Basil Zempilas’s punt for leadership has sailed straight through the goalposts, in a play by Western Australia’s Liberal party that surprised nobody.
As the nation waited for the federal budget to drop, Zempilas took centre stage on the steps of the state parliament to announce his unopposed appointment as opposition leader.
By his side was his predecessor, Libby Mettam, who stepped down to deputy.
Barely a fortnight after being elected to parliament, the former football player and sports presenter turned lord mayor says a Liberal reset is under way.
“The road to [the] 2029 election begins today,” he said. “I am honoured and humbled to have been elected to lead the Western Australian Liberal party.”
“We will examine, probe and scrutinise and we will demand ‘gold standard’ transparency and accountability from WA Labor.”
He went on to reveal that earlier this month he severed his employment with billionaire Kerry Stokes’ Seven West Media, a role he controversially retained while earning $186,000 a year as lord mayor of Perth.
He said his position as lord mayor ceased automatically when the election results were declared.
But Zempilas admitted he would continue to write unpaid for his former employer and appear on Channel Seven’s Sunrise program.
“Libby Mettam writes a column in The West Australian, but is not an employee of Seven West Media. Rita Saffioti writes a column in The West Australian,” he said.
The big question now is whether Zempilas’s high profile is enough of a magic bullet for the WA Liberals.
Labor won its third successive landslide on 8 March, taking 46 of the 59 lower house seats. The Liberals, while narrowly winning back opposition status – after losing it in 2021 – only hold seven seats in the legislative assembly, one more than the Nationals.
Instead of comfortably winning the once blue-ribbon Liberal stronghold seat of Churchlands, Zempilas limped over the line by 636 votes – with 90% of the ballot now counted.
“It was a humiliating rejection (by many voters),” William Bowe, a political analyst at the University of Western Australia, says. “It’s part of the parcel of evidence that he is not as appealing as his backers assumed that he was.”
But Bowe says Zempilas has “showbiz pizzazz”. “He is obviously good on television. It is going to be a learning curve for Basil, who has a lot of experience in the media, but little as a parliamentary strategist.
“I think the early period is going to be quite dangerous for Basil – if he commits a couple of high-profile blunders, then it could stick.”
Zempilas, 53, is no stranger to controversy. He raised eyebrows more than once during his mayoral tenure, walking back a newspaper column calling homeless people “disgusting” and apologising for making transphobic comments on his radio 6PR program.
On Tuesday, Zempilas said he was committed to ensuring WA Labor makes decisions to benefit all West Australians.
“We will not allow four more years of failures in delivering quality health services, accessible housing, and reliable, affordable electricity.”
Murdoch University political scientist Jacob Broom says Zempilas brings personality and name recognition, but warned that can come with its negatives.
He said reports suggested that name recognition for Mettam and WA Nationals leader Shane Love was low.
“I think that is why he is perceived as a positive for the party,” Broom says.
“But [Zempilas’s] image is kind of divisive to especially middle-class voters that the Liberal party are really trying to get back. Some voters have a reaction to electing a sports or media personality because they perceive him to not have the credentials to make good leadership decisions and govern.”
Zempilas’s track record on women’s shelters and his notoriety as a major sporting personality may be problematic for a Liberal party working to resuscitate its popularity with women, Broom says.
During his time as lord mayor, Zempilas defended a decision to end the trial of a women’s night shelter that housed many who were escaping family and domestic violence.
At the time, Zempilas insisted he was acting for the Perth community and cited complaints from nearby residents about antisocial behaviour. He said he asked the state government to fund the service in the future and they had declined.
In October 2020, Perth woke to a guerrilla art installation outside the Art Gallery of Western Australia that quoted a column Zempilas had written in the West Australian where he argued homeless people should be forcibly removed from the city.
“I make no apologies for this, the homeless need to be moved out of the Hay and Murray Street malls and the surrounding areas,” he wrote.
“The look, the smell, the language, the fights – it’s disgusting. A blight on our city and the single biggest impediment to progress and rejuvenation.”
Zempilas was forced to backtrack on his comments, later saying he wanted to turn car parks into safe places for people experiencing homelessness and make the city a more welcoming environment.
But a few weeks later and just out from Perth’s largest LGBTQ+ festival, he was back in the hot seat and forced to apologise for making transphobic comments on radio 6PR.
In a chat about an LGBTQ+ boxing tournament, Zempilas stated it was “wrong” for someone to identify as a gender that was different from their anatomy.
He offered the excuse that he had “forgotten” he was lord mayor at the time – a job he had landed just a fortnight earlier – and apologised.
Today, Zempilas says that the WA Liberal team will prove it is a credible alternative to government.
He promised to lead with fairness, integrity and with an invigorated team that listens to West Australians.
This article was amended on 26 March 2025. An earlier version quoted Jacob Broom saying polling showed that name recognition for Libby Mettam and Shane Love was low. Broom later advised that reports had suggested this, not polling.
