Category: Western Australian Politics

A Westpoll survey of 400 respondents in The West Australian today corroborates the bad news for Labor in this week’s Newspoll, showing the Liberal-National government leading 59-41 on two-party preferred from primary votes of 50% for the Liberals, 5% for the Nationals, 30% for Labor and 10% for the Greens. Colin Barnett leads Mark McGowan 51-35 as preferred premier. GhostWhoVotes has full tables, including responses on most important issue. The sample size being what it is, the margin of error on the poll is about 5%.

GhostWhoVotes reports that Newspoll’s long awaited October-December result of state voting intention in Western Australia shows Colin Barnett’s government on track for a landslide win at the election to be held on March 9. The Liberal-National lead on two-party preferred is 58-42, up a point on an already surprisingly robust lead for July-September, from primary votes of 43% for the Liberals (steady), 6% for the Nationals (up one), 30% for Labor (steady) and 12% for the Greens (steady). Colin Barnett’s personal ratings are essentially unchanged, his approval up a point to 49% and disapproval steady on 37%, while Mark McGowan is down four on approval to 44% and up three on disapproval to 26%. Barnett’s lead as preferred premier is up from 45-29 to 48-29. The sample for the poll was 869, with a margin of error of about 3.3%.

Lower house preselection news:

• The Liberal Party state council has confirmed, apparently with some reluctance, the preselection of sustainability consultant Matt Taylor in Christian Porter’s seat of Bateman. Gareth Parker of The West Australian reported the state council had earlier gone back and forth on the question of whether the preselection should be conducted according to the usual procedure, with a vote of delegates from eligible branches, or by a plebiscite of all members, which was on the table because the electorate had only one eligible branch. A plebiscite was initially favoured, which would reportedly have been bad news for Taylor, but there followed a change of mind and a ballot held by the one eligible branch. Taylor duly prevailed in the ballot over RAC executive Matt Brown by 10 votes to nine, with lawyer Jane Timmermanis and teacher Cam Tinley as also-rans. However, the state council initially refused to ratify the result and resolved to determine the matter directly, only to concur with the party branch in favouring Taylor out of the four candidates available.

• Labor has announced it will direct preference to the Liberals ahead of the Nationals in every seat (UPDATE: I speak too soon – Ben Wyatt has merely pushed for this to occur, with a definitive decision still pending; hat tip to Gareth Parker of The West), which could damage the Nationals in tight three-cornered contests which loom in Moore, Blackwood-Stirling and Kalgoorlie. Ben Wyatt apparently suggested it might also make the difference in Brendon Grylls’ audacious bid to move to Labor-held Pilbara, although he should hope to be wrong about that as it would involve Labor falling from first place to third.

• John Bowler, the former Labor minister who won Kalgoorlie as an independent in 2008, has announced he will retire at the next election. The seat will be contested for the Nationals by Mining & Pastoral MLC Wendy Duncan, for the Liberals by Melissa Price and for Labor by Terrence Winner.

What follows is a long-gestating review of upper house preselection action. Hopefully all the information is still up to date:

• Two of the three Nationals elected for the Agricultural upper house region in 2008, Max Trenorden and Phil Gardiner, have confirmed they will seek re-election as the first and second candidate on an independent ticket. Trenorden was the leader of the Nationals from 2001 until he was deposed by Grylls in 2006, holding the lower house seat of Avon until its abolition at the 2008 election. He parted company with the Nationals after failing to win re-endorsement earlier this year, prompting Gardiner to announce he would not contest the election out of solidarity. Trenorden originally contemplated a run for Central Wheatbelt, to be vacated due to Brendon Grylls’ bid for Pilbara and contested for the Nationals by the party’s third Agricultural region winner from 2008, Mia Davies. The Nationals’ Agricultural ticket will be headed by Martin Aldridge, a former chief-of-staff to Tony Crook.

• The Nationals have chosen state party director Jacqui Boydell as their lead candidate for Mining and Pastoral, replacing Wendy Duncan who will run for the lower house seat of Kalgoorlie. Second on the ticket is Dave Grills, a Kalgoorlie police officer and the state party’s deputy president. Incumbent Colin Holt remains undisturbed at the top of the ticket for South West, and will be joined on the ticket by Sam Harma, Young Nationals state president and candidate for Albany in 2008.

