Do we like them?

Do we like Mark McGowan?

Our score: 7 out of 10. Decent record on people, with one contested area: his cosy-ish relationship with the resources industry, before and after office.

Mark McGowan spent 26 and a half years in state parliament, led WA Labor for about 11 and a half of them, and was premier from 2017 until he walked away in 2023. He quit midway through his second term, saying “The role of political leadership doesn't stop – it's relentless.” For a politician at the peak of his popularity, that's an unusually clean exit.

The defining chapter was the pandemic. He shut the WA border, which supporters say avoided long lockdowns and kept the state's economy strong, and the High Court rejected Clive Palmer's challenge to it, a challenge the Morrison government had initially backed. His approval hit 88% early in 2023, and he won a 2021 landslide that nearly wiped out the WA Liberals. Love the hard border or hate it, it was a call he owned.

The asterisk is gas and mining. One Crikey commentary argued he kept friction with the resources sector to a minimum as premier, and reported that he was heading to BHP with a side role at Mineral Resources after politics. That is the author's reading, not a finding, but it's why the climate side isn't a clean pass.

Nothing new on him lately that we could verify. He's out of parliament and working in the private sector, so there's no fresh storm to report.

Where does that leave us? A leader who delivered on a long-promised LGBTQ+ protection, kept his state through the pandemic and left voluntarily. Gas-friendly and mining-adjacent, so not a climate hero, but nothing harmful to people turned up.