Nothing was left to chance as Prime Minister Anthony Albanese launched Labor's election campaign in WA.
There was an embrace of WA Premier Roger Cook, fresh off the back of a larger-than-expected state win, perhaps in the hope some of his popularity would rub off.
Choosing to launch the campaign in Perth was an acknowledgement of WA's pull and a show of gratitude for the state he feels indebted to for helping him win the last election.
And as it all came to an end, there was a strategic nod to one of the state's icons.
Not Mark McGowan, who became one of the world's most popular politicians following COVID, and not its booming mining industry.
It was the the state's emblem — the black swan — that Albanese drew upon.
The black swan
"For hundreds of years in England and across Europe, when people needed to describe something impossible, something that simply couldn't exist, they would say it was like a black swan," he said.
"The rest of the world was certain that there was no such thing as a black swan, until Europeans sailed up that river just out there and saw them by the thousands."
The image Albanese seemed to be evoking was of himself as one of those European explorers, sailing along the Swan River into WA ahead of the last election in 2022, to discover hundreds of thousands of voters waiting to be wooed.
In Tangney, Hasluck, Pearce and Swan, Albanese (aided by McGowan's intense popularity) brought those voters onside, delivering crucial seats for his win.
But now that the black swan has been discovered, the task of winning in the west isn't as straightforward.
2022 election
A big part of the reason for Albanese's success, and the reason he could 'discover' those black swans, was because they felt forgotten by the Morrison Liberal government.
The COVID-hangover that also influenced the result was two-fold: firstly, McGowan's lingering popularity, as well as the sour taste left by the Morrison government's decision to join Clive Palmer in a High Court challenge against WA's hard borders.
Albanese and his team stood in stark contrast.
They were present in the west, said all the right things, and launched their campaign at Perth Stadium.
Together, they told the state — which is thousands of kilometres from the nation's capital and often feels forgotten — they had a friend who would listen.
"To be honest, he's barely been away ever since," Premier Roger Cook told the crowd at yesterday's launch as he revved them up for their leader's arrival.
"He comes back to WA every other week, or so it seems."
It's been a little less than that, at 31 visits according to the PM.
Holding his launch in the west is meant to reinforce how much he values the state, but that might not be front of mind for voters.
In the wake of the state campaign, there's a sense many are switched off to the same again at a federal level and might not realise he's had a major campaign launch at all, let alone that it was in their home town.
And while Dutton hasn't racked up quite as many visits, the Liberals have learnt from their mistakes and been more present, especial of late.
In 2022, appealing to WA's parochialism was the winning ticket.
In 2025, it's the price of entry, which both leaders have paid.
WA's key issues
That makes the policies each side is offering Western Australians much more important.
Both have bowed to the state's great mining powerhouses and passed the test of recognising its self-imposed title of "the engine room of the nation".
Albanese has promised to re-work the Nature Positive laws that Cook had asked him to scrap because of the concerns of the resources sector.
The Coalition has promised to "never revive" the laws and is instead promising to "halve project approval times while keeping standards high", starting with the North West Shelf project.
Cost of living and housing, key issues in the west, have been just as important everywhere else across the nation, with each party proposing their own solutions to tackle the problem.
Keep the sheep
One of the few significant points of difference is on the live sheep export trade — which Labor has promised to phase out by 2028 and which the Liberals would reinstate.
A 14.8 per cent swing away from Labor in the regions at the recent state election has been attributed, at least in part, to Labor's stance.
In Perth, the swing was 11.7 per cent.
"Anthony Albanese has shown us no respect at all," one farmer told the ABC.
"He hasn't had the courage to stand in front of us once … completely disrespectful and completely lacked courage and even manners to talk to us and tell us why."
But the stance carries little risk for Labor in the west — the state's regions have been solidly blue territory for decades with little prospect of changing.
Optimism in the west
For the next three weeks both sides will keep pointing to reasons they should be optimistic in the west.
Labor seems hopeful it will keep the four seats it picked up last time, at the very least, helped along by a stronger-than-expected state result.
The Liberals have pinned a lot of hope on taking Curtin back from independent Kate Chaney and winning the newly created seat of Bullwinkel on Perth's fringes.
Without McGowan's seemingly magical touch or Morrison's distance, the race should at least be a little more interesting.
It's a big incentive for both sides to keep make the long trip west at least once more to see if there are a few more black swans waiting to be discovered.
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