WA: Premier Geoff Gallop steps down
By Geoff Gallop, Premier of Western Australia
This is the statement issued by Geoff Gallop announcing his decision to stand down after five years as Premier of Western Australia.
Date: 15 January 2006
It is my difficult duty to inform you today that I am currently being treated for depression. Living with depression is a very debilitating experience, which affects different people in different ways. It has certainly affected many aspects of my life. So much so, that I sought expert help last week.
My doctors advised me that with treatment, time and rest this illness is very curable. However, I cannot be certain how long I will need. So in the interests of my health and my family, I have to rethink my career.
My commitment to politics has always been 100 per cent plus. I now need that time to restore my health and well-being. Therefore I am announcing today my intention to resign as Premier of Western Australia and member for Victoria Park in the state parliament.
It has been an enormous privilege and pleasure to serve this state and witness the wonderful progress that is being made.
I would like to thank the WA public for bestowing me the immense responsibility and thrill of leading this great state for just under five years, and my colleagues for giving me the honour of leading the WA Labor Party for the best part of 10 years. I would particularly like to thank the residents of Victoria Park for the support they have given me for nearly 20 years.
In fact, what has made this announcement all the more difficult today is that I love being Premier, I love the work, I love the state and I love its people. In order to do the job, you need the support of your staff, the cabinet and your parliamentary colleagues. They have all been magnificent and I will always cherish the times I have spent with them working on ideas for a better future.
Even though change of the sort I announce today will bring its challenges and will be disruptive in the very short term, I am confident that the government will continue its excellent work.
The State Parliamentary Labor Party at its earliest possible convenience will decide my successor. In the meantime, Eric Ripper has kindly cancelled his scheduled leave to continue to act as Premier.
I hope you will appreciate the pressure my current condition has placed on my family, who have been a tower of strength and a source of great support. I now need the space required to start the process of full recovery and for this reason I will not be taking questions nor doing any further media interviews.
I thank you for your co-operation and I wish you all well for the future.
A comment by Kim Beazley
I deeply regret Geoff Gallop’s decision to leave the Premiership of Western Australia. He has been a brilliant and innovative Premier presiding over Western Australia’s most dynamic economy.
Under Geoff’s stewardship, Western Australia’s public education system has emerged as powerful and effective. He made sure that the system expanded to handle the problems of a burgeoning population by constructing a massive number of new schools and expanding older schools.
He will be remembered too, for vital decisions to protect Western Australia’s environment. The complete prohibition on old growth logging saved Western Australia’s native forests.
He has fought persistently for Western Australia’s coastline, and fisheries industry, despite the near criminal neglect by the Howard government. Unfortunately he cannot yet call that campaign a success.
He will be particularly remembered for his vigorous pursuit of minerals development. He broke the log-jam that had developed under his predecessors in relation to Native Title, which has produced a series of win-win outcomes for Aboriginals and miners.
In pursuing Western Australia’s mineral developments, Geoff has done all Australians an enormous favour by upholding virtually the only expansion area of our national exports.
The mismanagement of the Howard government would have been deeply exposed without it.
A long career has come to an end. He leaves our State a far better place than he found it.
