Deputy leader of the WA Liberal party Libby Mettam on her unorthodox path to success

Sitting in an office still adorned with the possessions of her predecessor Bill Marmion, Libby Mettam interrupts her first interview as Deputy Leader of the WA Liberals to field a call from a regional journalist. The pair are working on a story about under-resourced police in her Vasse electorate. Ms Mettam points out Busselton — population nearly 30,000 — has the same number of cops as Esperance, a town half that size. The rapid-fire exchange concludes with a promise to provide a statement and a copy of commentary on the topic made in Parliament. The conversation is instructive. One day after former leader Liza Harvey and Mr Marmion were deposed — at the combined age of 120 — it is already clear there is a fresh current humming through the party. The tone is being set at the top. Zak Kirkup, at 33, became the youngest leader of WA’s conservative party this week. Ms Mettam, though a decade his senior, is also representative of the “new guard” — the first MPs to helm the Liberal Party who were not cabinet ministers under Colin Barnett. Ms Mettam’s unorthodox path to the deputy leadership began shortly after graduating from Geraldton Senior High School. It was 1994 and, as an ambitious 17-year-old with her mind set on a media career, Ms Mettam felt she had no choice but to leave her family and the regional town she loved and beat a track for Perth. In more recent years as a proud Dunsborough resident she has watched the same scenario play out twice in quick succession as daughters Bianca, 21, and Sophia, 19, both flew the nest to attend university in Perth and Sydney respectively. Ms Mettam is determined her daughters’ own children will not be forced to make the same choice. “That is something that has lingered with me. I don’t think it’s fair the only option for regional children is to go to the city to further their education,” she said. Daughter to Jenny and Peter Hansen-Knarhoi, Ms Mettam was born in Subiaco but raised in Kalgoorlie, briefly, and then Geraldton — where she attended Bluff Point Primary School before Geraldton SHS — as she and brother Jonny followed their father’s work as a biochemist. While her parents have always voted Liberal, neither were party members and Ms Mettam herself showed no interest in politics until well after graduating from the WA Academy of Performing Arts, where she studied broadcasting alongside long-time Perth news anchors Narelda Jacobs (Network 10) and Michael Tetlow (ABC). It was during university that she met her now-husband Jonathan — or “Metts” — when the pair both worked at the Albion Hotel in Cottesloe, he in the bottle shop and she behind the bar. Ms Mettam paused her degree to follow her partner to Melbourne, where the couple both spent a year hawking sunglasses, before returning to WAAPA and finishing her studies while pregnant with first child Bianca. A wedding and then second daughter Sophia followed 16 months later before the young family decamped to Adelaide for a year so Jonathan could complete a winemaking qualification. It’s a period Ms Mettam remembers well for bestowing her with a lifelong aversion to pumpkin soup, one of the only meals they could afford at the time. While juggling two toddlers, and despite the meagre income barely covering the cost of childcare, Ms Mettam worked part-time roles for Channel 9’s A Current Affair in Adelaide and then, after the family moved to Dunsborough to lay down roots, ABC South West. In both gigs, she shunned the camera and the microphone in favour of producing roles. “I’m actually quite shy and prefer doing the grunt work behind the scenes,” she said. It was those roles in the early 2000s that gave Ms Mettam her first introduction to politics, and politicians — including then Vasse MP Troy Buswell and Upper House member for the South West Barry House. “When I was working at ABC I found you were often highlighting issues and not really resolving them and I wanted to at least help do a bit of the follow-up,” she said. “I actually asked Troy about local members to work for. He had staff working for him, so I contacted Barry House and someone was retiring so I ended up joining his electorate office.” Ms Mettam would spend the next 10 years working alongside Mr House, a popular local member who spent three decades in Parliament and was well known for the open-door policy he adopted with his constituents. “Through that open-door approach I realised, and was quite taken aback by, how much you can help the lives of people,” she said. “I saw two things. One is that it’s very easy for people to live a decent life and then quickly fall through the cracks — and that is frightening. “But the other thing is that there are people that don’t know how to advocate for themselves, or have no means of being able to resolve basic issues.” One of the first campaigns Ms Mettam worked on was successfully opposing then transport minister Alannah MacTiernan’s push to axe the Australind train service and replace it with a coach. “It highlighted to me the issues in regional WA are very different,” she said. “Business cases and projects in regional WA will never stack up in terms of demand like projects that exist in in the city, where you are trying to move a significant number of the population.” Through helping others, it did not take long for Ms Mettam to become immersed in issues within her own community — although by her own admission those initial efforts were modest. “The first one was when the City of Busselton wanted to mulch our park,” Ms Mettam recalled with a smile. “I did a bit of a survey of residents and no one wanted it so we worked out it would be a cheaper option if they just didn’t water the park as much.” The fire had been lit and Ms Mettam soon found herself volunteering for the Liberals in her spare time, while also taking on a Masters of Public Policy course that required week-long trips to Perth during which the family would stay with her parents (and Jonathan juggling child-entertainment duties). “At that time my idea of what I was going to do next was working as a policy adviser in government,” she said. But a decade after joining Mr House’s office opportunity knocked in 2014 when Mr Buswell — by that point treasurer to Colin Barnett — pulled the pin on his tumultuous