Colin Barnett

The Honourable Colin Barnett MEc MLA
29th Premier of Western Australia Elections: 2005, 2008, 2013
Incumbent
Assumed office 23 September 2008
Monarch	Elizabeth II
Governor	Ken Michael Malcolm McCusker Kerry Sanderson
Deputy	Kim Hames Liza Harvey
Preceded by	Alan Carpenter
Treasurer of Western Australia
In office 27 April 2010 – 14 December 2010
Preceded by	Troy Buswell
Succeeded by	Christian Porter
In office 12 June 2012 – 7 July 2012
Preceded by	Christian Porter
Succeeded by	Troy Buswell
In office 10 March 2014 – 17 March 2014
Preceded by	Troy Buswell
Succeeded by	Mike Nahan
Leader of the Opposition of Western Australia
In office 26 February 2001 – 9 March 2005
Preceded by	Richard Court
Succeeded by	Matt Birney
In office 6 August 2008 – 23 September 2008
Preceded by	Troy Buswell
Succeeded by	Eric Ripper
Member of the Western Australian Parliament for Cottesloe
Incumbent
Assumed office 11 August 1990
Preceded by	Bill Hassell
Personal details
Born	Colin James Barnett (1950-07-15) 15 July 1950 Nedlands, Western Australia
Political party	Liberal Party
Alma mater	University of Western Australia
Profession	Economist

Colin James Barnett (born 15 July 1950) is an Australian politician who is the 29th and current Premier of Western Australia. He is also the leader of the Western Australian Division of the Liberal Party of Australia. He had previously served as the state's Leader of the Opposition and Treasurer, as well as holding various other portfolios in Western Australia's Cabinet.

Barnett was born in Nedlands, Perth. He graduated from the University of Western Australia with an economics degree. Having lectured in economics at the Western Australian Institute of Technology and served as an executive director of the Western Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, he was elected to the Western Australian Legislative Assembly for the seat of Cottesloe at a by-election in 1990. Barnett served as a minister in the Court–Cowan Ministry from 1993 until its defeat at the 2001 election, after which he was made leader of the Liberal Party, replacing the outgoing premier, Richard Court. He resigned as leader after the unsuccessful 2005 election, but regained the position prior to the 2008 election, where he was elected premier. Barnett was sworn into office on 23 September 2008 by Ken Michael, the Governor of Western Australia at the time. At the 2013 election Barnett and his government were re-elected to a second term.

Early life

Barnett was born in Nedlands, an inner western suburb of Perth, on 15 July 1950. He was educated at Nedlands Primary School and Hollywood Senior High School.^[1] He began studying geology at the University of Western Australia, but switched to an economics course from which he graduated with an honours degree and later a master's degree. In 1973, he became a cadet research officer for the Australian Bureau of Statistics in Canberra, being promoted to senior research officer before returning to Perth in 1975 to become a lecturer in Economics at the Western Australian Institute of Technology (later renamed Curtin University of Technology).^[2]

In 1981, he was seconded to the Confederation of Western Australian Industry, becoming the founding editor of their publication, Western Australian Economic Review. He was later appointed their chief economist, and served with them until 1985, when he became the executive director of the Western Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry.^[3]

Politics

Court government and Opposition Leader

At the 1990 Cottesloe by-election, Barnett was elected to the Western Australian Legislative Assembly for the blue-ribbon Liberal seat of Cottesloe, and was immediately promoted to the Opposition front bench. In 1992 he was elected Deputy Leader of the Opposition.

After the 1993 state election which saw the Liberals take power under Richard Court, Barnett became Minister for Resources Development and Energy and later, Minister for Education and Minister for Tourism in the Court–Cowan Ministry. He was also the Leader of the House in the Legislative Assembly and remained deputy leader of the Liberal Party. He was generally regarded as a competent and successful minister, and was associated with a number of important resource development projects.^[4]

The Court government was defeated at the 2001 election. Court had a somewhat frosty relationship with Barnett and wanted to keep him from becoming leader of the opposition. While Court was from the conservative wing of the state Liberal Party, Barnett is from the moderate wing. Court engineered a plan to have federal MP Julie Bishop succeed him instead. Under Court's plan, both he and Barnett would have resigned from the state legislature. Bishop would have resigned from federal parliament and handed her seat of Curtin, the safest Liberal seat in the Perth area, to Barnett. Bishop would have then run in either Barnett's seat of Cottesloe or Court's seat of Nedlands, both reckoned as comfortably safe Liberal seats, and Court would have handed the leadership of the state Liberal Party to Bishop.^[5] When Barnett found out about the plan, he claimed to have "choked on his Weet-Bix" at what he described as "an act of treachery or deceit."^[6] However, when Bishop rejected the plan, Court, finding himself in an untenable situation, resigned.^[7] This left Barnett to take the leadership unopposed.

