McGowan Legacy – All Roads Lead to the City

No one can deny that Covid has been a massive gift to the McGowan government, but many forget that things have not always looked so rosy.

After winning a landslide victory in 2017, within just 12 months, his administration was staggering around looking very lost.  Early mistakes by Ministers attempting to keep a swag of promises, including building the promised medi-hotels and mashing together multiple departments, proved that many of his cabinet colleagues were not up to the task.

Then there was the growing list of broken promises, starting with the no new taxes pledge which lasted only until the first budget when the government rolled out a gambling tax, an uber tax, a gold tax and an increased payroll tax. 

Then there was the no privatisation promise, which went out the door with the quiet sale of $150 million dollars’ worth of Synergy’s wind and solar farms.

By May 2018, the electorate had woken up and gave Labor a belting at the Darling Range by-election, but since then McGowan has had a long series of lucky breaks starting with the election of Scott Morrison in August 2018.

The new PM proved to be a godsend as he moved swiftly to end the decade long fight over our share of the GST, handing McGowan an annual billion dollar bonus, effectively fixing the State’s budget problem with the stroke of a pen.

Adding to that, was the start of the second mining boom which saw the price of iron ore begin its upward march from US $70 tonne to the stratospheric US $160 today, about the same as a tonne of barley is worth (only iron ore costs just US $30 tonne to mine and load).

Adding to the rivers of gold was the billion dollars a year Labor has raided from Royalties for Regions, a slight of hand never officially announced. 

And just when Labor needed to be called out for hitting the financial jackpot with no effort, the state Liberals swapped out the economically literate and articulate Mike Nahan and promoted the pedestrian Liza Harvey in a deal cooked up by the factional Liberal warlords which also included promoting the hapless Jim Chown into the role of Shadow Ag Spokesperson. Neither lasted the distance.

2020 brings Covid and McGowan responded with the simplistic authoritarian formula of locking the borders, no doubt fearing his Ministers and mashed together Departments were closer to Victoria than NSW in competency.

But it seems to have worked in his favour as suddenly the Premier is looking like a Presidential superstar on track to pick up a swag of seats in a week’s time, including half of the 13 seats the Liberals hold in the Lower House and 2 of their 9 Upper House seats.

For Labor, it’s been an unbelievable run of luck. 

But the problem with relying on a run of political luck is that eventually one day it will run out, something that the hard heads in WA Labor are acutely aware of. As a result, they are planning to use the opportunity of a once in a century electoral win to rewrite the electoral boundaries to help lock in a long term advantage that favours the city over the regions.

To do this, Labor needs to win big in the Lower House which they are on track to do by potentially taking 49 of the 59 lower house seats which will keep them in power through most of what is shaping up to be the roaring 2020s.

If this happens McGowan could end up being the second longest serving WA Labor Premier after Philip Collier 1924 – 1930, (9 years, 126 days) .

Or he could well set his sights on being the State’s third longest serving Premier after Sir John Forrest 1890 – 1901, (10 years 48 days).

With no Ben Wyatt waiting in the wings for his turn at the top, three or even four election victories for McGowan is not out of the question, just look at these examples of long term Labor Premiers; Peter Beattie (9yrs 85 days), Don Dunstan (9 years 214 days), Mike Rann (9 years 236 days), Neville Wran (10 years 51 days) and Bob Carr (10 years 121 days). 

Such a long term in office might be good for McGowan and the State Labor Party but it would be a disaster for rural Western Australia.

Assuming McGowan wins big on March 13, my guess is his already very metro focused government will become even more centred on its new swag of metropolitan marginal seats.

In turn McGowan will quickly lose the limited amount of interest he currently has in those country electorates that continued to vote for rusted on Liberal or National MPs.

Already we see that Labor’s view of the bush goes about as far as they can see when standing on a beach or from the top of the local mine lookout. 

Take for instance the three key regional Labor held seats of Albany, Bunbury and Collie which all fall into this list and have been rewarded with projects aimed at pump priming those electorates with political pork. Also on the target list are the Liberal held Kalgoorlie and the Nationals held Geraldton and Carnarvon (North West Central).

If Labor picks up any of these big regional coastal or mining towns, they will have confirmation bias that their plan of focusing funding on only big regional centres at the expense of National held seats was a brilliant political move. 

If, on the other hand, they fail to pick up any new regional seats or lose one of their existing six regional electorates which include Albany, Collie Preston, Murray Wellington, Bunbury, Pilbara and Kimberley, they will likely turn their backs on regional Western Australia and simply focus their next term solely on pump priming the greater metropolitan area with the aim of retaining their swag of new city seats.

Either way, it is win win for the city and lose lose for small country towns and farming communities in the Wheatbelt, South West and Great Southern.

Already we can see what is coming, as despite four years in office and solid surpluses plus the opportunity to splash cash on COVID related job creation schemes it’s hard to find where McGowan has made his mark on the bush.

