Mr Crook said voters were sick and tired of the constant leadership speculation between Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard.

He said, however, if Mr Rudd was to win the ballot and become PM again, he would welcome a conversation with the new leader to see if the government’s “anti-WA” attitude had altered.

He said his issues with the Labor government remained unchanged, regardless of its leader, with damaging policies on the Mining Tax, GST, native title compensation and its “deplorable” handling of the live cattle exports suspension to Indonesia last year, hurting WA.

Mr Crook said the ALP viewed WA as “a large open pit mine that just delivers money to the east coast”.

He said he’d never met Mr Rudd but was contacted by an ALP backbencher before the 2012 parliamentary year started, asking if he supported the former PM as the Labor leader, which he didn’t discount.

However, he has held regular discussions with the PM including “extensive” talks during debate over the asylum seekers’ legislation last year, which he effectively stifled, and succeeded in getting her to visit Albany and Esperance in his electorate, O’Connor, last August.

He believed Ms Gillard relegated Mr Jenkins to the backbench and put Peter Slipper into the speaker’s chair on the final sitting day of parliament last year, to secure an extra vote for the government and create a buffer position or insurance, in the event Mr Rudd resigned from parliament after losing a leadership challenge.