State Election 2021: WA Liberal leader Zak Kirkup concedes he can’t win fearing ‘landslide’ Labor victory

WA Liberal leader Zak Kirkup fears Labor is heading towards an “absolute landslide” State election victory, frankly admitting “it’s not my time, but I’m not going to give up fighting”. In an unprecedented move by the leader of a major political party, Mr Kirkup said it was time to stop “playing people for fools” and instead be honest about the “impending reality”. “I accept it's not my time, but I’m not going to give up fighting,” Mr Kirkup said in an extraordinary interview on the first day of early voting on Wednesday. He said the election was not a contest between he and Mark McGowan about who would be premier, but a choice for voters about “Labor getting too much power with no checks and balances”. The Dawesville MP stopped short of conceding defeat before the March 13 poll, but spoke fatalistically about the prospect of the Liberal Party being in Opposition for another four years. He vowed the party would fight tooth and nail over the remaining 17 days of the election campaign to hold on to as many of their 13 Lower House and nine Upper House seats as possible. “This has been one of the most difficult (elections) that the Liberal Party’s ever faced and all of us are aware of that,” Mr Kirkup said. “But as I get around WA, and it’s been a lot, more and more people are telling me that they just expect Mark McGowan’s going to win and we have to acknowledge that, because I don’t want to treat people like mugs. “I don’t want (people) to think that I’m not aware of their comments and their belief that the Premier is going to be re-elected after March 13. “We have to keep fighting on — we have to keep doing that — but the reality is I can’t escape the fact that people believe that Mark McGowan will be the next premier. “And so now we have to move our campaign to make sure that we get as many Liberals across the line and to fight hard in every seat so that we can hold the Government to account and make sure we have that strong checks and balances. “Because without that, another four years of Labor with an Opposition that is reduced to single digit seats, that’s a massive, massive issue for the future of our democracy. I’m conscious that this is my body on the barbed wire here, I need to get as many (Liberal candidates and MPs) over the fence as possible now.” He said the Liberals would be “an Opposition that works collaboratively, cooperatively and constructively” and hold the Government to account “if Labor gets it wrong or goes too far”, but had a “very real fear” the State would be worse-off if there was not a strong Liberal Party post-election. The 34-year-old made a direct plea for West Australians to forget about whether he would become premier and instead vote for a Liberal Party candidate “who’s going to stand up and fight for them locally and be there in case Labor goes too far or gets it wrong”. He said the prospect of the Liberal vote going backwards and Labor winning a “super majority” and control of the Upper House for the first time ever “would bring into question our democracy”. “This is a substantial shift. I’ve never been part of any election campaign in my life where I’ve seen this kind of language change. We’re not giving up the fight, because we can’t afford to in any of our seats, but I have to acknowledge what people were telling me,” Mr Kirkup said. “I feel a sense of solemn duty about that. I feel the burden of responsibility to make sure people know that actually I’m fighting for the future of WA, to make sure we can hold the government to account, let alone where we will be if we were to get wiped out if there’s a Labor landslide.” The first-term MP, who succeeded Liza Harvey as Opposition leader 13 weeks ago, said the radical strategy shift was not driven by a Newspoll which suggested a 12.5 per cent swing to Labor that could reduce the Liberals to just two seats. He believed the pivot — which he described as “a leader who is sacrificing himself”— was unprecedented in Australian electoral history and “something which has weighed on me for a long time”. He said the lockdown of Perth and the South West earlier this month — which he supported to stop the spread of COVID — had robbed almost two weeks from the campaign and hurt his party’s chances. “My attitude has gone from being really hopeful about our chances of getting really close to being fearful about what happens when Labor gets an absolute landslide,” he said. Mr Kirkup himself is in grave danger of being booted from parliament. He holds Dawesville by a razor-thin 0.9 per cent margin. “I fear that we could be decimated. I fear that there could be a Labor landslide,” he added. “It’s already hard now. We’ve got 13 in the Lower House and Labor has 40. That’s already a task for us to hold them to account ... if that number was reduced, it makes it harder still. If that goes backwards, I fear for where WA would be after that.” He was “very confident” that his controversial plan to replace coal-fired power stations with renewable energy within four years had not contributed to the situation. A video which emerged this week of Mr McGowan being cheered at a wedding at Crown had reinforced what people were telling him. “They think he’s going to be premier, so let’s not play the people for fools and pretend that this is a choice between him and me. This is a choice, now, about Labor getting too much power, and no checks and balances,” Mr Kirkup said.