A new government and a police royal commission is making politics in Western Australia more interesting than it has been for a long time, as Hillary Bray reports.

The West. Big place. Lots of land. Few people. Everyone’s related and everything’s related, too.

Ever since the Perth Mint case got blown open again, it’s been big news over there. Former police officer Anthony Lewandowski has sworn an affidavit that he and murdered CIB boss, Don Hancock, stitched up the three Mickelberg brothers for the crime back in the eighties.

Last weekend, the West Australian editor turned shockjock, Paul Murray, wrote in his column in the Sunday Times that the JP who was on duty at the East Perth lock up on the night that a prisoner died says that he has hard evidence of a police cover-up.

It’s all an enticing entre51e to the Royal Commission into the local coppers.

The Court Government tried to clean up the police service through the ill-fated Anti-Corruption Commission but failed. Numerous prosecutions were attempted but they all fell flat. Interestingly, the lawyer for the accused police officers is now a state Labor MP, John Quigley.

The WA Inc Royal Commission cleaned up politics to an extent but the Perth political-business scene is very self-contained. Everyone went to school together, everyone went to uni together, everyone slept with each other at uni, everyone lived in the same suburbs and everyone married each other and their kids will repeat the process.

If you go to any social function it is always the same sort and will feature a few well known surnames Bond, Holmes a Court, Court etcetera. Many of the people who made the eighties boom so spectacularly in the West are still around. They still wield significant influence. And many have skeletons in the closet they don’t want to see disturbed.

The Royal Commission into Police Corruption only begins next month, but allegations are already flying back and forth. It has wide terms of reference, too and will be able to take a good look at what went on during the wild 1980s.

The Liberal Party is already salivating at what will come out on the Micklebergs, as the current Health Minister, Bob Kucera, was the officer in charge of the station where the alleged stitch-up occurred. Remember, this is the state where the caring and sharing Carmen Lawrence introduced mandatory sentencing laws that lock up black kids to shut Howard Sattler up so Kucera was touted as Labor’s star recruit.

He won the seat of Yokine at the election last year and was immediately catapulted into the Health ministry. Not surprisingly, the Liberal Opposition has been loudly demanding he resign ever since Lewandowski’s bombshell.

It sounds great on paper but there’s just one problem with their campaign. The incriminating affidavit from Lewandowski is easy to demolish in court because there are suggestions that Lewandowski only signed it after receiving copious amounts of sex, money and alcohol and after his business went under. Until facts change, that makes Liberal attack little more than a dirty albeit newsworthy smear campaign.

The person who may end up being damaged the most by this is the Liberal leader, Colin Barnett. Already some of his team think he stuffed up big-time and it has brought the leadership issue to the fore.

During the first stage of the attack on Kucera, strategy was being determined by Barnett, his very rural deputy leader, Dan Sullivan, justice spokesperson, Sue Walker, the self-proclaimed saviour of the party, Matt Birney and Peter Foss, a top moderate and shadow Attorney General. By the second week, Barnett was only meeting with Walker and a couple of unimpressive staff none of whom were members of the party before getting their gigs.

This enraged other MPs. Barnett was seen as sidelining Foss, Birney and Sullivan three powerful MPs in their own right.

Foss is a proud moderate who keeps the eastern suburbs of Perth firmly under moderate control. Birney is regarded as the leader of the right. Sullivan is popular with the numerous rural MPs for his efforts in opposing boundary reform and making life easy by defending their right to only deal with 9000 voter constituencies while their metro cousins have to service 40,000. Both Sullivan and Birney take their orders from the ultimate Right wing warrior, Noel Crichton Brown. Walker, on the other hand, has little credibility.

She spent years as a branch president in a leafy suburb after a marriage to Ross Lightfoot failed then won the Nedlands preselection by accident. The seat was due to go to the right’s Michael Quinlivan, a key player in the disastrous dumping of MHR Alan Rocher who was President of the Curtin division until his wife fell ill in 1998. The other alternative candidate was the moderate David Honey, a former party state president.

When Walker ran, the vital blonde factor somehow carried her over the line but once in Parliament, with no factional base of her own, had to desperately attach herself to the leader.

At last week’s party room meeting, an MP asked Barnett why he had frozen out the other members of the leadership team from the Kucera attack. He was rewarded with one of the legendary Barnett dummy-spits. There was much shouting and spitting and threats and lecturing on various MP’s failings not the brightest strategy for a man who got beaten for the leadership by a woman who wasn’t even a member of the State Parliament.

Now, the death watch on Barnett’s ill-fated leadership has begun. No one has worked out what the ticket will be, but many Western Australian Liberals are leaning towards a New South Wales youth approach by catapulting Matt Birney into the job. Birney’s particular brand of illiberalism will not go down well in Perth especially if the challenge the Liberal Party, One Nation and a few other enlightened souls have lodged against Labor’s one vote, one value redistribution plans falls flat.

Other Liberals are leaning towards Sullivan and his more temperate views. That would create an opportunity to see just how Birney behaves by parking him in the much less crucial role of deputy.

If Foss, who is at the other end of the party to Birney, is dissatisfied with Barnett, then he doesn’t have much hope. The next two months will be crucial and what comes out at the Royal Commission will be just as important in deciding the future directions of the Western Australian Libs.

Hillary Bray can be contacted at hillarybray@crikey.com.au