Ben Harvey: There’ll be backbiting, bedlam and even more Basil Zempilas as State election loom large in 2025

Roger Cook says: ‘I didn’t sign up for this s..t!’ It’s in the third term that wheels come off government wagons. Roger will romp it in come March but when dozens of backbenchers realise this could be their last shot at being frontbenchers, you’ll see Labor do what Labor does best: tear itself apart. Amber-Jade Sanderson puts the mouthguard in Further to the above, AJ will start getting frustrated. Don’t forget that she came within a bee’s dick of being premier when Mark McGowan’s exhaustion got so bad he had to quit and take on 59 corporate advisory gigs. Will she risk waiting until 2029 and possibly being consigned to opposition for eight years before having another crack at the top job? The year 2037 must seem an eternity away for someone who almost became premier in 2023. Basil Zempilas wonders: ‘What now?’ When Baz rolls Libby (like an iron ore price crash, it’s not a matter of if) he could end up being like the dog who finally caught the car. A new corruption tsar for WA Incumbent Corruption and Crime Commission boss John McKechnie officially leaves the star chamber in 2026 — assuming he serves his full second term — and the search for a replacement will begin in earnest next year. McKechnie was given that second term after former premier Mark McGowan overruled the parliamentary committee that watches the watchdog. Whoever replaces the former Supreme Court judge will no doubt want to prove early on they are their own person (and no, there is no evidence the new CCC commissioner will be gender-fluid, it’s just the way that sentence came together). An early black eye for a third-term Government? You can bet on it. Justice gets pricey Remember all those law-and-order crackdowns over the past couple of years? The much-needed focus on domestic violence? The recent pivot back to police on the streets to bring down the road toll? The constant battle to ensure bikies can’t pick their noses without being arrested? That all means more arrests, more court cases and more people in jail. With those crusading chickens coming home to roost in 2025, expect two big announcement: a new jail (or at least a big expansion of an existing one) and a new court building (word is the Department of Justice is eyeing off the Kings Hotel on Hay Street, which is a stone’s throw from the District Court and Central Law Courts). WA’s AAA credit rating gets squeezed The above projects alone are going to sap an unbudgeted $2 billion from State coffers, with the outlay coming as State debt is rising of its own accord (don’t let those bumper surpluses fool you — by the end of the next term of government we will have more debt than ever before). When iron ore takes a stumble in 2025 (it’s not a matter of if) Rita Saffioti will become Scrooge McDuck. She’s got form — as a young treasurer officer in Geoff Gallop’s government she was looking under the cushions at Dumas House for spare change to eek out a razor-thin surplus back in 2001. A High Court challenge to the 2024 Firearms Act Quite a few skeet-shooting lawyers will lose their shotguns when Paul Papalia’s “toughest gun laws in Australia” take full effect next year. Expect at least one of them to work out a way to prove the legislation is unconstitutional. The Libs exact revenge on the Nats Mettam says she can win the 2025 election (she’s a bit like the flesh-wounded knight in Monty Python and the Holy Grail in that regard) but the mathematical reality is the only victory she’ll claim in March will be over Shane Love. When she officially becomes leader of His Majesty’s Opposition, the first order of business won’t be taking the fight to Roger; it’ll be letting the WA Nationals leader know who’s boss. That’s assuming Shane is still in Parliament — he has a tough fight with his National turncoat Merome Beard, who is contesting his electorate as a Liberal. Losing your seat is bad. Losing it to a Benedict Arnold is worse.