On a day when speculation ran rife that WA had lost the nation’s biggest resource development project, the Inpex Liquefied Natural Gas project in the Kimberley valued at $25 billion, Alan Carpenter announced yesterday he would be closing the bars at Parliament House.

That announcement, aimed at wedging Colin Barnett over his predecessor Troy Buswell, was pretty typical of how this election has gone in the first two weeks and might explain why at the halfway mark of the campaign Labor finds itself in a tight contest against a crisis-ridden Opposition that only settled on a leader the day before the election was called.

Barnett may be obsessed with Brian Burke, but the Labor campaign is a little too fond of the Buswell jokes they had prepared to let them go this quickly. There are many valid points to be made about Buswell’s continued political success, in particular the effect it’s had, and will continue to have, on women in the Liberal Party, which translates to the women whom they seek to govern. But stunts like this impress nobody, and they belittle the real issues that Buswell’s behaviour brings to light. The problem with Buswell, and the boys’ clubs on both sides, is not that there are bars in parliament house.

There’s an even bigger problem with this kind of stunt, though, which is that it helps paint Carps as arrogant, but arrogant in the service of very little except his ego. “No-one else would have dared to try this,” he would have thought to himself, though it probably wouldn’t have occurred to him to wonder why that was. As Barnett pointed out, it’s the Speaker’s job to make these kinds of decisions. Quite aside from the issue of whether a Premier should be involving himself in such trivial matters, it doesn’t help his standing within his party to be attempting to take on yet another power that isn’t his.

Outside of legal restrictions and standing orders, the only standards for MPs are those that their constituents set for them. The issue isn’t whether they share a bottle of wine during a meeting, it’s whether they make the right decision. It’s not about drinking during work hours, as if they’re operating heavy machinery; work hours for an MP are a fluid thing. Is networking a work requirement or a social opportunity? It’s both.

The problems this is supposed to be a fix for are serious. The treatment of women, the seriousness with which political decisions are made, the amount of work done by our politicians, a lack of transparency and democracy in decision-making… State politics is certainly in need of a lot of work. But this is just a way to hide some of the symptoms. It will do nothing to make MPs take their responsibilities more seriously. It won’t prevent a single meeting with a lobbyist. It won’t stop women being excluded from the exercise of real power(if anything, it could reduce the ability for women to be included, if it forces people to meet and network elsewhere), and it won’t stop them being objectified and harassed .

Election campaigns are mostly for those who haven’t paid attention for the rest of the term. Stunts can be useful; they’re certainly understandable. But it’s best to consider the long-term implications before pulling them out.

He’s devious, because calling an election only a day after Barnett became leader was like “jump[ing] into the Olympic swimming pool five seconds before the other competitors“. But if length of time as leader is the issue, then it’s his own fault that he gave up his advantage; if he’d stuck around after losing the last election he’d now be ahead of Carps in time served.

He’s devious because he’s trying to avoid CCC reports that will prove just how deep he was in with Brian Burke. He went to parties with Burke, you see. The idea that Brian Burke installed Carps as leader is one of those stories that’s both true and not-true, all at the same time. Few people were expecting Gallop’s resignation, so there was a rush of phone calls and meetings between the various party power-brokers trying to find the best solution. It soon became clear that there were very few members of the caucus capable of taking on the role, and of those, Carps was the obvious stand-out; his media experience and lack of factional alignment being the two main factors. Pretty much all of the main players agreed, and so made this agreement known to their “numbers” within caucus. While they would have looked for someone who they believed they could work with, any party power-broker worth the title would also be somewhat concerned with ability: to lead the party, to be premier, to win elections. In short, Burke may have supported the choice, maybe even actively helped it happen, but that doesn’t mean that Carps wasn’t the best/only choice anyway, and it doesn’t mean he would have lost without Burke’s help.

The obsessive focus on Brian Burke is understandable, in that it’s a short-hand and effective means of calling someone corrupt in public without getting sued. But it brings public debate down to nothing more than rumours and guilt by association. No-one has ever accused Burke of holding a gun to people’s heads. There’s been little suggestion that he works by threats and intimidation. He deals in favours, and if he’s encouraged people to break laws and cross ethical boundaries, in the end it was their choice to do so. There hasn’t, that I can remember, been any specific claims of Carps ever doing the wrong thing in the service of Brian Burke. The suggestion that he owes Burke a favour, in return for being “installed” as Premier, is slimy and unfair, but the Libs haven’t been called on to provide proof of this claim because, these days, we have always been at war against Brian Burke. Perth’s a small town, and while Burke is indeed very rich and powerful, if everyone who’s had a drink with Brian was actually in his thrall, he’d be the King of Westralia.

Nevertheless, there’s no doubt that politicians think this way, and often seek to learn from campaigns and tactics that appear to have worked elsewhere in the past. There’s a whole mini-industry now, for instance, of importing Australian political consultants to work on and direct British campaigns. One thing I’m surprised no one (to my knowledge anyway) has mentioned is the fact that Alan Carpenter is obviously taking a leaf or two from Peter Beattie’s campaign book.

In 2001, Peter Beattie – enmeshed in a scandal where MPs and candidates were under the microscope of a CMC inquiry for allegations of electoral fraud – a scandal which took the scalp of the Deputy Premier Jim Elder and also of prominent MP Mike Kaiser – dashed to the polls with a promise to cleanse the Augean stables of his own party. He handpicked candidates for now vacant seats, and won a landslide victory of massive proportions. In 2006, despite voters’ tiring of his “look it’s broken! I’m sorry! I’ll fix it!” schtick, he once again dashed to the Governor’s residence a week after the Liberals had dumped Bob Quinn for the hapless Bruce Flegg, and won against the odds with the Springborg led opposition imploding on cue on the first day of the campaign.

