opinion
Ben Harvey: The odds are stacked against Basil Zempilas becoming premier, but don’t write him off

If ever you have the misfortune of being on a plane that’s plummeting to Earth because of an engine failure, pray that Basil Zempilas is on board. This guy doesn’t do accidental death; he does miracle survival. WA’s newest Leader of His Majesty’s Opposition in the Parliament of Western Australia (that’s his long title) has his work cut out for him as never before. He’ll take that in his Teflon-coated stride. Work doesn’t faze him. I have seen his ability to put in the hours, day after day, because I worked in the same office as him for quite a long time. I say “worked in same office” rather than “worked with him” because our professional paths rarely intersected (owing to the fact he was a sports presenter and I was an actual journalist). We would occasionally get in the lift together in the afternoon, Zempilas exhausted from an early morning on radio and late night hosting an event and me exhausted from a particularly long lunch. “Why is that strange man kissing mummy,” I imagine his kids would say to each other in the rare moments he was in his own house over the past 20 years. Whereas I have centred my career in the sweet intersection of maximum pay and minimal output, Zempilas just kept working and working. “You know you can let some opportunities go through to the keeper,” I told him when he put his hand up to be Lord Mayor. “Mate, if you’re given an opportunity, you owe it to yourself and your family to take it,” he replied. That sums up his approach to life. A lot of people reckon he got here through luck. Yep, there was a bit of that. But a lot of it was of his own making. He put himself in the position to be given the opportunities he would later take. Zempilas is going to need more than luck, self-generated or otherwise, over the next four years because Opposition leaders in WA have the life expectancies of a fruit fly. About 40 people have held the position since Federation. The first one lasted five weeks and the next just three. Opposition leaders are more easily replaced than premiers and prime ministers, so they tend to live and die according to opinion polls and often transitory support in the party room. It’s like one long game of Survivor. The 21 Opposition leaders who served for the first 80 years of modern WA had an average time in office of a bit over three years. That’s less than a full term. The life expectancy dropped from about 1980. The 16 party heads who served in the role from the time of Brian Burke to the age of Mark McGowan averaged just 1.8 years, or 21.6 months, in the job. The last five conservative opposition leaders — Mike Nahan, Liza Harvey, Zak Kirkup, Mia Davies and Shane Love — held on to the job for an average of just 18 months. History says that if Zempilas is going to win, he needs to win fast. Of the six Opposition leaders who became premier in the past 50 years (John Tonkin, Burke, Richard Court, Geoff Gallop, Colin Barnett and McGowan) only two (Gallop and McGowan) served as Opposition boss for longer than two years. The set four-year terms Barnett put in place means that can’t happen. Roger Cook can’t call a snap early election which means Basil can’t bag one from the outside, as Barnett did in 2008 when Alan Carpenter went to the polls early. So, it’s going to be a four-year grind. It’s not just history that’s against him. I can’t remember an Opposition leader who won their supposedly safe seat with such a small margin. Don’t worry about the work needed to win government, this bloke is going to have to campaign flat out just to retain his own seat. I can’t remember an Opposition leader whose deputy was previously No. 1 on the ticket. Libby Mettam may appear magnanimous on camera, she still has a lot of shit on her liver. Zempilas may still have an Et Tu, Brute moment. Most importantly, I can’t remember an Opposition leader who has had such a problem getting support from half the population. Labor has taken great delight in describing how Zempilas has a problem winning female voters and will keep dipping into that well for the next 48 months. Zempilas won’t like the circumstance in which he took his current job. But he’ll take comfort from knowing that as long as he’s in the race then he’s in with a chance, regardless of how far behind he is. Remember, this is the bloke who was in the commentary box when Steve Bradbury lined up for the 1000m speed skating final in the 2002 Winter Olympics. Zempilas called the most unlikely win in Australian sporting history. He knows anything’s possible. And he would certainly know that the gap between being Opposition leader and premier is far narrower than the gap between being a sports presenter and Opposition leader.

opinionBen Harvey: The odds are stacked against Basil Zempilas becoming premier, but don’t write him off

opinion
Ben Harvey: The odds are stacked against Basil Zempilas becoming premier, but don’t write him off