Mia Davies opens up on women in power, her country roots and the fight of her life

In the 10 seconds it takes the lift to descend from the second floor to the ground, Mia Davies allows herself a moment to catch her breath. As the door opens into the bright lights of the lobby she is again Opposition Leader, Nationals WA leader and shadow spokeswoman for this, that and a little bit more. Life has swept her into a whirlwind in the four months since that Saturday night in March when the Labor Party punched a great big hole in the Liberals. “All of my friends and supporters were standing up on my veranda having a well-earned drink,” Davies, 42, says. “And I was standing with the State’s media answering multiple questions about what it meant to be the new leader of the Opposition. I don’t think anyone was under any illusion that we would see a change of government but the sheer scale was, I think, the most shocking part of it. But there you are, these things happen. You face it and then you get on with it.” Getting on with it is in Davies’ DNA. Raised on a wheat and sheep farm near Wyalkatchem, about 200km north-east of Perth, it was what was expected of a country kid — expected when she didn’t get enough marks to get into her preferred university course, when the September 11 terrorist attacks shook her sense of security and when, to her amazement, she won a seat in Parliament at just 30 years of age. You can sense she yells it when her beloved Fremantle Dockers are struggling. “It’s just a very practical way,” she says. “And I think that’s what typically country people are. You just get on with it, make the most of the opportunity that’s offered to you and step into it.” The road to political redemption is as long as those that crisscross Davies’ Central Wheatbelt electorate. She’s got more than 100,000 square kilometres to look after in the bush, just three National colleagues and two Liberals in the Lower House to help find a way forward and an all-conquering Government to combat. “Our role is to, one, provide a critique of the spending, decisions and priorities of the current Government and, second, to offer an alternative because people want to know what it is that you’re going to do,” she says. “But if you ask me what the answer is right now it will always come back to hard work and remaining relevant in the communities.” She is quick to bat away suggestions that being both National and Opposition leader puts her in a difficult position. “It is a team effort,” Davies says. “But before we get to that point, I’ve been a minister in a previous government, I’ve sat around a Cabinet table where we’ve made decisions for the benefit of the whole State. And I think that by paying some attention to regional communities that actually achieves that end.” Then there’s the issue of her relationship with reheated Federal Nationals leader Barnaby Joyce. Three years ago, Davies led calls for Joyce to resign from the leadership amid revelations of an affair with a staff member, with whom he now has two children, and sexual harassment allegations, which he has denied. She hasn’t called him since he beat Michael McCormack in a leadership spill in June and he hasn’t called her. “I am on record as saying that there is some trust that needs to be rebuilt as a result of this change,” she says. “But no matter what we think has happened at a partyroom level federally, we have to be professional in our response and I hope that Barnaby as the Deputy Prime Minister will do the same.” There was a time when life was simpler, a 1980s childhood steeped in the values of the bush. She was the kid eager to help out on the family farm, wandering around the shearing shed, her presence making the contractors mind their language. “We were always included, shearing time, harvest seeding,” she says. “We had a lot of freedom. After we got off the school bus, we’d have afternoon tea with Mum; Dad was typically out somewhere on the farm. In summer we’d be at the swimming pool; in wintertime, just out in the yard. You didn’t have to worry about too much as a kid growing up on a farm in those days.” Davies’ dad Dexter farmed with his brothers and parents, mum Leonie was a well-loved schoolteacher, she had a younger sister, Emma, and an enduring best friend and her sister lived five minutes down the road. “I think the security of having that family around you, lots of cousins, who are always your first best friends, and the two girls who lived down the road has set me up, I think, as somebody who feels very secure,” she says. Dexter Davies played football for East Fremantle and was a fine cricketer. His children were taught to take part, though Davies says she wasn’t very talented. “For Mum and Dad, it was as much about teaching us discipline and being a part of a team, being part of something bigger than yourself. They were very keen for us to learn how to cope with disappointment in life and see that success comes from working hard.” If it wasn’t for a miserable old cat, Davies could have been holding an animal’s fate in her hands rather than holding the Government to account. Raised with access to just two television channels, she feasted on a high-rotation diet of James Herriot’s gentle adventures in All Creatures Great and Small and determined