mettam, a leader hardly anyone knows and who is doomed to decisive defeat in an election next month, has more spine than the Prime Minister in standing up to WA’s daily newspaper, it augurs really poorly for federal Labor when their turn comes in a couple of months. Almost no one reads The West, they’re out of step with public polling on this issue, and the editorial team act like they can barely be bothered running a serious scare campaign – and yet they still get the job done without lifting a finger. If Libby’s last stand suggested The West might finally be ceding some of its outdated influence in WA politics, then Labor is overdue a wake-up call. WA might currently hold the balance of power, but the Prime Minister is drawing all the wrong lessons. Albo’s going to lose, and he deserves to – and unlike Libby Mettam, he’s got no one to blame but himself.