• Incumbent Linda Savage has been dumped from the party’s East Metropolitan ticket, which she reportedly blames on her status as one of caucus’s few factionally unaligned members. Labor will now field an all-new line-up of state party president Alanna Clohesy and Sam Rowe, business development manager at the American Chamber of Commerce in Australia and sister of Belmont candidate Cassie Rowe. Savage came to parliament in 2010, when she filled a vacancy created by the death of AMWU powerbroker Jock Ferguson. At the insistence of Alan Carpenter, she was contentiously given the number three on the ticket in 2008 at the expense of incumbent Batong Pham, who was in a wheelchair at the time recovering from a stroke. In the event, Labor was unable to win the third seat in what had traditionally been its strongest among the state’s six regions.

• The other East Metropolitan incumbent, former minister Ljiljanna Ravlich, will move to North Metropolitan, where a vacancy has been created with the impending retirement of Ed Dermer.

• Labor’s Mining and Pastoral ticket also receives an overhaul with the retirements of Jon Ford and Helen Bullock, who will be replaced by “former Labor staffer Stephen Dawson and Electrical Trades Union assistant secretary Jim Muri”. The West Australian earlier reported the state executive had knocked back the membership applications of former member Shelley Archer and her husband, former CFMEU state secretary Kevin Reynolds, scotching the former’s ambition to contest the preselection.

• In the one region where Labor holds only one seat, Agricultural, the party’s incumbent Matt Benson-Lidholm has been demoted to number two, making way for “Wheatbelt farmer and former Country Labor president Darren West”. Interestingly, Benson-Lidholm’s demotion is said to be a sign that Labor is confident of winning a second seat this time.

• The Liberals have demoted Jim Chown, who won a seat in Agricultural from number two in 2008, to the unlikely prospect of number three. Farm Weekly reports the demotion arose from a state council decision to negate the result of ballot of country division preselectors, which put Chown at the top of the ticket. Number one will now be newcomer Steve Martin, the party’s O’Connor division president, with the other incumbent Brian Ellis demoted from one to two. UPDATE: Evidently the situation has changed since that Farm Weekly report, which dated back to May. Liberal state director Ben Morton informs that the order of the ticket will be Jim Chown, Brian Ellis, Steven Martin.

GhostWhoVotes reports the long, long, long-awaited Newspoll result for state voting intention for the July-September quarter has the Liberal-National alliance with a resounding 57-43 lead on two-party preferred, compared with a 53-47 when the last such poll was published for the January-March quarter. On the primary vote, the Liberals are up four to 43%, the Nationals down one to 5%, Labor down five to 30%, and the Greens up one to 12%. Despite that, Mark McGowan, who took over the Labor leadership from Eric Ripper in January, continues to be well received: his approval rating is up five to 48%, with disapproval up six to 23%. Colin Barnett’s numbers also maintain their long-term deterioriating, his approval down three to 48% and disapproval up four to 37%. That being so, the increase in Barnett’s lead as preferred premier from 42-30 to 45-29 is counter-intuitive.

Liberal preselection news:

• The local party ballot to choose Christian Porter’s successor in Bateman has been won by Matthew Taylor, a sustainability consultant who has paid his dues as federal candidate for Fremantle and state candidate for Willagee. Beatrice Thomas of The West Australian reports the field also included Phil Edman, upper house member for South Metropolitan region; Matt Brown, head of member advocacy at RAC and twice-thwarted federal preselection nominee for Tangney; Simon Creek, a family lawyer (clients include Rose Porteous) said to be very close to Porter; Jane Timmermanis, a lawyer for not-for-profit group Sussex Street Community Law Services; and Cam Tinley, a high school teacher. Non-starters who had previously been mentioned included another South Metropolitan MLC, Nick Goiran, said by Gareth Parker of The West Australian to have had the support of the electorate’s one and only party branch (although “others say his social conservatism is a mark against him in the eyes of some influential colleagues”); and Russell Aubrey, long-serving mayor of Melville.

• Linda Aitken, a nurse at Hollywood Private Hospital, is the new Liberal candidate for the outer northern suburbs seat of Butler (the new post-redistribution name for Mindarie), held for Labor by John Quigley. This follows the withdrawal of Simon Morgan after his preselection met with a blizzard of adverse publicity surrounding his past indiscretions in Victoria, namely running an anti-Ted Baillieu blog while serving as his campaign director and making offensive comments about former federal Liberal MP Fran Bailey.

