Former WA premier Mark McGowan has told the Investment Magazine Fiduciary Investors Symposium that the Opposition’s policy of allowing early access to superannuation by first homebuyers may win some votes, but it’s less good as public policy.
“[If] you’re trying to buy a house, it’s superficially attractive for a voter,” McGowan said.
“But I would have thought the conservative view of the world is that you save for your retirement, and you save for your retirement so you’re not a burden on the tax base. That’s what the purpose of superannuation is.
“I’m now in my late 50s. I see the total wisdom of it, and my children should save so that they can provide for themselves and not be a burden on the state. I would have thought that’s a very conservative view of the world. So, what they’re doing, I think, is just a vote-winning exercise.”
As McGowan adjusts to a life outside politics and looks back on a 26-year career, in conversation with Conexus financial founder and managing director Colin Tate AM he said that he would generally encourage people to go into politics.
“We need good people in politics who want to contribute to society and do something decent with their lives and use their skills and abilities to improve the country and the state, and so forth,” he said.
So far, McGowan said, Australian politics seems to be somewhat immune from the sorts of inflammatory rhetoric and extreme polarisation that have occurred in the US system.
“I think [politics in Australia] is much more civilised and mature,” McGowan said.
Speaking ahead of the US election, McGowan said he believed Trump would win but that some of his stated policies “particularly around women’s rights and guns and perhaps tariffs and so forth…will be bad, and some of that will have adverse impacts on us”.
McGown said the media has a lot to answer for in how it treats politicians, and how it covers politics generally, which feeds public mistrust of politicians. In the end, it was the day-to-day grind of dealing with the media that led him to the decision to quit politics altogether.
“The senior [politicians], generally, Anthony [Albanese] and prime ministers, [work] 80, 90 hours a week, [experience] incredible stress, and yet they’re treated like crap,” he said.
“It drives down public perception. It’s why there is little faith in politicians, because [they are] always looking for something to be negative about.
“So, after you do it all that time, you’ve got to work out do you want to keep doing something you don’t want to do anymore? And so, I decide to leave.”
At the peak of his popularity, McGowan enjoyed approval ratings upwards of 90 per cent. When he left in June last year it was a surprise to many, but it capped a 26-year political career and became an object lesson in how to quit at the top. But McGowan told the symposium that he “never planned on getting to the top” in the first place.
“I got to be premier after 20 years in Parliament, so that was a long, hard slog; and then I did six and a half years as premier,” he said.
“But by the time I’d done six and a half years as Premier, and 26 and a half years in Parliament, I just had enough. I didn’t want to deal with it anymore.
“Every day, you have to get up and face the conflicted issue of the day, and all the criticism and all the rest that goes with it. And you just thought, ‘Oh, god, I don’t want to do this’. Whereas earlier in my career, I’d loved it. That’s all I wanted to do. I liked notoriety and prominence. By the end…I didn’t want to have to deal with it anymore. So, you know, when you get to that point, you know that it’s time to do something else.”
McGowan entered politics in 1996 after a stint as a lawyer and serving in the Australian Navy. He was in parliament for 20 years before being elected premier for the first time in 2017, and even though he is inextricably linked to WA, he was born in Newcastle in NSW and didn’t move to WA until 1994.
He developed a national profile during the Covid-19 pandemic, which he approached with a simple objective: keep the virus out of the state until everyone was vaccinated.
“We kept the virus out,” he said.
“We had virtually no lockdowns. My kids missed six days of school. We had a booming economy. All of our export industries stayed open. We poured money into the Commonwealth to help fund the whole Covid response. We did all that, but we had to keep the virus out, which meant [closing] borders; and we had to get everyone vaccinated, which meant mandates.”
McGowan said that he loved public life – until he didn’t.
“You do some great things – I don’t want to run down public life, It was great. I met Al Gore, I met Xi Jinping, and I met King Charles, and all these amazing people. I actually introduced David Attenborough to Al Gore,” he said.
“You get to do these great things and meet all these great people. I can’t actually remember meeting Xi Jinping. He was governor of Zhejiang province, and I was parliamentary secretary to the premier in the early 2000s. He came out, I did a signing thing with him; I can’t remember it, but every time I go to a Chinese [event], the photos are up there. So, I definitely did it.
“And I met Tony Blair in Downing Street, lots of things; all the Prime Ministers going back to Gough Whitlam. I’ve done great things and great, great public policy achievements, which is actually the real joy of public life.”
