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After a 2017 state election bloodbath which toppled Colin Barnett's long-term government, WA Liberals consoled themselves with the message that things could not get any worse.

How wrong they were.

In the five years since, things have continued to get substantially worse for WA's once-dominant political force.

At a state level, the Liberals barely exist.

They held on to just two lower house seats in the 2021 election wipe-out, forcing them tohand leadership of the Opposition to the Nationals.

Like in 2017, Liberals thought that result 14 months ago was as bad as things could get for them.

And they were wrong again.

Follow all the post-election action as vote counting continues

The scale of the Liberal losses in WA's federal seats may not be quite as extreme as that state result, but blue-ribbon territory has once again fallen all over Perth.

And instead of battling irrelevance at just the state level, WA Liberals now face exactly the same fate federally.

Once again, the WA electorate has sent a loud and clear message to the Liberals.

And once again, voters will be watching closely to see how the party responds.

Liberal strategists always knew some WA losses were possible, given the popularity of Mark McGowan, apparent voter resentment towards Scott Morrison and the Coalition's support for Clive Palmer's High Court border challenge.

But as the campaign wore on, WA Liberals expressed optimism the damage might not be as bad as they once feared.

Going into election night, they knew Swan and Pearce were deeply vulnerable and they had a serious fight on their hands from 'teal' independent Kate Chaney in Curtin.

But strategists were expressing hope, bordering on confidence, that Ken Wyatt would hold on in Hasluck and the Curtin challenge would be overcome.

In the end, the losses in those two seats were not even the most surprising results.

Tangney, which has only been won by Liberals since 1984, fell to Labor by anot-insignificant margin.

And even more shockingly, the Liberals are no certainties to hold on in Moore a seat thought of as so safe that neither party really spent any real time even thinking about it going into polling day.

Liberal Ian Goodenough is ahead there, but not by anywhere near enough to feel close to comfortable.

In Pearce, Swan and Hasluck, the results were not even close.

The Liberals barely even got 40 per cent of the two-party preferredin Pearce and Swan

And while things were substantially closer in Curtin, that was not enough to prevent what should be the bluest of domains falling out of Liberal hands.

The upshot is that the Liberals were thrashed right across Perth, even in territory they once felt comfortable in.

And the losses were across the board too, from ritzy Curtin to outer suburban battlegrounds such as Pearce and Hasluck the swings against the Liberals in many seats were in the double digits.

For the WA federal Liberals who remain, the coming days and weeks will bring heavy soul searching as they try to begin rebuilding a shattered party.

But there will also be extremely tough questions facing state Liberals.

More than a year since their WA electoral annihilation, can they say things have actually improved, as they look ahead to the next WA election now less than three years away?

Questions about how long David Honey should remain as WA leader may well become more pressing for state MPs nervous about what they saw on the weekend.

The WA Liberal team hoped McGowan's popularity had taken a hit from the dire situation facing the state's hospitals and how he handled reopening interstate and international borders.

But whether that is true or not and the evidence of Saturday night's result certainly makes it seem dubious, at the very least is now almost a side issue for conservatives, because WA voters have again made their views about the Liberals painfully clear.

In the space of five years, the WA electorate hasdelivered three incredibly emphatic rejections of Liberals in the state.

Now the clock is ticking to turn things aroundbefore voters are left to contemplate if they should repeat the trick next time they go to the polls.

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Posted23h ago23 hours agoSun 22 May 2022 at 9:07pm, updated19h ago19 hours agoMon 23 May 2022 at 1:20am

Here is the original post:
How will the WA Liberals rebuild after three emphatic election victories for Labor? - ABC News