The Sunday Interview: ‘Accidental’ WA Liberal president Caroline Di Russo says victory is the only success

The Sunday Times’ political editor Joe Spagnolo sits down with State MPs and political figures to get the lay of the land ahead of the March State election. This week, we meet the WA Liberals president Caroline Di Russo. You grew up in a traditional Italian-Australian family on a sheep and grain farm in Hyden with your father and mother, Antonio and Maria, and brother Mark. Good memories? Great memories. In the house next door to our farm, my Nonno and Nonna and Zio and Zia and their family used to live there. So a special memory for me is my Nonna cooking for 12 of us three times a day. And if our workers were single men, they would sit with us for all our meals. I just remember these happy, robust times at meals. Politics and business got discussed at the table at every meal. For me, politics was very much part of my upbringing. I used to take a stick of pork sausage and sundried tomato sandwiches to school. What was in your lunch box? I had the pork too, but Mum would cut it up for me. Do you remember the little round Tupperware containers? Mum would cut up some sausage for me and some pecorino or some provolone. Sometimes a cutlet, meatballs. The Aussie kids just didn’t understand my lunch box. And to this day, even when I get home after a busy day and I might not necessarily want dinner, there is always sausage and there is always plenty of cheese in the fridge. Your family still makes its own sausages and sauces? Yes, sausages and sauce and we also make our own olive oil. We get all the family and friends together and go olive-picking together, and then Mum and Dad take the olives to get pressed in York, and then we divvy it out to friends and family. I love sauce day. The first bit of sauce that comes out my Zia goes and puts it on the stove and starts cooking it for about three hours. We finish making the sauce and then we have pasta schuta. After a long morning’s work there is nothing better. You are a lawyer by profession, specialising in commercial litigation and corporate insolvency. I practised for about 15 years, I loved it. I worked for Gadens and for Herbert Smith Freehills. You also have an online fashion business? I come from a family of women who, although they may not always have had a lot of money, were always elegantly dressed. So I’ve always had an interest in clothing and fashion. I love filling my wardrobe with pre-loved and classical pieces. My entire outfit I’m wearing today I bought second-hand. I started with (selling) second-hand, vintage handbags, did some restoration work and I used to import other vintage and limited-edition pieces and sell them into the Australian market. My friend Amy (Lane) and I now are in the business of authenticating luxury goods — and that’s what we do. We have brand experts who can determine whether a luxury handbag, or clothes or shoes is legitimate. How would you define your fashion style? It’s a work in progress, like I am. You became president of the WA Liberal Party at the end of 2022. Why would someone give up a highly paid, successful legal career to become State president? I had left full-time work (as a lawyer) to start my business in 2017. The party was not in a particularly good place at the end of 2022. The State president had resigned in October and we knew we were facing two elections within close timeframes of each other. I had been the senior vice-president of the party. I didn’t apply for this role, but the fact of the matter is that sometimes things happen in life, and sometimes you have to stand up. In a sense, I’m the accidental State president. (But) I’m not a half-arser. If you do something, you do it properly. Will you run for politics after this? You never say never but it’s not the driver behind what I’m doing now. Despite claims by the party that it has diminished the influence of powerbrokers, Nick Goiran still has the number two spot on the Upper House ticket. Why? We expanded the entitlement for those Upper House pre-selections. Nick, under any model was going to do well. I know he is polarising. But he is, particularly in the parliamentary sense, an excellent contributor. If you look broadly across our preselections, Upper House and particularly the Lower House, where we now have that broad plebiscite model, the old way of doing business is over. We have had some excellent and very competitive results of potentially people who could never have won under the old (preselection) model. What are acceptable results for the Liberals at the State and Federal 2025 elections? I want Libby as the premier and I want Peter Dutton as the prime minister. That’s my goal. That’s the absolute marker of success. I know that in relation to the State election it is very difficult to hold a government to account when you have so few members, but I really look forward to shaking the tree. I’m in the business of winning elections. And that’s the beginning, middle and end of story. I’m not thinking about not winning. I’ve said before Peter Dutton is unelectable. What do you say to that? They said the same thing about Abbott before he swept to power. My sense is that Dutton is more interested in being respected than liked. Has Libby got your absolute, unequivocal support to be leader (at the next election)? Of course she does. She has done an incredible job in very difficult circumstances. So should Basil Zempilas just bide his time? Basil needs to worry about winning Churchlands. Two words to describe Roger Cook? Decent. Ineffectual. What is WA Labor’s Achilles heel this election? This Government is smug, lazy and totally disconnected from the priorities of WA families. They have squandered a huge opportunity to make our State a better place. They’ve unfettered power and full coffers and yet they have achieved nothing of substance to secure our future prosperity. And West Australians know it. You attended the US Republican convention in July? I went to the Republican convention as one of the Party delegates. The party is involved in the International Democratic Union. I was asked out of our Federal secretariat to attend this as one of the party representatives. Kamala Harris or Donald Trump. Who would you vote for? I would vote for Trump because he is not Kamala Harris. Kamala Harris and the Democrats have not done a great job over the last four years. Her masquerading down on the border this week like she has had nothing to do with it for four years, she is behaving as if she is in Opposition. You enjoy your other gig as a Sky News commentator? Of course. Have you ever known an Italian short of an opinion?