Alan Carpenter appears to be playing a similar game – distancing himself from his own party’s factional morass, and making much of his selection of candidates who are supposed to be clean, untied to the Burke scandals, and represent renewal. He’s also rushed to call the election just after the Liberals changed their leadership, dumping Troy Buswell for Colin Barnett. Whether or not any of this will produce a Beattie sized result, or even a win, I can’t say. But it’s obvious that Carpenter has been keeping a close eye on Queensland political dynamics.

CCC investigations have lead to some upheaval in the ranks of the Carpenter Government. Tony McRae, John Bowler, Norm Marlborough and John Dorazio were all forced to resign from the Ministry. Forced resignations from the Labor Party, too: Dorazio, Bowler and Marlborough, Brian Burke, Julian Grill (who was actually expelled) and Shelley Archer, who refused to agree to cut ties with Burke.

The resignation of Shelley Archer, which came after the expulsion of Assistant Secretary Joe McDonald, lead to CFMEU Secretary Kevin Reynolds, husband of Ms Archer, announcing that he would resign from the ALP as well. While in practice the CFMEU (who made up the majority of the centre faction since the TWU started working with the Right) rarely turned out their numbers, the resignation of Reynolds would largely mean the death of the third major faction on paper, especially considering that it had done little in the way of encouraging new generations of factional “warriors” to take over the job. (Although the upcoming elections may change all of that, with the first genuine threat to Reynolds in years looking to take control of the union.)

The New Right, which had no union backing, lost its two main “recruiters” in Dorazio and Batong Pham (to a serious illness which he is now recovering from). Pham, who remained a part-time electorate officer for Dorazio even once the latter was forced out the party, took a seat in the Legislative Council when Louise Pratt resigned to contest the Federal election. His loyalties to Dorazio, his illness, and anger at being overlooked for preselection twice in a row, meant that he would have done very little to keep up the faction’s numbers. (I’m sure that the new rules forcing members to pay for their own memberships in person had absolutely nothing to do with it…)

As expected, the Misso majority of the left eventually did a deal with the SDA-aligned right to do a preselection deal which pretty much locked out anyone not in favour with these two groups, or blessed with an endorsement by the Premier.

All of this internal upheaval is being reflected in the number of external challenges to the ALP in the form of independent former Labor MPs. Shelley Archer has announced that she will run as an independent for the Mining and Pastoral Region. This was a somewhat surprising announcement, as the general consensus was that she was going to challenge Carol Martin in the lower house seat of Kimberley. However it does suggest that she wants to be more of a constant thorn in the government’s side, rather than a more visible, but largely powerless, independent lower house MP.

John Dorazio, who forced his way back into the ALP for a couple of months, only to resign again after it became clear he would not win ALP endorsement, is running against former journo Reece Whitby in Morley, hoping either to use his alleged popularity as local member and former Mayor to win the seat, help Labor lose the seat, or some other thing that I’m sure is not dodgy at all.

Bob Kucera, who was forced out of the Ministry when Gallop was still Premier over a minor scandal involving shares, was overlooked for one of the two seats created from his current one of Yokine. He, too, resigned from the party after his loss, and is still leaving his options open. He has the choice of running for the more marginal seat of Mt Lawley, which covers the majority of his old seat, or the safe Labor seat of Nollamara. As William Bowe and Antony Green explain, he would have more of a chance in the safer seat of Nollamara, but to be frank he probably has little chance in either. Kucera has expressed anger at Carpenter allegedly telling him that he was “too old” to run again, and has also claimed that he is upset on behalf of his constituents about “parachuted” candidates. These moments are rare, but I found myself in agreement with State Secretary Bill Johnston, who pointed out that former police chief Kucera was also a parachuted candidate. We’ll know by Friday what he is going to do.

Carpenter’s efforts to keep a strong hold on the WA Labor government, leading to his reputation as a bit of a dictator, can probably be attributed to three main factors: his need to cement his authority in the absence of a general election win, his isolation as a non-factional MP, and also an attempt to correct what appears to be one of his biggest mistakes early on in lifting Gallop’s ban on his ministers meeting with Burke and Grill. Whether it continues should he get the legitimacy that comes from winning an election in his own right remains to be seen. His success in having all of his demands met in the latest preselection round (including his own chief of staff) may partly alleviate his problems with isolation, given the numbers in caucus who will owe their positions to him. However, his isolation is not just due to a lack of friends – it’s also due to a lack of first-hand knowledge of the history and minutiae of WA factional workings, and given the speed with which he overturned Gallop’s Burke and Marlborough bans, and his promotion of Dorazio as a “rising star”, he may also lack the inclination to learn them.

So, lots of excitement this election season, but in the end, I doubt that much of it will make any difference to anyone but the players involved. Still, I guess that kind of makes the “Stability” part of the campaign slogan technically true. I’ll get back to you once I locate the vision and leadership…

*Not sure which ones, though: Musical Chairs? Pin the Tail on the Donkey?

Update: I missed this before I pressed publish, but perhaps the stability thing isn’t as much of a given as I claimed, either!!

In a column in The West Australian newspaper, former WA Labor MP and party secretary John Halden said Ben Wyatt, a Labor MP for the Perth electorate of Victoria Park, would be premier in four years.

“The government has its centrepiece Building WA, a package of infrastructure projects with such long lead times that many won’t come to fruition until its time to vote again in another four years, when Victoria Park MLA Ben Wyatt is premier,” Mr Halden wrote.