• Dean Nalder, a former ANZ and Australia Post executive, has been preselected to run against independent incumbent Janet Woollard in the naturally conservative seat of Alfred Cove.

• Local café owner and Chamber of Commerce president Trevor Cosh has won preselection for Albany, held for Labor on a razor-thin margin by Peter Watson.

• Jaimee Motion, Collie native and until recently media adviser to Troy Buswell, has been preselected unopposed for Collie-Preston, where the redistribution has increased Labor member Mick Murray’s buffer from 1.0% to 3.8%.

• Badgingarra agronomist Chris Wilkins will run in Moore, to be vacated at the election by Nationals member Grant Woodhams, after winning a July preselection vote ahead of Perenjori shire president Chris King.

• Natasha Cheung, who represents Ellenbrook ward on Swan City Council, will run in West Swan against Labor’s Rita Saffioti, whose margin is 4.1%.

• David Goode, owner of a small business in the “banking and finance industry”, will run in Gosnells against Labor’s Chris Tallentire, whose margin is 4.8%.

• The candidate for Kalgoorlie is Melissa Price, a lawyer who has worked in the mining and agriculture sectors. The presumed front-runner had been local branch president Matt Eggleston, who withdrew citing “a potentially life-threatening health scare” along with business commitments, although had also been fined after being caught driving nearly three times over the legal limit.

• Taking on tasks with various degrees of thanklessness against Labor are Bayswater councillor Sylvan Albert in Maylands (held by Lisa Baker with a margin of 8.8%), physiotherapist Daniel Parasiliti in Midland (Michelle Roberts, 8.3%), Jesse Jacobs in Cannington (Bill Johnston, 9.0%), Joel Marks in Warnbro (Paul Papalia, 10.1%), Katherine Webster in Armadale (Tony Buti, 14.8%) and Matthew Hanssen in Fremantle (Adele Carles, margin indeterminate). Tony Solin, public relations director at Peel Health Campus, will run in Mandurah (David Templeman, 10.5%).

• And taking on tasks with various degrees of thanklessness against the Nationals are George Levissianos, owner of Karratha Retravision, who joins the race in Pilbara; Stephen Strange, who also ran in 2008, in Central Wheatbelt; Tami Maitre in North West Central; Jenny Bloom in Kimberley. Augusta Margaret River shire president Ray Colyer will run against Nationals member Terry Redman in Warren-Blackwood, having failed in a bid for upper house preselection.

Labor preselection news:

• Cockburn councillor Lee-Anne Smith has withdrawn as Labor’s candidate to run in Jandakot, which Joe Francis holds for the Liberals on a margin of 1.8%, as she wishes to focus on her not-for-profit group providing assistance to Aboriginal youth. She has been succeeded by her campaign manager, Klara Andric.

• Susy Thomas, former chief executive of drug and alcohol counselling service DrugARM, will run in Southern River, held for the Liberals by Peter Abetz on a margin of 1.8%.

• Labor’s candidate for the fading prospect of Kalgoorlie is Terrence Winnner, 27-year-old chief executive of the Eastern Goldfields YMCA. The Kalgoorlie Miner reports Labor had approached local businessman Rod Botica, who “withdrew due to work commitments”, and Daniel and Sam Bowler, the sons of the seat’s Labor-turned-independent member John Bowler. Bowler Sr expressed his displeasure at the approach, saying he would “campaign vigorously against either of them because I hate nepotism”.

• Jennifer Shelton, a 29-year-old public servant who grew up in Carnarvon, will run against Labor-turned-Nationals member Vince Catania in North West Central. Catania won the seat of North West for Labor by 3.1% in 2008, which he owed to the Nationals’ narrow failure to edge out the Liberals into second place. He has since defected to the Nationals and enjoyed a good turn in the redistribution, which produced a 3.3% margin in his favour.

Miscellany:

• After announcing in March that she would not contest the next election as the Liberals’ determination to run a candidate left her with no chance of victory, Adele Carles has told Joe Spagnolo of the Sunday Times that she might consider running again in Fremantle as a “wild card”.

• Former Liberal member Bernie Masters has announced he will run as an independent against Troy Buswell in Vasse. Masters also ran as an independent in 2005 after Buswell defeated him for preselection, and fell 0.9% short of victory.

• Local councillor and businessman Shane van Styn will run for the Nationals against Liberal member Ian Blayney in Geraldton. Labor’s candidate is school teacher Kathryn Mannion.

