Sue Walker quits the Liberals - and congratulations to her
Feb 9th, 2008 by Rebecca
This afternoon, the only non-retiring member of the Liberal caucus in the Western Australian Legislative Assembly, former Shadow-Attorney General Sue Walker, announced that she would quit the Liberals and run as an independent in the forthcoming election.
The Liberals in Western Australia have perhaps been the only state opposition within striking distance of an incumbent Australian government in recent months. It’s bad enough that they had all of two women MPs in their lower house caucus - the lowest, to my knowledge, of any major party caucus in any house of parliament in the country - but considering that they’ve now had both of those MPs angrily resign, how on earth can they reasonably expect women to vote for them as an alternative government?
The WA Liberals elected Troy Buswell as their leader a weeks ago despite knowing of numerous sexual harassment allegations against him. Veteran MP Katie Hodson-Thomas, one of those who had made the allegations against Buswell, almost immediately announced that she would retire at the next election. Speculation then turned to the only remaining Liberal lower house MP who was recontesting her seat, Sue Walker, after she didn’t show up to the leadership vote when the outcome became clear, left the state, and refused to return Buswell’s phone calls. She returned to Perth this week, promptly announced that she was declining Buswell’s offer of a return to Shadow Attorney-General, and today made the much-expected decision that she was going to go it alone, quit the party, and run at the next election as an independent.
The WA Liberals are the singularly most backward of the state Liberal parties, taking far wing stances on a host of issues, perhaps the most disgusting being their talk about recriminalising homosexuality if elected to power. It says a lot about how out of touch and extreme they’ve begun when one of their leading moderate figures gets so frustrated as to go it alone as an independent. Walker has been openly frustrated about the party’s treatment of women candidates in the past, and was especially critical of the decision to preselect another man for the forthcoming by-election in the safe Liberal seat of Murdoch after it became clear that Hodson-Thomas would retire. She has also repeatedly accused notoriously corrupt powerbroker (and friend of Brian Burke) Noel Crichton-Browne of targeting her, and it had been expected that he would arrange a challenge to her preselection due to her outspoken status.
In quitting the Liberals, she joins existing moderate independent Liberals Elizabeth Constable and Janet Woollard, both of whom have survived concerted attempts to unseat them and replace them with endorsed (surprise surprise, male) candidates in the past. My friends in the know in WA suggest that she’s got the local support to win re-election and join those two on the crossbenches permanently, so good luck to her. I’ll certainly be hoping that she gets returned in the election due (probably) later this year.