At the 2005 state election, Barnett proposed the construction of a canal from the rivers of the Kimberley Ranges in northern Western Australia to Perth to meet Perth's growing water supply problem. The proposal was costed by Barnett at A$2 billion, however it soon emerged that no feasibility study or detailed costings had been done.^[8] Some experts put the cost as high as A$5 billion. The Prime Minister, John Howard, refused to commit federal funds to the project. He released the policy costings only a few days before the election, when a A$200 million error in the costings document was discovered.^[9] When the Gallop government was returned with its majority intact, Barnett accepted responsibility for the defeat and resigned the Liberal leadership.^[10] On 9 March 2005 Liberal MPs elected Matt Birney, the member for Kalgoorlie, as Barnett's successor.

Barnett spent the next two years on the backbench—the first time in his career he had not been either a minister or opposition frontbencher. In November 2007, he announced that he would retire from politics at the next state election, at that stage due by May 2009.^[11]

Premier

WA Government

Barnett in 2012.

On 4 August 2008, Troy Buswell resigned as Opposition Leader and two days later Barnett was re-elected unopposed to the Liberal leadership despite the fact that he had previously announced his retirement and Deidre Willmott (who would subsequently be appointed as his Chief of Staff)^[12] had been endorsed in his electorate. On 7 August 2008, Premier Alan Carpenter called an early election for 6 September 2008. Barnett led the Liberal Party to the election, which saw a significant swing away from the incumbent Labor Party, leading to a hung parliament. On 14 September 2008, the National Party agreed to support the Liberal Party as a minority government. As part of the deal, Nationals leader Brendon Grylls and two other Nationals accepted posts in Barnett's cabinet. However, the National ministers had only limited cabinet collective responsibility, unlike past Liberal-National coalitions in Western Australia (and at most levels in the rest of the country), and the Nationals reserved the right to vote against the government on issues that affected their electorates' interests. Additionally, Grylls was not appointed Deputy Premier, a post which went to Liberal deputy leader Dr Kim Hames.^[13] Carpenter resigned rather than face certain defeat on the floor of the Assembly, and Barnett was sworn into office on 23 September 2008.

Barnett was the sole state premier opposed to Labor Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's key Health reform policy deal at the April 2010 COAG meeting. Barnett at the time led the only Liberal State Government in Australia, while all others states were led by Labor Governments. The reasoning for Barnett's strong opposition towards the reform was because it would require the State Governments to forfeit a proportion of their GST revenue. The Rudd Government's proposal was that 30 per cent of the GST revenue pool was to be dedicated towards the Commonwealth's contribution for hospital services, which had a disproportionate impact on those States receiving a less than per capita share of the GST pool (for Western Australia, this would have resulted in an estimated 64 per cent of GST revenue being forfeit). Barnett had already been angered that Western Australia was given a decreased 7.1 percent amount of the GST revenue (lower than last year's revenue amount of 8.1 percent)^[14] while Western Australia is a state that will be heavily relied upon for the nation's economic growth due to its booming resource sector. Western Australia therefore would be heavily dependent on GST revenue to fund major resource sector projects although they would not be supported by GST revenue, thus becoming extensive expenditure for the state.^[15]

Barnett believed that if Western Australia had agreed to a proposition for the States to handover 30% of the GST revenue pool, the arrangement could eventually lead to the federal government being able to acquire 100% of the state's GST revenue. The reaction of Barnett towards the health reform has been considered by political writer Peter van Onselen as a preservation of the states' rights.^[16]

From 27 April 2010, Barnett held the Treasury Portfolio after the resignation of former Treasurer Troy Buswell. In a cabinet reshuffle he handed the portfolio to Christian Porter later that same year.^[17] Barnett returned to the treasury portfolio when Christian Porter suddenly decided to pursue a career in federal politics and resigned immediately from all his state ministerial portfolios on 12 June 2012. Porter's resignation saw Barnett serve as an interim Treasurer until he was officially replaced by Troy Buswell the following month on 7 July.^[18]

