Disastrous Nahan rises to top WA job

Advertisement

Don’t say I didn’t warn you. Via The Australian:

He’s a 66-year-old right-wing ­policy wonk with an American accent who bears a striking ­resemblance to Ned Flanders from The Simpsons.

Former West Australian treasurer Mike Nahan yesterday ­became the unlikely leader of the shell-shocked Liberal Party, ­replacing the long-serving Colin Barnett in the wake of this month’s crushing election defeat.

After laughing at suggestions that he was “not sexy” enough for the job, Dr Nahan talked up his chances of remaining Opposition Leader for the next four years and defeating the McGowan government at the 2021 election.

“I’m not here for the short term — I’m very healthy,” he said. “My task is to bring the team ­together.’’

The Michigan-born Dr Nahan, who ran the free-market Institute of Public Affairs think tank before entering state politics in 2008, was never an obvious leadership option for the Liberals.

But he was the only MP to put his hand up for the job this week and was elected unopposed at a partyroom meeting yesterday.

Dr Nahan guided the WA budget disaster after Troy “chair sniffer” Buswell had his breakdown in 2014. He was responsible for three consecutive enormous Budget misses and a credit downgrade, guiding the state from a surplus of $175m to a deficit of $3.9bn over three years.

He left the current forecasts in a state of complete delusion (which Labor is mad if it does not call out immediately) and resisted all attempts to get mining to pay a fair share of tax. Based upon this record alone, Nahan is the worst state treasurer since Barry Pullen trashed Victoria in the 1990s.

Advertisement

For his sins he has been appointed caretaker leader while the WA Coalition sinks from sight.

About the author
David Llewellyn-Smith is Chief Strategist at the MB Fund and MB Super. David is the founding publisher and editor of MacroBusiness and was the founding publisher and global economy editor of The Diplomat, the Asia Pacific’s leading geo-politics and economics portal. He is also a former gold trader and economic commentator at The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, the ABC and Business Spectator. He is the co-author of The Great Crash of 2008 with Ross Garnaut and was the editor of the second Garnaut Climate Change Review.