The West Australian has published one of its increasingly infrequent Westpoll surveys (conducted by Patterson Market Research) of state voting intention, this one showing the Liberal-National government with a 54-46 lead over the Labor opposition, from primary votes of 35% for Labor, 47% for the Liberals, 2% for the Nationals (I don’t normally read much into poll results for the Nationals, but this seems surprisingly low) and 8% for the Greens. This concurs with the last result from Newspoll, covering the January to March quarter, in finding a considerable narrowing since Mark McGowan assumed the Labor leadership, while still leaving the Liberals short-priced favourites to win the election that will be held on March 9 next year. There has also been a striking decline in Colin Barnett’s rating as preferred Premier: on Westpoll’s reckoning it was never less than 39% when Eric Ripper was Labor leader, but the current poll has it at just 5% (42% to 37%). The poll also shows 60% expecting the government to be returned, against 28% who think Labor will win. As is the norm with Westpoll, this comes from a small sample of 400, with a margin of error of nearly 5%.

UPDATE: Further results from the poll show 42% believing themselves to have benefited from the mining boom, 23% responding it was “harming their ability to make ends meet”, and 33% saying neither.

We should also get a new quarterly Newspoll result for Western Australia some time next week, bringing a sudden end to a very fallow period for polling just nine months out from the next election. There have now been five polls for WA published this year, of which only two have had substantial samples, accounting for a combined total of about 2700 respondents. This compares with roughly 70 federal polls conducted over the same period, covering more than 87,000 respondents, none of which told us anything we didn’t know already. One effect of this is that I have accumulated a mountain of preselection news since Newspoll last provided the occasion for a dedicated Western Australian thread three months ago. I’m now unloading the material relating to the lower house, and will hold back on the upper house until Newspoll.

• Liberal preselectors in Churchlands have rebuffed Colin Barnett by delivering a resounding defeat to his preferred candidate, restaurateur Kate Lamont. Sean L’Estrange, a former army lieutenant-colonel and Afghanistan veteran, defeated Lamont by a margin of 22 to 5. The naturally conservative seat has long been held by Liz Constable, an independent who serves as Education Minister in Barnett’s government, and is considered certain to be won by the Liberals with her retirement at the next election. Lamont was granted dispensation to nominate at Barnett’s initiative despite the deadline having passed, and the fact she had only recently joined the party. Barnett was reportedly dismayed that no women had emerged in the initial field of five nominees, given the party’s present contingent of two women out of 24 members in the Legislative Assembly (Tony Barrass of The Australian reports former Australian Medical Association federal president Rosanna Capolingua had earlier been approached). Many in the party were angered when Barnett reacted to Lamont’s defeat by complaining that an “exceptional person” and “potential Premier” (whom he nonetheless didn’t know “all that well”) had been passed over in preference for a merely “good person”. Mark McGowan responded by suggesting she might care to run for Labor instead. Perhaps tellingly, The West Australian wrote in May of “a perception among some Liberals that (Lamont) is too close to State and Federal Labor figures”. Candidates who fell by the wayside earlier in the Liberal preselection process included Richard Wilson, the 30-year-old chief of staff to Energy Minister Peter Collier, and another late female entrant, Jane Timmermanis, a lawyer for not-for-profit group Sussex Street Community Law Services who ran unsuccessfully for the Nedlands preselection before the 2008 election.

• Christian Porter’s surprise announcement that he will enter federal politics at the next election has created a Liberal preselection vacancy in his safe southern suburbs seat of Bateman. The West Australian initially reported Liberal sources saying the position could be filled by Sean L’Estrange, but this was made redundant by his success in the Churchlands preselection. Suggestions the seat might offer a fall-back option for Kate Lamont following her defeat by L’Estrange were quickly dismissed. Another candidate mentioned by The West Australian was Simon Creek, a lawyer and Porter’s campaign chairman.

• Another Liberal seat under the spotlight is the northern suburbs electorate of Hillarys, after its 69-year-old member Rob Johnson was dumped as Police Minister in the reshuffle that followed Porter’s exit from cabinet. Johnson responded by publicly accusing Colin Barnett of betraying him, claiming he had earlier agreed to keep him until the election when he would exit the front bench of his own volition. The West Australian reports rumours that Johnson had threatened to quit the Liberal Party and run as an independent if he wasn’t guaranteed the Speakership after the election.

