The War in the West

We’ve been saying it all along: If you want to understand where things are headed in Australian politics, all you need to do is take a daily glance at the front page of The West Australian, where the agenda is set and the battle lines drawn up. 

That's never been more obvious than it was this week. The Stokes propaganda machine went into overdrive, and The West declared full-blown war on federal Labor. The West is barely trying to conceal the reason it continues to exist: to exert brazen political influence on behalf of the resources industry. The paper’s primary audience is a small group of federal and state politicians, and the message is clear: Do as we say, or else.

The headline on Thursday’s advertising wrap cast Labor as an ‘Enemy at the Gate’. Inside, the actual front-page headline was ‘Labor’s War on the West’. The story outlined how the government had opened “two battlefronts threatening the resources industry” – an industry which, in the Seven West imagination, is interchangeable with the state of Western Australia itself. These two threats were the ‘Nature Positive’ reforms The West has been relentlessly campaigning against for months, and the news that the Australian Workers Union was fighting for Pilbara workers to receive better pay.

And the thing is, it worked: by mid-morning, Labor had pulled the Nature Positive bill. They’d looked close to securing a deal with the Greens to pass it with added climate considerations, but suddenly the legislation was yanked from the agenda – supposedly postponed for a week. (Time will tell.)

In the lead up to next year’s election, things are looking grim for the Albanese government. Unable to stand up for itself, unable to stand for anything, and copping it from all sides, it will pay the electoral price if it continues to capitulate to Seven West. Sure, the company still retains some ability to shape the tenor of public discourse and influence voters on this side of the country, but we suspect the conventional wisdom that Nature Positive would lead to an electoral wipeout in WA is overblown. And of course, pulling in the other direction are Labor MPs fretting about losing votes to Greens and Teals who aren’t beholden to the same big corporate interests. 

We’re not the only ones noticing the state of play. WA government backbencher Chris Tallentire said in the parliamentary chamber this week:

“It is just so important that we, as members of this place, realise that there is a concerted effort by interest groups to counter the environmental protection laws that exist at a state and federal level. This concerted effort is most clearly seen in the writings of the Seven West Media group, with the number of headlines and stories on at least a weekly basis attacking Nature Positive evidence of this.”

Tallentire also confirmed our suspicion that no one cares about The Nightly – Seven West’s daily digital newspaper – aside from tragics like us and the politicians and government employees it tries to influence:

“I have to say that I had never actually heard anyone mention The Nightly before, but I was at a conference in Canberra in July put on by the Environment Institute of Australia and New Zealand attended by 400 people. The keynote speaker was Professor Graeme Samuel, who is, in many ways, the architect of the nature positive laws. He actually referred to The Nightly and its campaign against nature positive, and now we see headlines on the front page of The West Australian that these laws are nature negative. Actually, nature negative is the situation that we have got into. This is why we must have the strongest possible environmental protection laws at a state and federal level.”

Tallentire’s speech was first covered by WAtoday and the ABC, before the West filed a perfunctory report of its own. But it was a different Labor backbencher – possibly a proxy – who was dragged on the front page of the paper for the next two days.

David Scaife – who I remember from my university days as a powerbroker of student politics – had delivered in parliament what The West labelled a “bizarre tirade of abuse” against Perth Lord Mayor/Liberal candidate for Churchlands/Seven West employee Bazil Zempilas.

In a debate related to a long-running dispute between the City of Perth and the state government over land for a primary school, Scaife said of Baz: “He’s a phony, he’s a fraud. Mr Zempilas is a B-grade TV personality cosplaying as a politician.”

Globally, TV personalities cosplaying as politicians have proven themselves to be some of the most effective political operators of this century (not everyone can be a lifer like Scaife) – but Seven West can’t have been happy with one of their brightest stars being described as ‘B-grade’. Zempilas was “one of WA’s most high-profile TV personalities and a veteran sports broadcaster”, the paper clarified on Friday.

Basil, of course, is lapping it up. He said he’d “never heard” of Scaife. Then, after Housing Minister John Carey defended Scaife, the Lord Mayor had these glorious lines on the front page of Saturday’s West:

“Seriously, I’m stunned by their lack of discipline. Everyone knows they shouldn’t mention me but it’s like I have them hypnotised or something, they fall into a trance and blurt out my name day after day.

“I’m not complaining, it’s amusing, so I just say thank you for the free kicks.”

We expect to see more of Mr Zempilas on the front page as the state election gets closer. In Basil, Kerry Stokes might have shaped for himself a sharper political tool than even The West, The Nightly, and the 7 News bulletin put together.