Peter Law: Balancing egos and workloads is Premier Mark McGowan’s cabinet reshuffle challenge

For any politician, the beauty of quitting on their own terms is they essentially get to write their own obituary. Just ask former treasurer Ben Wyatt — he did it twice in less than a year.

The narrative around Alannah MacTiernan’s retirement is that she’s walking away at a time of her choosing after a career that spanned more than 30 years and every tier of government.

Labor sources privately say there is truth to what reporters were told at MacTiernan’s press conference with Mark McGowan — that she was never going to serve a full term in Parliament.

The only mystery inside the party room was exactly when she would pull the pin and speculation she would go sooner rather than later ramped up after she fell out with farming lobby groups.

Not every Cabinet minister has the luxury of choosing the timing of their departure, as Water and Forestry Minister Dave Kelly looks set to discover at the now inevitable Christmas reshuffle.

Kelly’s ousting from Cabinet has been like a slow-moving train since the 2021 election, when he kept his spot while the person who cleaned up his mess in fisheries, Peter Tinley, got the boot.

It has been an accepted wisdom in Labor circles that Kelly would be punted by McGowan at about the halfway mark of this four-year term.

Kelly’s ministerial jobs have progressively diminished, first being stripped of fisheries in 2019 in the wake of the crayfish fiasco and then losing innovation, ICT and science last year.

He is now left with the relatively junior portfolios of water, forestry and youth.

By contrast, Bill Johnston has corrective services (there’s never any good news), energy (no one else understands it), mines and petroleum (pays the State’s bills) and industrial relations (going to war with unions that helped get Labor elected).

Kelly and Johnston are on the same pay packet — $285,881 plus allowances — but their responsibilities are lightyears apart and the comparison between the pair is an example of the workload imbalance in Cabinet.

But that slow-moving train is now finally coming to take Kelly to the backbenches, where the former union boss will likely hang around for years flying the flag for Labor’s left wing ideologues.

First-term bolter Jackie Jarvis, co-owner of Margaret River’s Jarvis Estate winery, is widely tipped to replace MacTiernan in Cabinet next month.

She meets Labor’s criteria to fill the post — she’s a woman from the regions who sits in the Upper House — so there’ll be pressure to prove she’s not being promoted by default.

Jarvis is also aligned to the United Workers Union, which dominates the Left faction in caucus.

Right faction-aligned Cabinet Secretary David Michael is frontrunner to take Kelly’s seat, with some arguing the two-out, two-in scenario maintains Cabinet’s factional split.

The complicating factors are that Kelly has the support of UWU state secretary Carolyn Smith and the influential union lays claim to MacTiernan’s seat in Parliament — even though MacTiernan herself was fiercely independent.

Almost two years after he led WA Labor to Australia’s biggest election win, McGowan continues to reign supreme over the party room and he may have to exert his authority to get the Cabinet he wants.

A broader change of personnel appears increasingly unlikely in this reshuffle. Sue Ellery has said this is her final term, but she’s seen as a safe pair of hands in education and the Legislative Council.

No one has a clue about whether Attorney-General John Quigley will contest the 2025 election but he’s made it clear to anyone who’ll listen that he still has plenty left on his “to do” list for legislative reform.

There’s speculation Fisheries Minister Don Punch might quit politics at the next poll, but given he’s one of three Labor MPs from the regions in Cabinet it’s expected he would remain in the ministry.

Rolling MacTiernan’s portfolio of hydrogen into Roger Cook’s state development responsibilities make sense, while it’s clear a fresh pair of eyes — plus a softening of rhetoric — is needed in corrective services.

The shake-up potentially opens the door for Wanneroo’s Sabine Winton, a favourite of McGowan’s, to become cabinet secretary, while Mirrabooka’s Meredith Hammat, another former union boss, is being touted for a parliamentary secretary gig.

There are probably plenty of other ambitious Labor MPs who believe they should be talked up in this column for promotion and managing bruised egos is going to be another headache for the Premier next year.