At a cabinet meeting on 29 May 2023, the then Western Australian premier, Mark McGowan, passed a note to his long-serving deputy, Roger Cook. “Mate, I’m done – you’re not going to the US,” Cook recalls of that brief message, which referred to an overseas trade mission that would soon be cancelled.
An “exhausted” McGowan announced his shock resignation shortly after, triggering an internal contest to replace not just a premier but a leader whose personal popularity had turned WA into a near one-party state.
Cook emerged the winner, thrust into the role of preserving Labor’s extraordinary grip on power at the 2025 election.
Labor won 53 of 59 lower house seats at the 2021 ballot after Western Australians rewarded McGowan for shutting the state off from the rest of the country during the pandemic.
The Liberals were reduced to two seats, just one in Perth, leaving the Nationals as the official opposition party.
As Western Australians prepare to head to the polls on 8 March, Labor is a firm favourite to win another term leading the country’s strongest economy.
But no one – Cook included – is expecting a rerun of four years ago, when even the bluest parts of Perth couldn’t withstand the wave of red.
Labor is tipped to lose its upper house majority, meaning it won’t be able to ram through laws at will.
“In 2021, we had an extraordinary result, one which will never be repeated again in Western Australia, so we can’t expect to see that,” Cook admits, while insisting Labor will fight to retain every seat.
Labor and Liberal insiders expect the Libby Mettam-led Liberals to pick up eight to 10 seats, including the prized electorates of Churchlands and Nedlands in Perth.
In that scenario, the Liberals would fall well short of forming government but regain a degree of relevance – and the mantle of state opposition – four years after it was pushed to the brink of political oblivion.
The focus would then shift to the biggest talking point in WA politics.
What does Basil do next?
A state that makes its own rules
The major parties chose the morning of 23 February to formally launch their campaigns.
After entering Optus Stadium’s Riverview Room to the sound of INXS’s Don’t Change, Cook announced a “Made in WA” strategy to turn the mining-reliant state into a manufacturing and renewable energy powerhouse.
“I know we’re an export state, but we should never export jobs and projects we can do ourselves,” Cook told a crowd of Labor faithful that included McGowan, making a rare public appearance since his retirement.
The WA budget is the envy of debt-laden east coast governments, posting a $4.5bn surplus in 2023-24 on the back of rivers of mining royalties and the state’s guaranteed share of GST payments.
Across town at her launch, Mettam accused Labor of squandering WA’s latest mining boom as she pitched a plan to build more homes, hire more police and hold a royal commission into the state’s troubled health system.
“What matters is how governments manage the money at their disposal to benefit the people of Western Australia, and on every metric the two Labor governments have failed miserably in this regard over the past eight years,” Mettam said.
The pair came face-to-face the next evening for the first and only leaders’ debate, an awkward, stumble-riddled affair in which neither landed a telling blow.
At one point Cook said “we put Labor first” when asked about the state’s health system, before rushing to clarify that “we put health first”.
Cook, who spent 15 years as Labor deputy leader, appeared nervous and unassured.
The 59-year-old was anything but when he sat down with Guardian Australia the following afternoon in his 13th-floor office of Dumas House, the state government building overlooking Perth’s Kings Park.
Where McGowan was stern, direct and uncompromising – or arrogant, in the eyes of his critics – Cook is affable and energetic, in public and private.
“I’m a different bloke,” he says.
“I was never backwards in sort of thinking ‘I’ve got to be like Mark’. I’ve always thought I’ve just got to be like Roger – make sure that I’m true to myself.”
Cook’s leadership mettle was immediately tested as the government fumbled the rollout of new Aboriginal cultural heritage protection laws brought in to prevent a repeat of Rio Tinto’s destruction of Juukan Gorge in 2020.
After weeks of intense industry, political and media pressure, Cook scrapped the laws in a decision he now casts as a sign of strength and conviction.
The premier similarly does not regret the public pressure he put on Anthony Albanese to shelve a promised federal environment protection agency, nor his attacks on federal Labor backbenchers who sought to revive it.
“I wanted to drive the message home that Western Australia is the engine room of the nation’s economy,” he says of his rebuke of the MPs.
“You can’t make decisions in isolation from the impact that it would have to WA industry.”
The full court press adopted by Cook and miners to thwart the environmental legislation, which followed a decision to stall on the state’s own promised climate targets, has fuelled perceptions WA is in thrall of the resources giants, and unwilling to adequately respond to the climate crisis.
Cook staunchly defends the state’s climate and environment record, pointing to a doubling in renewable energy in the south-west energy grid and phasing out of coal by 2030.
He insists the climate legislation, which would formalise a net zero 2050 target and require a 2035 emissions reduction goal, will be revisited in the next term.
If WA’s emissions need to rise to supply gas and critical minerals for the global energy transition, then so be it, Cook says.
Back from the dead
The WA Liberals barely had a pulse three years ago, almost wiped off the map at state and federal level, drained of funds, riven by factionalism and irrelevant in the eyes of voters and Perth’s influential business sector.
After overthrowing David Honey – the only other lower house Liberal – in a bloodless leadership coup, Mettam took on the thankless task of rebuilding the brand before back-to-back state and federal elections, this year.
A former journalist, Mettam has performed best when prosecuting the failures of the state’s health system, which most recently involved a 27-minute wait-time for an ambulance to reach a 39-year-old man who had a heart attack, and later died.
Mettam’s campaign has been undermined by a succession of candidate controversies, including the resignation of a candidate who had once described break-ins to his business as a “Welcome to Country”.
And then there’s Basil Zempilas, the high-profile Perth mayor and long-term employee of Seven West – the state’s dominant media company – who is running as the Liberal candidate in Churchlands.
Zempilas has cast a shadow over Mettam since he confirmed his run for parliament in January 2024, a widely expected announcement splashed across the front page of the West Australian (owned by Seven West) on consecutive days.
In November, pro-Zempilas forces attempted to parachute him in to lead the Liberal campaign from outside parliament, after polling – commissioned by an unnamed Perth businessman and leaked to the West Australian – suggested the party was facing another catastrophic defeat.
Mettam stared down the plotters, calling a snap party room meeting, which overwhelmingly endorsed her as leader.
Zempilas denied any links to the poll, despite reports that it was conducted by a marketing firm led by his former campaign manager.
The media personality has publicly maintained his loyalty to Mettam and was front-and-centre at the party’s campaign launch.
But insiders expect that once Zempilas is elected, it is only a matter of time before he is installed as leader.
The Guardian sought an interview with Mettam but was told she was unavailable.
Cheers to the past
Days out from polling day, the premier’s schedule is predictably packed.
Cook spent the morning after the leaders’ debate at Henderson shipyard, south of Perth, where he announced an $11.5m Aukus jobs program, before rushing back to the city for other engagements.
He did find time to drop into the pub to shoot content for the election’s final stretch.
In this digital age of political campaigning, the photos and videos parties choose to push into voters’ social media feeds say a lot about the messages they believe will resonate.
Cook’s drinking mate on that late summer afternoon? Mark McGowan.
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