Barnett led the Liberals to victory in the 2013 state election, taking 31 seats on a swing of 8.8 percent. This was theoretically enough for the Liberals to govern alone, and marked only the second time that the main non-Labor party in Western Australia had won a majority in its own right since adopting the Liberal banner in 1944. However, Barnett said after the election that the coalition with the WA Nationals would be retained.^[19] According to ABC election analyst Antony Green, Barnett would have been forced to keep the Nationals in his cabinet in any event. Even after the 2008 electoral reforms, rural areas are still significantly overrepresented in the Legislative Council. Green argued that the rural weighting in the Legislative Council makes it politically impossible for a Liberal premier to govern without National support, even when the Liberals win enough Legislative Assembly seats to theoretically govern alone.^[20]

Controversial policies

In October 2004, Barnett led a campaign to raise the age of consent for homosexual acts from 16 to 18. This policy of recriminalisation was opposed by several major organisations, including Amnesty International, the World Health Organisation, and the Australian Medical Association, as well as all other parliamentary parties, including the Nationals.^[21]

In October 2009, Barnett announced a series of new policies relating to drug legislation including a repeal of the Cannabis Control Act 2003.^[22] The previous laws were formulated by Geoff Gallop's drug summit, taking input from experts such as academics, police, social workers, lawyers, medical professionals and members of the public.^[23] Barnett has stated it is his intention to overturn these laws because of his beliefs and stated that the drug summit members made a mistake introducing them^[24] and that cannabis was a "gateway drug".^[25] To help with the enforcement of this new policy, Barnett also supported legislation to give police the power to search and seize property without any suspicion or belief that a crime has been committed.^[26] A Liberal parliamentarian, Peter Abetz, voiced support for these laws in parliament by drawing reference to the work Adolf Hitler did to bring security to Nazi Germany.^[27][28] Barnett said that Abetz was making a valid point.^[29]

In June 2013, Barnett said that Western Australia would not sign up to the Gillard Government Gonski School Funding Reforms. Barnett said that he will not let the federal government govern schools.^[30]

In December 2013, Barnett announced a controversial plan for great white sharks to be shot and disposed of at sea if they come within one kilometre of the coast of West Australia, while acknowledging broad dissent in the community.^[31][32][33]

In 2015, former Liberal leader Bill Hassell--who had preceded Barnett as the member for Cottesloe and "has a habit of excoriating Barnett in the media" according to The Australian--labelled Barnett a social liberal and a useful over-spender. Barnett claimed mining royalties were spent on "disability, mental health and other areas of social need". In December 2007 when former Liberal leader Barnett was once again a backbencher and contemplating political retirement, he claimed: "I'm disappointed that the Liberal Party has been taken over by hardline right-wingers" and "The party has become inflexible and has held a hard line on social issues, and that has not worked with 30-year-old voters" and "We should be more moderate on social issues. Saying sorry to Aboriginal people is part of that. We should have said sorry long ago".^[34]

Second-term polling

Polling since the 2013 state election landslide has consistently shown a large swing against the two term Barnett Liberal government. The latest Newspoll, conducted from October to December 2015 and released in January 2016, revealing the government significantly trailing 47-53 two-party against the Labor opposition, representing a double-digit two-party swing of over ten percent since the 2013 election and would be big enough to deny the government a third term. Just prior to the 2013 election, Barnett was nominated Better Premier with a 21 percent lead on 52 percent, with an approval rating of 51 percent and a disapproval rating of 36 percent. Since then, Labor leader Mark McGowan has consistently led Barnett as Better Premier by several percent, with Barnett's approval rating consistently low, currently at 33 percent, with his disapproval rating consistently high, currently at 54 percent.^{[35][36][37][38][39]}

2016 leadership spill

On 17 September 2016, Local Government Minister Tony Simpson and Transport Minister Dean Nalder resigned from Cabinet.^[40] Subsequently, a motion to spill the leadership of the WA Liberal Party was brought by backbencher Murray Cowper. On 20 September, it was defeated 31 votes to 15. Nalder, who would have nominated against Barnett if the spill motion had passed, promised not to launch future leadership challenges.^[41]

See also

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Colin Barnett.

• Barnett Ministry
• Western Australian state election, 2017

Notes

External links

• Department of the Premier and Cabinet
• Electorate website for Cottesloe

Premiers of Western Australia
Forrest Throssell Leake Morgans Leake James Daglish Rason Moore Wilson Scaddan Wilson Lefroy Colebatch Mitchell Collier Mitchell Collier Willcock Wise McLarty Hawke Brand Tonkin C. Court O'Connor Burke Dowding Lawrence R. Court Gallop Carpenter Barnett