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WA Liberals will 'rebuild', Nahan says

Former WA Treasurer Mike Nahan, who is expected to lead the Liberals, will speak with Colin Barnett about leaving parliament and vows to rebuild the party.

Western Australian Treasurer Mike Nahan
Former WA Treasurer Mike Nahan, who is expected to lead the Liberals, has vowed to rebuild the party (AAP)

Former WA treasurer Mike Nahan says he will rebuild the Liberal party after their crushing election defeat and plans to speak with former premier Colin Barnett about leaving parliament.

The Liberal party will meet for the first time on Tuesday since the disastrous loss, which left Labor with 41 seats of the 59-seat parliament.

Mr Barnett is set to stand down as leader and a new leader will be voted in.

Dr Nahan is believed to be the only candidate and has nominated Liza Harvey to remain as deputy.

"I will discuss with my colleagues, including Colin, about their role going forward," he told ABC radio on Monday.

"'I'm confident we will come back very strongly."

Dr Nahan has previously indicated he would speak to Mr Barnett about leaving parliament and said he would "have a discussion with Colin along that line".

He said his focus was to rebuild the party following their "terrible" campaign and analyse what went wrong so they wouldn't make the same mistakes again.

The One Nation deal was disastrous for them, he said, as Pauline Hanson's party's views were inconsistent with Liberal values in a multicultural state.

"It was terrible for many for us - it really hurt us," he said.

"I had no idea it was going to happen until I read it in the paper.

"I expected ... as minister for multicultural interests they would have come to me and said 'what do you reckon?' I would have said: 'no way'."


2 min read

Published

Source: AAP



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