political career in the wake of a series of controversies. Up against popular Busselton businessman Peter Gordon, running for the Nationals, Ms Mettam suffered an 18.2 per cent swing against her but held on to retain Vasse by 1200 votes. While Mr Buswell’s career was marred by high-profile indiscretions — bra-snapping, chair sniffing and an affair with Greens MP Adele Carles to cover some of the highlights — he was an exceptionally talented parliamentarian and enjoyed cult hero status in his electorate. “As so many people said to me at the time, ‘You’ve got really big shoes to fill’,” Ms Mettam said, before recounting multiple failed attempts to door-knock alongside her popular predecessor. “Wherever we went everyone would want to talk to him for ages — we just wouldn’t get very far,” she laughed. In her maiden speech, Ms Mettam described the isolation experienced by both her grandmothers after they immigrated to WA from the UK in pursuit of a better life. “(Maternal grandmother) Eileen wrote about her time during those years and how battling loneliness she would cry tears into the kitchen sink,” she said. “As the newly elected representative for the regional seat of Vasse, one of my driving ambitions is to foster development in our region to the point that leaving town is no longer the only option for our children.” A commitment to shining a light on the disparity between country and city has characterised Ms Mettam’s time in Parliament ever since, and it was a theme she returned to during her first comments as Deputy Leader on Tuesday. “What I think I can bring forward ... is a passion for regional WA, who feel let down, who feel significantly challenged during this COVID period,” she said. In her first weeks in Parliament Ms Mettam stood out to Mr Barnett for her talent and enthusiasm for research, which would manifest itself in commentary pieces submitted to newspapers on contentious issues of the day. “I did find that all of my previous roles — the media role, working for an MP and then being a member of Parliament — were very similar in that you were digesting a large amount of information and then trying to communicate that in the simplest message possible for audience so they can understand it,” she said. The former premier remains one of Ms Mettam’s political backers and sources of counsel. He was among the first calls she made when weighing up a tilt for the deputy leadership and strongly encouraged her to stand. “I have great admiration for Libby. She is of a good age to come into politics and, as a country person and a woman, she is appealing publicly,” Mr Barnett said. “I think she has also proved she is a hard worker, and an effective worker in Parliament. “She is not afraid to take on a challenge. Transport is a big portfolio, but one you can really get your teeth into and she’s done that. “She will be a very good Deputy Leader and supporter of Zak — she’s popular in her electorate, in the party room, and with the wider Parliament because she’s very constructive.” Ms Mettam was promoted to Barnett government whip in September 2016, a position that needed interaction with MPs of all stripes and sharpened her focus on pragmatic rather than confrontational politics. “I do my best in everything I do not to be personal,” she said. “The Opposition’s role is to question and, only where appropriate and in the best interests of the community, to raise concerns about the Government’s management of taxpayer funds and delivery of projects.” That approach has been tested in more recent times when, as shadow transport minister, Ms Mettam has been required to lock horns with Labor’s Rita Saffioti. Ms Saffioti relishes a fight. Rising to ask her a question in Parliament is akin to aiming a lightning bolt at Zeus. But Ms Mettam has not shirked the challenge, mounting credible attack lines over cost and time blowouts on Metronet, safety issues on the Forrestfied-Airport Link, and the McGowan Government’s persistent refusal to release information and documents relating to major infrastructure projects. As deputy, she plans to retain the transport portfolio, as well as responsibility for ports and fisheries — pitting her directly against not only Ms Saffioti but fellow Labor veterans Ms MacTiernan and Peter Tinley. Speaking in the wake of recent allegations of sexism and misogyny in both the Federal and WA parliaments, Ms Mettam said it was not behaviour she had encountered during her time in politics. “But I do think that women have unique challenges in in their working life and that is something that I have experienced,” she said. “What is a bit unique in my case, at least it’s a bit unusual these days, is that I had my first child at 22 and now enjoy the benefit of having older daughters and being able to work, which isn’t shared by that many people of my age.” Rectifying that very issue will be a priority for the new-look Liberals, with Ms Mettam on Tuesday flagging “part of our focus going forward will be ensuring that women have greater opportunities when entering the workforce after raising their children”. Ms Mettam and Mr Kirkup will soon be expected to begin rolling out the remainder of the platform they believe gives them the best chance of unseating Premier Mark McGowan. Or, more realistically, holding on to enough seats to be considered a legitimate Opposition. While refusing to set a yardstick for success next March, Ms Mettam acknowledged her party was fighting for survival. “We’re up against one of the most popular pandemic premiers and that is a super challenge,” she said. “But we do have a belief in what the new team can deliver and certainly a lot of energy for it as well.” There are 104 days until West Australians go to the polls. But first, Ms Mettam has a more pressing milestone in mind. On Monday next week, Ms Mettam be able to wrap her arms around Sophia for the first time since WA’s hard border slammed shut in response to the coronavirus pandemic, locking her Sydney-based teenager interstate. Currently self-isolating in the family’s Dunsborough home, Sophia has already reacquainted herself with her dad’s trademark Shakshuka and eggplant pasta. But there’s nothing quite like a hug from mum. That embrace — in eight days and counting — will serve as a powerful reminder of exactly what drove Ms Mettam into politics in the first place.