The toughest job in politics
Ambition can be a powerful motivator in politics, but when it outruns capability or misreads opportunity, it can quickly become a liability.
That’s the trap Basil Zempilas has walked into by leaving the Perth Lord Mayoralty to become WA’s Opposition Leader. He made the shift at the state election earlier this year, narrowly winning the once-safe seat of Churchlands.
He now leads a Liberal lower house team of just seven MPs in the 57-seat Legislative Assembly – that’s how pathetic the WA Liberal Party is at the moment.
In politics, timing is everything. Leading the WA Liberals in the slump they are now in is bad timing for Basil. What looked like a headline-grabbing play for higher office is more likely to become a strategic blunder.
Most Australians know Zempilas as a football commentator and part-time breakfast TV host. But don’t forget: his media career was hardly at the cutting edge of politics and public policy, and it didn’t give him any sort of grounding in the art of statecraft.
And let’s be honest, Zempilas wasn’t even a particularly good Lord Mayor either. His term was marked more by self-promotion than serious governance – to the extent that local government is ever really all that serious.
The job, for all its ceremonial flourish, isn’t one of real executive power: it’s largely about chairing meetings and symbolically representing the city wearing a silly gown. And yet, even within those limits, the serious side of his performance raised eyebrows.
Basil Zempilas (pictured when he was sworn in as Perth mayor) has walked into a trap by leaving the lord mayoralty to become WA’s Opposition Leader, writes Peter van Onselen
Zempilas (pictured with wife Amy) now finds himself leading a demoralised WA Liberal Party that has already spent eight years in the electoral wilderness
Take his proposal to move the homeless off the streets of Perth by simply banning them from sleeping rough. It was a headline-grabbing gesture that did more to inflame than solve the problem of homelessness.
But Basil, never short on self-belief, seems to have read into his mayoral stint a political mandate that didn’t really exist. That, coupled with his background as a sports journalist, appears to have fuelled the delusion that politics at state level would be an easy transition. It isn’t.
Council politics is not party politics. Consensus-building in a chamber of independents bears no resemblance to the relentless factional, ideological and strategic manoeuvring required to survive, let alone thrive, in a modern parliamentary major party. Especially when starting from such a weak position.
Zempilas now finds himself leading a demoralised WA Liberal Party that has already spent eight years in the electoral wilderness. His task is Herculean: rebuilding a political brand that, in WA, has all but vanished.
Even if Basil avoids being knifed by colleagues – and that’s a big if – he is almost certainly looking at eight long years in opposition before he even gets a sniff of real power.
That’s assuming the Labor dominance in WA begins to recede, which at this point is far from certain. That said, if Labor finds a way to win after 16 years in office that would almost be without precedent.
Assuming the Liberals aren’t able to orchestrate a comeback four years from now, given how badly they did at the election in March, you have to ask: Is Basil built for the political grind of spending eight years as opposition leader?
There’s no evidence yet that he is. There is a reason the role is described as the toughest in politics.
Basil, never short on self-belief, seems to have read into his mayoral stint a political mandate that didn’t really exist. That, coupled with his background as a sports journo, appears to have fuelled the delusion that politics at state level would be an easy transition. It isn’t
His past success has been in front of a camera, not behind closed doors hammering out policy detail or brokering internal party peace.
Charisma alone doesn’t usually cut it in politics, and plenty of Zempilas’ critics query whether he even has that.
I’m not suggesting outsiders shouldn’t enter politics – frankly they should, given the shallow gene pool we see in most state parliaments around the country – but there’s a big difference between entering public life to serve versus using public roles as stepping stones in a personal project.
Zempilas’ move looks more like the latter than the former, and I suspect voters can sense that.
Eight years from now, he may well look back and wonder what it was all for. He’s about to turn 54.
I’m very happy to be proven wrong, because one party in power for the best part of a generation is never good for a democracy. But as things stand, Zempilas is less likely to be remembered as the man who saved the WA Liberals than just another ambitious local who mistook celebrity for substance.
Defamation bailout should worry us all
Meanwhile in Victoria, the Liberal Party has set a dangerous precedent by financially bailing out its former state leader John Pesutto.
The one-time opposition leader lost a defamation case against fellow state MP Moira Deeming, leaving him to pay her massive legal bills. Pesutto almost certainly would have been bankrupted had the Liberal Party’s Victorian division not decided to lend him the funds to cover the costs that he couldn’t stump up – $1.55million to be exact.
While I can understand why the Liberals did it, what happens the next time one of its MPs says something stupid and ends up in legal trouble?
Will the Liberal Party do it again, and again, and again?
Mr Pesutto (pictured with his wife Betty) has been ordered to pay $2.3million to Moira Deeming
Moira Deeming (pictured) was found to have been defamed by Mr Pesutto last year
Had Deeming followed through on her threat to bankrupt Pesutto – a reasonable threat, I might add – he would have been forced out of parliament because a bankrupt is not allowed to serve as an MP.
That would have forced a by-election in his seat of Hawthorn, which there is no guarantee the Liberals would have won. Either way, it would have cost the party hundreds of thousands of dollars fighting to retain the seat.
The loan is on commercial terms, apparently, allowing the Victorian Liberals to claim that lending him the money is an ‘investment’, as ridiculous as that sounds.
I hear Deeming offered Pesutto the same deal to help settle the matter, albeit with a guarantee from the Liberal Party that she would be pre-selected for her seat at the next election. I suspect that was declined because they hope she will lose that contest, courtesy of significant branch-stacking that has gone on in her electoral backyard. Just another example of how appallingly she has been treated by the Victorian Liberal Party during this whole saga.
Pesutto, a lawyer by training, should have known not to get himself into such a pickle.
You can’t afford an expensive legal fight if, well, you can’t afford it. While landing oneself in legal difficulties cannot always be avoided, Pesutto certainly should have known better in this case. He didn’t need to defame Deeming and if he decided he wanted to risk doing so anyway, he needed the cash to afford to lose.
Anyone who has found themselves caught up in litigation knows it is best avoided. That said, the golden rule is simple: only do it if you’re loaded.
Cash for comment?
You do have to start to wonder if Anthony Albanese is ever going to get to meet Donald Trump.
It has been six months since Trump’s return to the White House and, aside from the briefest of phone calls, our PM has been persona non grata in MAGA land, it seems.
Not only is Albo copping it for everything from not spending enough on defence to new tariffs hurting Australian exporters, but Team Trump is now also making rumblings that it might pull out of the AUKUS nuclear subs deal.
Donald Trump made an early dart from the G7 summit in Canada without speaking to Albo
Labor went all in backing AUKUS when former PM Scott Morrison first announced it.
Apparently Albo was thinking of flying to the next NATO summit in the hope of catching some alone time with Trump – but he has decided not to bother, sending Deputy PM Richard Marles there instead.
Albo was supposed to meet Trump at the G7 summit in Canada, but the U.S. president left early. Will Trump invite Albo to the White House the same way he did with Morrison in 2019? Probably not.
American presidents sometimes auction off their time at political fundraisers, just as many other politicians do when seeking to build election war chests for their parties.
Of course, presidential face time comes at a much higher price than it does for other public office holders. Perhaps Albo might need to stump up some cash to get his first meeting with Trump? Although I doubt the new national integrity commission would look too kindly on such a (mis)use of taxpayers’ money…