to become a vet. Fate had its way first when she failed by a few points to get the necessary university score. “I remember the day when I missed out,” she says. “I was devastated. It was the first thing that I had really failed at. I had a bit of a cry with Mum and then we made a plan and got on with it.” Davies studied first-year biological science at Murdoch University and got work experience at a local vet practice. “This cat came in and it was a gnarly, angry animal. A couple of nurses sort of toned it down a bit but it managed to escape and ended up hanging off my thumb. It was the moment where I thought, ‘I don’t think this is what I want to be doing for the rest of my life’.” She went back to the student village at Murdoch, opened the coursebook and decided on marketing and media. “I had no idea what I was going to do but the course sounded good. So, boots in again, changed course, got some credits and got on with it.” After graduating, she would join friends in Britain on a two-year working visa but the terrorist attacks on US soil on September 11, 2001, rocked a sense of security that has been her bedrock since childhood. “I know exactly where I was and calling Mum and saying I really want to come home. And she said just to stick it out for a little bit longer. You know, you’ll be disappointed if you don’t stay. I was home by Christmas. That was the first time that I’d felt very, very isolated and away from everything that I knew and trusted.” Davies returned eager to repay a debt to her parents and even more eager to get a job. Max Trenorden, the Nationals leader and “a Wyalkatchem boy”, offered her a position on the front desk in his office. She would go on to work for Brendon Grylls when he became Nationals leader. “I had an idea then that I wanted to stay involved but I knew it would be important to go and work in the private sector for a bit,” Davies says. A job with the Chamber of Minerals and Energy would open her eyes to that other regional powerhouse — the resources sector. “I remember the first day I flew into Port Hedland. So this would have been 2005-six, round about then. And the taxi driver dropped me off in the main street of the town and I looked at him and said, ‘You’re having a lend of me, aren’t you? This must be the industrial area.’ It was a real eye-opener because it’s a completely different part of the State and a completely different industry.” A member of the Young Nationals since she was 18, Davies had seen her father, a long-time supporter of the party, win a seat in the Legislative Council in 1998 but it was a call from Grylls less than a year after she joined the chamber that gave flight to her career. “He said, ‘Come back and run our Federal campaign and run into the State election’. And at that point I really knew that’s where I wanted to be. Not a member of Parliament but as someone working behind the scenes. I loved the organisation, I loved being a part of something that was bigger than myself and I liked the people involved. So it wasn’t hard to say yes, particularly to Brendon, who I have an enormous amount of respect for.” Davies would take her first step into the spotlight when she decided to throw her hat into the ring at the State election in September 2008. Sitting at No. 3 on the Nationals ticket for the Agricultural Region she didn’t expect to be elected but a rural backlash against city-centric one vote, one value legislation propelled her into the Legislative Council. “I think people responded to being disenfranchised and they saw an alternative being put forward by Brendon and the team,” she says. “Royalties for Regions was a very big part of that. It was aspirational, it was positive and it certainly made a difference. But I’m not going to lie. Politics is about a lot of things and a lot of ducks lined up.” At 30, she was the youngest person in the Council. “I sort of looked at both Brendon and Dad and said, ‘Goodness, do you think I can do this?’ And both of them said, ‘Yes, without a doubt’. I’ve been very lucky in my life to have people like that. Because it’s not human not to have doubts. And I sort of grew up looking at the Eric Charltons and the Hendy Cowans and the Max Trenordens. These were people that had great stature and to think I’m going to walk into the chamber and potentially do the same thing — it was a little overwhelming.” She took a deep breath and got on with it. “There was never a moment where I thought I’m not going to do it.” They were halcyon days for the WA Nationals. Grylls used the balance of power to help Colin Barnett’s Liberals form government and in return got his pound of flesh — 25 per cent of the State’s mining and petroleum royalties would be spent on regional projects. The groundbreaking deal had its critics — it was blamed for Budget cuts in other areas and some of the funded projects were ridiculed as trivial — but Davies is proud her party saw an opportunity and grabbed it. “As we travelled around the State, we saw such a huge disparity between access to education, health, community amenities,” she says. “You could see hospitals, crumbling, literally crumbling, you could also see a really piecemeal approach to government spending. There was no real road map for building confidence for the private sector to invest