A photo showing Cam Sinclair with the rest of Basil Zempilas’ doorknocking team was posted on the weekend, months after the fallout from polling which sparked a failed Liberal leadership challenge.
A photo showing Cam Sinclair with the rest of Basil Zempilas’ doorknocking team was posted on the weekend, months after the fallout from polling which sparked a failed Liberal leadership challenge.
By Hamish Hastie
January 23, 2025 — 2.52pm
Liberal leader Libby Mettam is untroubled that Churchlands candidate Basil Zempilas’ former campaign director – who stepped down over his involvement in a poll used to trigger a failed leadership challenge – is back on the campaign trail.
A photo of Cam Sinclair with the rest of Zempilas’ doorknocking team was posted to the Liberal candidate for Churchlands’ Facebook page on the weekend.
Sinclair’s marketing agency Ammo Marketing facilitated the Sodali & Co polling on behalf of a “mystery businessman”, and the results were leaked to The West Australian in November.
The polling suggested the WA Liberals’ primary vote would be about 7 per cent better at the March election if Zempilas were leader instead of Mettam, and formed the basis of a failed leadership challenge in the final week of parliament, where Liberal MLC Neil Thompson put forward the idea that Zempilas assume the role of campaign leader of the party.
Having retained leadership, Mettam raged at Sinclair’s involvement in the poll and called on her party to review Ammo Marketing’s role in leading the Liberals’ digital campaign ahead of the election.
Sinclair apologised for not alerting the party of the potential conflict of interest and kept his position in the Liberals’ campaign, but stood down from Zempilas’ campaign for Churchlands.
Zempilas maintained he did not know about Sinclair’s involvement in the poll, nor the poll itself, until it was made public in the pages of The West.
On Thursday, Zempilas rubbished any suggestion that Sunday’s photo meant Sinclair was back on his campaign team.
“Cam is not my campaign director, but he’s still a huge supporter and when I sent a message out a few days prior to a group of supporters saying, ‘who’d like to join a doorknocking effort on Sunday’, he was one of the first to reply,” he said.
Asked whether she was concerned about Sinclair’s presence on the campaign trail alongside Zempilas, Mettam said: “Not at all.”
“We are a united team focused on defeating a government who has lost their way during the largest boom our state has ever seen, a government that has failed Western Australians, whether it is in housing, a broken health system, cost of living or crime which is out of control,” she said.
Mettam repeated that sentiment when pressed on whether she had forgiven Sinclair and put the saga behind her.
“Western Australians are struggling during the largest boom our state has ever seen and a premier who is obsessed with only one project and one project only – which has been Metronet,” she said.
“We are focused on delivering better outcomes for Western Australians. That is our focus, and we are a united team.”
Sinclair said he was volunteering in the doorknocking effort as a local Liberal party member.
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Hamish Hastie is WAtoday’s state political reporter and the winner of five WA Media Awards, including the 2023 Beck Prize for best political journalism.Connect via Twitter or email.