This has been reinforced in a recent letter from the Premier to WAFarmers in responding to our election priority list (printed in last week’s Farm Weekly).

Not surprisingly, almost all of our priorities were ignored but the Premier did list 14 key agricultural related projects that were funded out of either the $7 billion COVID recovery plan or the $130 billion spent in the last four budgets. All good projects only problem is in total they amounted to a drop in the ocean of dollars at just over $200m.

The government does however claim it has reversed the spending cuts of the last government and that it has “delivered record investment of $131.5 million in the 2019-20 Budget to secure the future of the State’s agricultural efforts.” 

Problem is it’s not true, on forward estimates the new mega DPIRD Department will continue to lose staff and the previous government pumped around $100m a year into big ag projects whereas Labor is offering up a fraction of that amount while including road funding which should normally sit under Transport.

So what do we have to look forward to? The Premier’s letter promises the following which will be funded out of the next $130 billion dollars of state budget allocations.

·       $10.1m Processed Oats Industry Development

·       $15m Agriculture Climate Resilience Fund

·       $15m Carbon Farming Innovation

·       $52m Country Road upgrades

·       $14.8m Regional Roads Program

·       $22m for Tier 1 and 2 freight rail projects.

·       $6m truck driver training (post letter announcement)

Again, all good projects and all welcome, but seriously they total just $132m, less than what was funded in the first term in office. It’s a pittance and the ag community should be worried that as far as a Labor government is concerned, it’s all spin and no traction when it comes to funding projects that are game changers for the farming community.

In fact, a review at the date of writing this, of all of Labor’s election commitments for the next four years details gaping holes in funding for regional development.

Let’s look at some critical areas that have missed out.

Mobile connectivity does not even get a mention in the governments priorities going forward, in fact it barely rated a mention over the last four years totalling just $14m, that’s just over $3m a year, none of which helps coverage of the back paddock.

In comparison, the previous government stumped up over $300m on 350 mobile towers, why can’t the state government get connected with the bush by promising another 200 towers to help agriculture keep up with the digital revolution? 

Following three years of dry across the Great Southern, Water Corp’s response has been to throttle down stand pipes and reduce the pressure where it was needed the most. Despite spending millions on carting water all the government could come up with as a long term solution was to promise $7m to clean out 70 town dams and $1.5m to kick off their Smart Water program. 

Not that we are complaining, as both water projects are welcome, but the government should be looking for long term solutions. Outside of spending billions upgrading the aging system, one option is to allocate just 5% ($25m) per year of its annual $500m Water Corp dividend on incentivising farmers to opt out of needing to access scheme water during droughts via a four year $100m program of rebates to encourage farmers to build 10,000m3 plus mega dams, expanding farm catchments, or installing bores and desalination units.

Roads are another forgotten area. For a government happy to spend $4 billion on metro net you would think they would come up with something more than $52m for country roads over the next four years as an election commitment. 

At the very least give local shires more funds to upgrade RAV roads and continue the Covid recovery program of add a meter extra to the shoulders of 400km of country roads. It’s a great initiative and should be extended to every kilometre of the states 5000km of Grain Freight roads. Together, they would make up a nice $400m, four year, agricultural roads election commitment.

Any review of the hundreds of millions thrown at big projects targeting Collie, Bunbury and Albany shows that if you are lucky enough to live in one of Labor’s prized regional seats then it is happy days, as it seems there is no lack of money for ring roads or job creating projects.

But the money dries up real fast as soon as you cross into a neighbouring Liberal or National Party seat. One would not be so cynical if the governments sudden interest in Tier 3, farm water, truck driver training or the plight of the dairy industry had not coincided with the lead up to the election.

The farming and regional community is looking for something / anything to show that Labor has a vision and priority for the State’s agricultural sector outside of endless lectures on regen and climate change.

No doubt, the Minister will point to her over two hundred announcements over the past four years that are linked to regional development but seriously, name one that is a game changer like the Nationals have on their CV with mobile towers or Ord Stage II?

If Carbon Farming and Regen is going to be the governments primary focus for the next four years, then back it with a policy of 10 times the $15m offered for the long term field trials and the research and extension needed to drive the current Ministers soils revolution.

So far Labor’s election platform is a massive missed opportunity which may yet be corrected in the last days of the campaign, but from past experience and with the announcements to date one suspects the governments political eyes on the bush go no further than Bunbury, Albany and Collie.

Post election, country voters can well fear that a big Labor victory will see two things happen, firstly the funds will continue to flow to the city while the farming communities will be left with the hip and the headline grabbing micro projects.

And secondly, as McGowan stated during the debate last week, a big win will open the door to “enhanced representation” which is code for electoral reform which will see half the National Party seats abolished and sent to the city and the collapsing of the Mining and Pastoral and Agricultural Upper House regions into one, cementing forever the political mantra that all roads lead to the city.