because there wasn’t any confidence that government was going to invest.” Her biggest regret of the election defeat in 2017 was losing party control of that policy. Grylls ran for the seat of Pilbara at the 2013 election and Davies moved to the Legislative Assembly by winning his old seat of Central Wheatbelt. She would become deputy leader of the State Nationals in November that year and the party’s youngest minister at age 35. She would rub shoulders with another great mentor and family friend, Terry “Tuck” Waldron — “he had a great influence on me. Still does” — and got the chance to work professionally with her father. “When he worked for (former Nationals leader) Terry Redman he was a constant presence in and around our team and that was really special. I miss him every day.” Dexter Davies died three years ago from lung cancer at the age of 66. “He was someone that was hugely empathetic, very practical, very patient and had time for everyone. No one’s perfect. But they’re the things I think are important.” Davies would become the first woman to lead the Nationals in WA when the Barnett Liberal government was beaten in 2017. After this year’s landslide loss, she became the party’s first Opposition Leader since Arthur Watts in 1947, completing a historic female trifecta in WA. Labor’s Carmen Lawrence and the Liberal Party’s Liza Harvey have also served in the role. “I think the public are used to seeing women in leadership roles,” she says. “I was the first female to represent the Central Wheatbelt — and there are a lot of firsts women are making in these political realms now — but nobody in my electorate, I don’t think ... as long as I could prove I knew what the issues were, had the same values and aspirations for their community and was willing to have a go for them, that was what was important to them.” But she acknowledges there is still some way to go in the corridors of power. The first challenge Davies confronted was “probably when I became a minister — as a young female — dealing with the machinery of government and departments and senior bureaucrats”. “We are by no means there yet ... but going and talking to young people, women who are aspiring leaders, and demonstrating that this is something you can do, no matter where you come from if you have the right support network and the right drive, is really important to me. The challenges are out there. They have been very well canvassed at the State and Federal level, particularly in the last few years, so no sugar-coating it, but be part of the change that you want to see occur.” Both women and men in the preselection process must be encouraged to understand the role they can play in bringing about that change, she says. She laughs and says she wouldn’t join the Weld Club if it were to admit women. “I’ve seen the value of single-sex organisations — particularly the value for women to be able to network, to learn, for professional development, to share — but the ones that are most successful, I think, are where there is space for them to do that but also build networks across other parts of the community. It’s really interesting to watch senior members of private sector organisations say we’ve got responsibilities to gender equity and diversity, yet they are members of the Weld Club. That’s a personal choice. There’s a limit to what governments should legislate for but whether they remain relevant going forward is a question for them.” Labor’s landslide threw up one of the most diverse parliaments the State has seen and included many first-time MPs. Ayor Makur Chuot spent her childhood in a Kenyan refugee camp, Scottish migrant Lorna Harper marched against Margaret Thatcher’s poll tax, there is a winemaker, a naturopath and a psychologist amid the smattering of schoolteachers. “It is refreshing,” Davies says. “If I wasn’t in the chamber to listen, I read every one of their maiden speeches.” She feels for those who lost their seats, including former Opposition leader Zak Kirkup. “He had a huge work ethic, and not just for the election, he worked really hard for four years. It was really disappointing to see a young person who clearly had a passion for public policy, and a very empathetic individual, lose his seat. But politics is a tough game.” Davies, who has electoral offices in Merredin and Northam, where she lives, knows one of the toughest things will be to put herself first. She has barely seen the Dockers this season and doesn’t practise the musical instruments she says she already plays badly. She isn’t married and friends and family, particularly her young nephew and niece, are her priority. “I did take my nephew to the WAFL for the NAIDOC round and introduced Harry to Stephen Michael,” she says. “Dad was an East Freo man but we thought that Poppy wouldn’t mind if we barracked for Souths for one day.” Her mum lives in Perth and will sometimes join her on regional trips. “Other than that it’s very simple, catching up, a meal out, quality time.” But Davies wasn’t raised to complain. “This gives me such an amazing opportunity to walk into people’s lives that I don’t think you would be afforded in any other profession — OK, maybe as a journalist — and try to help.” And it’s raining, so that makes the MLA for the Central Wheatbelt very happy.