WA election week 3: No killer blows or fatal stumbles as close of campaign draws near
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If Liberal and Labor supporters were hoping this week's leader's debate would deliver a decisive blow dispatching their opponent to political oblivion, they would have been disappointed.
Instead, the only televised leader's debate of the campaign provided voters with a sustained, close-up view of the men who want to lead Western Australia for the next few years, and their political plans, promises, passions and aversions.
While politicians are regularly subjected to long interviews on talkback radio, extended television appearances like the 30-minute debate gave viewers a long, hard look at Premier Colin Barnett and Labor leader Mark McGowan as they answered and avoided questions fired by the state's most senior and experienced political reporters.
Mr Barnett acknowledged hard times had hit many since the end of the mining construction boom, but urged West Australians to have faith, and trust, and belief that he was the best person to return the state to a new era of prosperity.
Labor leader Mark McGowan said the same leader and same government would deliver more of the same results: record deficits, record debt and the highest unemployment in the country.
It was a contest of past performance against future promises with Mr Barnett's big building, big spending record proving a double-edged sword, as he trumpeted his achievements and defended his financial management, and broken promises like Max Light Rail.
Mr McGowan had to fend off the Premier's doubts about his international experience and try to justify the costings for his $2.5 billion Metronet rail plan and proposal to use mining royalties to pay down debt.
There was no decisive moment, no clear winner, with most voters likely to have finished the debate enlightened but with their existing views of both men, positive or negative, simply confirmed.
Leaders' appeal to Christian bloc
The next night, the Premier and Labor leader traded the cameras and panel of journalists for 500 members of the Australian Christian Lobby in town-hall style debate.
The questions were more moral than material, with the leaders having to navigate difficult issues from youth suicide to prostitution reform.
It was when the questions turned to euthanasia and the Federal Government's Safe Schools program, an anti-bullying program focused on gender and sexual diversity, that emotions in the crowd flared.
The leaders maintained their calm and their well-known positions on both topics.
The Premier did not support euthanasia, but Mr McGowan did.
Mr McGowan supported the Safe Schools program. The Premier did not.
In front of a crowd already largely convinced on the issues, their responses are unlikely to have changed a mind or a vote.
PM visit throws GST issue into stark relief
The leaders started the week in front of much more partisan crowds with their respective campaign launches on Sunday.
They were carefully staged and choreographed exercises in the politics of affirmation, rallying the party base, galvanising their belief in potential victory, and mapping out the grand vision why each leader deserved to be premier.
The launches were memorable not for their soaring rhetoric, but for the scathing criticism levelled by Federal Liberal Minister Christian Porter at Mr McGowan, whom he characterised as "sweaty and slimy" and unfit to lead the state.
Political rhetoric was all Mr Barnett managed to get from another senior Liberal, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, who rolled into town the next day to talk up the Federal Government's Defence shipbuilding commitments in WA, with a $100 million commitment to upgrading facilities.
It was not really clear if this was new money or exactly what the money would deliver.
But it was the other pile of money — WA's GST share — that was the focus of questions to the Prime Minister.
On that, too, there was little clarity. In the six months since he told the 2016 Liberal State Conference he would establish a base level for WA's GST share, he still had no specific level nor a specific timeline.
If there was a single tangible step he had taken to make the floor a reality, he resisted the temptation to reveal it.
It left Mr Barnett scratching his chin and still waiting, in hope, of GST reform that remains an ever-elusive solution to his debt and deficit problems.
Perth Freight Link blowout claim rebuffed
Late in the week, Mr Barnett was happier to head off another financial problem, a Labor claim of a potential multi-billion dollar blowout in the cost of the Perth Freight Link.
A Main Roads document obtained by Labor showed an estimated cost of $5.8 to $8.5 billion to get the road to Fremantle Port.
Mr Barnett and his Treasurer Mike Nahan were quick to confirm the current projected costs of Roe 8 to Stock Road ($450 million) and Roe 9 to Fremantle ($903 million).
But the Treasurer then added the Government was about to let a contract for Roe 9 at $1.2 billion, not $903 million.
No doubt that extra $300 million will be explained before election day.
Topics: government-and-politics, elections, wa
