The ballad of David Honey, and the mess facing new WA Libs Leader Libby Mettam

There was something appropriately bleak and comic about yesterday’s leadership change for the Liberal Party in Western Australia, the fifth since Colin Barnett bowed out in 2017.

David Honey pulled out of the vote, leaving Libby Mettam as not only the only other leadership candidate, but the only other lower house MP for the party in the state.

As we’ve long chronicled, the WA Libs achieve a level of tragi-comic dysfunction that would have Todd Solondz wincing and looking away. Honey took over from Zak Kirkup after the party was reduced to two lower house MPs in the Mark McGowan massacre of March 2021.

Let’s look back at one of the saddest (and quietest) reigns in Australian political history.

‘The Clan’

References to a “clan” very rarely give the impression of anything benevolent, and the WA Libs’ version is no different. “The Clan” — which had included former federal finance minister Mathias Cormann — was organised particularly around state Liberal MP Nick Goiran. It was Goiran who threatened to sue over an internal review which described its members of “odious” behaviour. The party eventually backed down.

By this stage about 700 pages of WhatsApp messages between Clan members (leaked in 2021 and covering the the previous five years) were already in the public domain. The messages detail alleged branch stacking and the manoeuvres that delivered their members to key office positions. It also featured a bunch of misogynistic language. Upper house MP Peter Collier referred to female colleagues with phrases like “prize bitch” and “toxic cow”.

Yesterday, a mere 18 months later, he issued an apology noting he was yet to make any comment but decided “given the ongoing commentary” about the messages he would. “I have expressed my apology to the WA Liberal Party Leader, Libby Mettam, and I also sincerely apologise to Liberal Party members, and the people of Western Australia for the inappropriate language that I used on several occasions,” he said.

Another member of the Clan, Ian Goodenough — the only federal Liberal still in a metropolitan seat post-May 2022 — claimed in Parliament that texts depicting him threatening to quit the party were fakes.

Devastation at state and federal level

While this is hardly Honey’s fault, the colossal wipeout in 2021 led to an internal party review so searing that it lead to defamation threats and had a huge impact on the 2022 election campaign: it wiped out the party’s grassroots infrastructure, reducing the electorate offices and staff around which volunteer efforts could be coordinated.

Indeed, Western Australia, traditionally a Liberal stronghold at federal level, swung violently against the party in 2022. The Libs lost four seats to Labor and one to independent Kate Chaney.

Jumping ship

In October 2022, the same week Honey polled at a 9% approval rating, state president Richard Wilson resigned after only 13 months in the role, and a mere three months after his reelection. In his farewell email, which found its way into the hands of the The West Australian, Wilson took aim at those in the party he accused of fostering “disunity” and public score-settling, saying “toxic self-interest” in the party was trumping “any deep-seated commitment to liberalism”.

A rough start

Honey’s public commentary on The Clan — transparently the biggest issue facing the Western Australian Liberal Party — was conspicuous in that it didn’t appear to exist. In fact, what’s most striking about The West Australian‘s coverage of the relentless scandals is how many pieces on the Liberal Party don’t mention Honey even once. When Honey did feature, it was invariably via editorials that argued it was time for him — “decent” and “not unintelligent” though he is — to go.

So it’s striking that Mettam’s first move is to go after The Clan, announcing that factional politics has been an “unfortunate and unedifying spectacle” for the WA Liberals and attempting to strip Goiran of his role as the party’s parliamentary secretary. That move failed to gain majority support, giving the distinct impression that the internal disputes are a long way from a quiet resolution.