• Simon Morgan, who made headlines in 2008 for anonymously running an anti-Ted Baillieu blog while serving as Victorian Liberal campaign director, and for describing former federal Liberal MP Fran Bailey as a “stupid fat bitch” (along with numerous other character assessments), has won Liberal endorsement to take on John Quigley in the outer northern suburbs seat of Butler (presently known as Mindarie). Paige Taylor of The Australian reports Morgan worked for Luke Simpkins, the federal member for Cowan, before moving to a position with new WA Liberal senator Dean Smith in early June. Quigley boosted his margin from 6.9% to 9.5% against the trend of the 2008 election, and received a further 1.9% boost with the redistribution.

• Josie Farrer, former Halls Creek shire president and deputy chair of the Kimberley Development Commission, has been preselected as Labor’s candidate to succeed the retiring Carol Martin in Kimberley. Martin became the first indigenous woman elected to the state parliament in 2001, and Farrer will become the second if successful. She must first see off Nationals candidate Michele Pucci, chairman of the federal government’s local Regional Development Australia advisory body, whom Martin identified at the time of her retirement announcement as her preferred successor as Labor candidate. Labor’s margin in the seat is 6.8%.

• Labor has preselected Janet Pettigrew as its candidate for the inner northern surburbs seat of Balcatta, which will be vacated at the election with the retirement of John Kobelke. The ABC reports Pettigrew was chosen ahead of Stirling deputy mayor David Michael. Labor’s margin in Balcatta was cut from 9.2% to 2.3% in 2008 (which becomes 2.2% after the redistribution).

• Labor has reopened nominations for the Liberal-held northern suburbs marginal seat of Swan Hills with an evident view to running as its candidate Ian Radisich, a project management consultant and the brother of the late former member Jaye Radisich. The initially preselected candidate, Dee Perry, has agreed to stand aside. Jaye Radisich won the seat for Labor for the first time at the 2001 election, but bowed out in 2008 after failing to win backing for a move to the safer neighbouring seat of West Swan. She succumbed to cancer in March 2012 at the age of 35. Frank Alban holds the seat for the Liberals on a margin of 3.5%.

• The Central Midlands and Coastal Advocate reports the Nationals have resolved a brace of lower house preselections, the prize pick being the endorsement of Dandaragan Shire president Shane Love to succeed the retiring Grant Woodhams in Moore. Also confirmed is Esperance pastoralist Colin de Grussa to run against Liberal member Graeme Jacobs in Eyre, having seen off a rival contender in Esperance business owner David Eagles.

• The West Australian has reported on a number of confirmed or likely Liberal candidates for fairly secure Labor seats: City of Perth councillor Eleni Evangel in Perth, former Belmont mayor Glenys Godfrey in Belmont and Ishar Multicultural Women’s Centre chief executive Andrea Creado in Mirrabooka. “Teacher Mark Harrington and interpreter Jesse Jacobs” have both nominated for Cannington.

• Joondalup councillor Philippa Taylor has won an unopposed Labor preselection for the outer northern suburbs seat of Ocean Reef, which Albert Jacob holds for the Liberals on a margin of 2.7%, cut from 4.4% after the redistribution.

Newspoll offers a very interesting result in its latest quarterly reading of state voting intention in Western Australia, with the Liberals’ two-party lead shrinking dramatically since the previous quarter from 59-41 to 53-47. Labor’s primary vote is up six points to 35%, the Liberals are down seven to 39%, the Nationals are up two to 6% after what looks like an aberration last time, and the Greens are down one to 11%.

There is further good news in the personal ratings for Mark McGowan, who took over from Eric Ripper as Labor leader on January 23. His approval ratings are 43% approval and 17% disapproval, although inevitably for a debutante there is a very high uncommitted rating of 40%. Colin Barnett is respectively down seven to 51% and up five to 33%, although these figures are similar to those he was recording in the middle of last year – it was noted at the time of the previous poll that he was probably enjoying a spike from his photo opportunities at CHOGM.

On preferred premier, McGowan is doing very much better than Ripper ever did: he trails Barnett 43-30, compared with 59-18 in Ripper’s final result from October-December last year, and his best-ever result of 56-22 at the poll before in July-September.

