Currently in WA Politics

Its a real mess, in all parties, on all sides and as a result WE THE PEOPLE will pay the most. Some more than other others but benefits to the state, to the electorates will slide down.
The comment is often we have a tough arrogant government and a weak depleted opposition so we're in trouble & the real variance in the mix will be how much sugar is sprinkled on the optic as there's little or nothing the people can do but ride out the storm as best they can. That People Power is going to have little effect for quite some time, the Government will do what the Government wants & the Opposition cannot stop them. 

All correct but there is another thing that's often forgotten. 
The Pendulum.

The pendulum ALWAYS swings. It gets bad one way, it shifts and often swings too far the other way but it swings, it always does. Only thing that varies is the variation in the swing speed & the onluy real concern is how much damage is done between swings. At the moment it appears the duration of swing is great & the amount of damage isn't over & might determine how big a swing is coming.

The date of WA State Elections is set. Its 1 year, 6 months & 18 days until the next State Election on March 8th 2025. So we know when the pendulum will be apparent. And like share prices, the election results reflect the position on that past date. Yes there is a small opposition in Parliament, yes one Party controls both houses by an enormous majority, so much so they do not need many of their MPs to sit in the chamber. In fact the Labor Party MPs need only attend enough sittings to qualify for their salary. They need only attend one minute of sitting time on & not attend for months. I assume Labor MPs are many in whatever office rooms they can use doing other matters, with their chamber on the speakers in their room & they need but a small sprinkling of MPs in the actual chamber. In fact, go onto the Hansard Video. It's not uncommon to see very few cabinet ministers in the chamber. It's extremely rare to see half the cabinet in the chamber at the one time. They are not taking the actual parliament very seriously, they have full unfettered control & can destroy any opposition amendments to any bill. 

This means a ruling elite can construct a Bill without many of their own party even aware its coming until they get word. 

We also have a growing list of ministerial failures. 
The Pendulum will swing but such is the horse trading for positions in the WALabor Government there's going to be a near on punch up if the Premier even so much as entertains a cabinet reshuffle.

Here's what's lost.

1) In the "old days" wiser parliamentarians who wanted to stay elected for a longer time knew and operated wisely. They knew the next election campaign starts the day after an election campaign result is settled. Every day between elections WAS the campaign. 
That's now lost. Now there's four and a half day news cycles. If you want to announce something with less fuss & criticism you make a soft announcement long before that doing "x" was a very likely possibility depending on advice and better forecasts as they become available. That's code for, we've already decided & amongst the decision is this dead cat bounce pre-announcement to lessen the blow...and we'll likely make the real announcement around midday on a Friday when all the news outlets are well & truly into full Sport Mode for the weekend. During AFL season is the best time for a weekend softner, Monday morning it'll be time diluted due to reporting on weekend sporting results.
Unsure? Well the dead cat bounce softner announcement for removing the State of Emergency (SOE) has happened already. Thats the SOE we already know is not based on Health Advice. They'll be fishing for every softner coupled with every distraction they can muster.

2) Parties are corporate governance black holes. All parties have Machiavellean players with way too much influence and control, with way too many people getting out of their lane & into the Over Reach Freeway with little or no tension or pull back. 
All parties need Corporate Governance reviews & widespread party reforms. The one party (like them or hate them) the Liberals, is well under way in a review & a reform. They & the Nationals should have both undergone full blown review, reforms, recalibration & then reboot in 2015. I say that now because I was saying it at the time.
7 years later, MPs have been controlling their Parliamentary Party (which is fine) but sadly they've also been controlling their organisations. All parties are in this predicament. It has several resulting problems. Machiavellean acts increase. Corporate Governance declines. Good people trying to effect good improvements will be targeted & be tipped under the bus and MPs will have very little accontibility in the organisation itself. That is, they are less answerable to the lay members & their equivilent of a board, the group that run the organisation, the ones who are repsonsible for Strategic Thinking are either over run, bypassed or stacked to the point they cannot deliver good governance & their proper fiduciary duty. That or they just do the MPs bidding & lay members get token double speak.
No party is free of this problem. None.

3) As good people leave the volunteer roles, the organisation's elected positions due to being targeted, undermined so to do other good people donating time to help the party do what they assume is the aim, help the state & the most vulnerable. Leaving with them is volunteered time, skill & experience...and cash donors. The reliance then goes not to bread & butter mums & dads, but to large corporate donors most often they'll be property developers, media owners, mining entities (mostly the mainly foreign owned) and other larger special interest groups. Leaders will have high buck dinners & soirees with advocacy groups and other corporate players. You won't see them have black tie paid access booze ups with P&C groups, WA SHire Presidents, Drug rehab providers and advocates...only the big money in the big end of town. The spiral begins, human nature takes over and they accelorate their dive into corporate dollar pursuit.

These things not only take over, they push aside a party's culture, their actual core values get diluted or worse still completely lost. Those are the things that drive their strategic thinking, that directs their strategic planning & worse still when the parliamentary side gains greater control of any party, the Machivellean creeps in & the accountibility to its members fades away to a forgotten memory. All that remains is the scramble for election & re-election at the expense of the reason why people come together to put others into Parliament.
Now, the career is more important than the values of the party & the benefit to the electors. 
Now you have a greater amount of politicians not legislators who talk for hours under water with a mouthful of marbles & say very little. Politicians who can work the room when things are tough to keep critics one on one, not in a group where the politician has to yeild, to listen & to improve. In the group setting the poltiician needs only great oratory skills to help motivate the room, to entertain & inspire even though its smoke, mirrors and a deliberate made up performance.

If a pendulum were to swing it needs to stop swinging from one tribe to the other. It needs to swing from poor governance, poor strategic thinking planning, poor accountibility & greater control of the political optic & swing towards World's Best Corporate Governance, properly known policies, properly known procedures, properly known lines in the sand within the parties to halt over reach & manipulation. 
Its only then will we get back to Wise Progressives vs Real Conservatives in the Legislature. 
Until then we will be stuck with factions, Machiavellean thugsters, political theatre props and grifters after personal gains ala restructuring the personal debt, elevating their previous lowly go no where careers & building a retirement fund they could never do on their own. Too many grifting thespians with above average debating skills.



FWIW - Many people get turn off as soon as they use the words "Ruling Elite" as a critical descriptor, but they sadly it is a valid descriptor & turning away only gifts more control to the grifters at the top.

The Premier is one of the more successful election leaders WA has seen. He ran a Labor tidal wave result in 2017, when the pendulum swung against the Colin Barnett Government. Then in 2020 McGowan followed it up with a monumental Political Tsunami despite Labor's less than stunning performance. No infrastructure has been signed off under Labor except MetroNet which is billions over budget & years over due. I think all the new schools, the Optus Stadium and hospitals were signed off under Barnett. Health Portfolio is very sharp decline into a far worsening crisis. Poltiical masterclass, governing disaster. 1200 Ambulance ramping hours under Barnett was rightly described by opposition Health Spokesperson Roger Cook as a crisis. As minister it regularly hit above 3000 hours and Cook described it as operating "fantastically" and operating at full capacity. 
People died though. And now under Sanderson its set to hit the first ever record high of 7000 hours and sections of hospital corridors are taped off to keep patients on gurneys for treatment.
To then have such a massive swing in 2020 was a political master stroke...despite the actual poor performance from 2017-2020. Such is our problem, political optics trump performance.
In this landscape, when the pendulum swings it will swing too hard, too far the other way...
We may end up with boom crash style stability as any traces of Statesmanship are lost. Taken out the back & shot by Public Relations gurus & media manipulators.