Do we like Roger Cook?
Our score: 6 out of 10. A real record of reform alongside dropped promises, a heritage backflip and a gas push, so a middling-to-good score.
Roger Cook is the 31st Premier of Western Australia, a long-time Labor minister who took over from Mark McGowan in 2023. He was health minister during the height of COVID and deputy premier from 2017, so he's the steady-hands-in-the-engine-room type rather than a showman.
On the planet side, Cook has been a loud backer of Woodside's North West Shelf extension. In 2025 he said gas was “critical to meeting the energy needs of Western Australia” and urged Canberra not to delay. His defenders say gas backs the renewables transition while WA exits coal, and climate groups see it as locking in decades of emissions.
He can be a bit of a larrikin. In the 2025 campaign he called US Vice-President JD Vance a “knob”, then apologised, calling it a lighthearted and unprofessional moment. He also described the Liberals as having been taken over by people with “extreme views”, and ripped into candidates over comments about LGBTQ+ people and vaccines.
The pushier moments cut both ways. Lawyers for two teenage climate activists alleged in 2024 that Cook had defamed them with comments about their behaviour at a Woodside AGM, and he declined to apologise. Separately, he said WA Labor would keep its CFMEU ties in 2024 while backing the east-coast suspension of the union and promising a fit and proper person test.
The good stuff is mainly the day job: a budget with over $1 billion in cost-of-living relief, $4.7 billion more for housing and a $9.1 billion health boost. That is government policy rather than charity, and the opposition argues it still hasn't fixed the basics. We found no court findings against him.