With the countdown to the next election ticking away, there’s plenty happening on the preselection front:

Continue reading “Newspoll: 53-47 to Liberal-National in WA”

The Labor leadership change has prompted The West Australian to commission its first Westpoll survey of state voting intention in nearly two years, and the results are all but identical to those of the Newspoll that precipitated Eric Ripper’s demise: the Labor primary vote at 29 per cent, the Liberals at 52 per cent and the Nationals at 2 per cent, the Greens on 11 per cent, and the Liberal-Nationals two-party lead at 59-41. However, Mark McGowan has done much better on debut as preferred Premier than Eric Ripper, trailing Colin Barnett 48-33 compared to Ripper’s 59-18 in the aforementioned Newspoll. The poll also finds 20 per cent “more likely to vote Labor” after the leadership change compared with 8 per cent less likely. However, the poll (conducted by Patterson Market Research) has the usual small Westpoll sample of 400, with a margin of error approaching 5 per cent.

The West’s Gareth Parker also reports that Channel Seven journalist Reece Whitby, who unsuccessfully ran in Morley at the 2008 election after being recruited by Alan Carpenter, now hopes to run in Belmont, which Ripper will vacate at the next election. The report says Whitby has “quietly spent the past three years attempting to bolster hims support base” in Morley, to the extent that he is now president of the party’s branch there, but he threatens to be squeezed out by Nollamara MP Janine Freeman’s determination to recover the seat for Labor. Meanwhile, the Fremantle Herald reports ABC TV gardening program presenter Josh Byrne has ruled himself out of contention for Labor preselection in Fremantle. The Herald reports the preselection now looms as a three-horse race between Fremantle councillors Josh Wilson and Dave Hume, and Maritime Union of Australia deputy secretary Adrian Evans (hat tip to Frank Calabrese).

It is being universally reported that Eric Ripper will officially stand aside as leader of WA’s Labor opposition today, with Rockingham MP Mark McGowan to fill the vacancy unopposed. Ripper had survived as Opposition Leader for three years and three months since assuming the position in the aftermath of the 2008 election – not bad going by modern standards. However, polling throughout the term has consistently indicated that Labor has failed to seriously trouble the government, and a post-CHOGM blowout in the Liberal lead to 59-41 in the Newspoll published on January 6 may have been the last straw.

The decisive moment came on Friday when Ripper was told he had lost the support of the seven-member “Missos” Left, including the party’s lower house deputy Roger Cook and upper house leader Sue Ellery (not to mention United Voice a.k.a. LHMWU state secretary Dave Kelly). This development activated the latent opposition to Ripper among the eight-member element of the Right which had supported Ben Wyatt’s abortive challenge last year, which included both the mooted contenders – McGowan and Peter Tinley. While some who didn’t like the idea of the former evidently gave encouragement to the latter, Tinley simplified matters by declaring himself too inexperienced. There were also at least three members of the “Metallies” Left (Mick Murray, Fran Logan and David Templeman) who saw things the same way as the Missos, together with factional independents Tom Stephens (a long-standing Ripper foe) and Tony Buti.

This collectively made for at least 19 members willing to back McGowan over Ripper out of a caucus of 37. The tipping point having been reached, by yesterday any holdouts among the Metallies faction had come round to Ripper. Ripper’s only remaining loyalists were the “New Right” faction, which is an alliance built around Michelle Roberts and the “Shoppies” Right, together with Ripper himself and his partner Ljiljanna Ravlich (once colleagues in the now barely existent Centre faction). The West Australian today reports that Ripper retained 12 supporters in total, so I presume by process of elimination this must have included one out of Adele Farina (who has a background in the Centre) and Linda Savage (an independent).

Part of the steady drip of bad news for Ripper was Monday’s announcement by Bassendean MP Martin Whitely that he would not seek another term, which came with a suggestion that Ripper should follow his example. Whitely further complained of “factional bullies who have tried to end my career on two previous occasions”. One of those he may well have been referring to, the aforementioned Dave Kelly of the Missos, was tipped by Gary Adshead of The West Australian yesterday as a possible successor to his seat. Adshead also identifies the proposal which has been floated for Nollamara MP Janine Freeman (whose seat has been renamed Mirrabooka in the redistribution) to recover Morley from the Liberals as being motivated by a desire to gain a further seat for the Missos, and further reports the faction has designs on Ripper’s own seat of Belmont. It had earlier been reported the seat might be of interest to state secretary Simon Mead, who is also associated with the faction.