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Nationals hand WA election win to the Liberals
Posted 3 hours 22 minutes ago
Updated 56 minutes ago
Nationals hand WA election win to the Liberals - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)
The Western Australian Nationals have handed the Liberals victory in the state election.
The WA Nationals leader, Brendon Grylls, has emerged from a State Council meeting at a Perth hotel announcing the party would use its balance of power in the Lower House to support its traditional allies.
Both the Liberal Leader, Colin Barnett, and Labor's Alan Carpenter have been courting the Nationals since last weekend's state poll delivered a hung Parliament.
Mr Grylls demanded that 25 per cent of mining royalties be set aside for regional projects.
Both parties agreed to the deal and to other requests, raising concern about the impact on WA's credit rating, and a range of projects planned for the state.
Mr Grylls says the decision was not unanimous but his party decided to back the Liberals because if they had supported Labor, the Greens may have had the balance of power in the Upper House.
"Any offer from the Labor party would require Greens support in the Upper House to guarantee that legislation," he said.
Mr Grylls says he wants to be minister for Regional Development, but the power-sharing arrangement is still to be negotiated.
"The Nationals State Council has today endorsed the parliamentary team to negotiate a power-sharing arrangement with a minority Liberal government," he said.
"On the present numbers this will also require the support of the Independent Member for Kalgoorlie, John Bowler.
"The power-sharing arrangement is to be negotiated over the coming days.
"We are not prepared to go into a traditional coalition so we'll be accepting ministries based on being independent ministers, that reserve the right to exempt ourselves from Cabinet and vote against an issue on the floor of the Parliament if it's against the wishes of the people we represent."
Mr Grylls said it has been a "tough and arduous week".
Mr Barnett had planned to retire at the election, but agreed to take on the leadership when the Liberal's former leader Troy Buswell became involved in a number of controversies, most notably a chair-sniffing incident.
Political analyst Peter Van Onselen says Mr Barnett has staged an extraordinary political comeback.
"Without a return of Colin Barnett to the leadership the National Party would never have been able to win the balance of power and would have remained in political irrelevancy," he said.
The decision by the Nationals spells the end of Labor's two-term reign in WA and raises further speculation about the future of the outgoing premier, Carpenter.
His leadership of the party has been under strain since Labor's poor election performance.
Mr Carpenter never won an election in his own right, taking over from the former premier, Geoff Gallop, who resigned for personal reasons in January 2006.
Mr Carpenter will give a concession speech this afternoon.
It will be Western Australia's first Liberal government since 2001.
Political analyst David Black says it will be hard for the Nationals to remain independent.
"It will be difficult, but I think it will be necessary because apart from anything else the National Party do require Labor Party preferences in some of their seats in the Legislative Assembly so I think as much as possible they want to try and maintain this independence," he said.
Meanwhile the distribution of preferences is continuing in a number of seats.
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