Basil Zempilas shuts down challenge to Libby Mettam’s Liberal leadership but leaves door open

Basil Zempilas has slammed the door shut on challenging Libby Mettam for the leadership of the WA Liberal Party before the next election — but the under-pressure leader isn’t out of the woods yet. As the Liberals stare down the barrel of another big election loss on March 8, Ms Mettam’s future as leader continues to come under scrutiny as some members of the party privately ponder whether Mr Zempilas would be a better bet to lead the conservatives to the next poll. Speculation within political circles that Mr Zempilas would challenge Ms Mettam for the leadership before Christmas reached fever pitch this week, in the wake of a dismal few weeks for the Liberals and a new poll which showed the Liberals, at best, would emulate the disastrous 2017 election result where they ended up with 13 out of 59 seats in the Legislative Assembly. Mr Zempilas, the Perth Lord Mayor and Liberal candidate for Churchlands, told The Sunday Times he would not challenge Ms Mettam for the leadership. “I can 100 per cent guarantee I will not be challenging Libby Mettam,” Mr Zempilas told The Sunday Times. But while Mr Zempilas shut the door on a leadership challenge, he left the door open to leading the Liberals to next year’s poll — in the event Ms Mettam resigned as leader or was dumped by her parliamentary colleagues during the December killing season. “It’s a pretty left-field hypothetical,” Mr Zempilas said when asked whether he’d lead the Liberals if approached by MPs. “It’s a pretty out-there question, and it’s not something that I have thought about because it’s not something I expect to happen. “I’m a team player. I play by the rules.” There has been a revolving door of WA Liberal leaders since Colin Barnett was trounced by Mark McGowan in 2017, with Mike Nahan, Liza Harvey, Zak Kirkup, David Honey and now Libby Mettam all filling the role at various times over the past seven years. As reported by The West Australian this week, a Demos AU survey of 948 voters predicted about 11 Labor seats would fall in next year’s State election. Assuming the Liberals held their current three seats in the Assembly, that would bring their total number of MPs in the Lower House to 14 out of a possible 59. Liberal Party sources told The Sunday Times this week that internal polling showed the situation was even more dire than polling in the public domain showed. Sources also claimed the so-called alliance between the Liberal and Nationals had disintegrated to a point where the two parties hated each other, barely on speaking terms. Mr Zempilas is expected to win Churchlands, which Labor’s Christine Tonkin holds by a flimsy margin of just 0.81 per cent. Prior to 2021, Churchlands had been in Liberal hands, held by minister Sean L’Estrange. Even though Mr Zempilas is not an elected member of parliament he could lead the Liberals from outside the parliament until the election was held — as did Campbell Newman in Queensland in 2012. Asked whether he thought Ms Mettam was Premier material, Mr Zempilas replied: “She is a star. She is an incredibly hard worker, and I am a huge admirer of hers. What she has achieved and what she has done — outnumbered and often under pressure — has been remarkable.” Liberal sources said that if a vote was held this weekend on the leadership of the WA Liberal Party, Ms Mettam could probably count on support from only three of her nine Liberal colleagues in State Parliament — Steve Martin and the retiring Peter Collier and Donna Faragher. Either way, Ms Mettam has made it abundantly clear she expects to lead the Liberals to the next election. “I have no intention of stepping down. I have no intention of not being the leader of the Liberal Party,” Ms Mettam last month told The Sunday Times. Rumours have been circulating for years that Mr Zempilas has long aspired to become WA Premier. Mr Zempilas said those rumours were false. “I have seen that said of me. That is not true,” he said. “I was always interested in politics, but hand on heart, I never said, ‘I’d love to be premier’. “But looking back now, I do think: was my broadcast career, which was everything to me, was that just getting me ready for this (political) career in front of me now?”