What a week it’s been.

While news of the loss of a tiny radioactive capsule triggered an urgent and unusual public health scare, WA politics was experiencing a seismic shift on the other end of the spectrum.

In just seven days, many WA Liberals have gone from downtrodden and pessimistic when they thought about the 2025 election, to having at least a glimmer of hope.

But beyond the shine of her first week as leader, there’s a lot of work to do for Libby Mettam – and plenty of time for things to go either horribly wrong, or phenomenally right.

It’s no secret many had been hoping Mettam would one day step up to the party’s top job.

As Mia Davies was giving a tearful press conference to announce she’d be stepping down as opposition leader, Mettam was mulling her options.

Within hours she’d called David Honey, and emailed her colleagues, officially challenging him for the party’s leadership.

At the time Honey believed he had the numbers, announcing on Saturday he’d also contest the leadership.

But by the time he’d arrived at Parliament House for what could have been a tense party meeting, he’d accepted his fate.

Having been told by a number of MPs ahead of the meeting he did not have their support, Honey stood aside and handed the leadership to his only lower house colleague.

Just as she’d been swift in her move against Honey, so too was Mettam quick in her attack on the factional powerbrokers formerly known as “The Clan”.

In one of her first acts as leader, she asked two of its members who remain in the state parliament to apologise for offensive and derogatory language they’d used in group chat messages leaked in 2021.

Peter Collier did and kept his place in the shadow cabinet.

Nick Goiran didn’t – later insisting an internal investigation had cleared him of any wrongdoing – prompting Mettam to immediately rule him out of a place in her shadow ministry.

With her former boss watching, she did what he couldn’t, or wouldn’t – tackle the internal issues the group caused, pledging that: “the issues that have dogged the party surrounding the so-called Clan will not be part of my leadership going forward”.

It sent a message loud and clear — Mettam’s Liberal Party would be markedly different to the one her predecessor oversaw.

But that’s not the only way she’s tried to wake up her tired party.

After years of almost every opposition press conference being held on the grounds of Parliament House, Mettam ventured to the northern suburbs to criticise the government for not doing enough to address the cost of living crisis.

To anyone paying attention, it showed she had some dimension.

Mettam was trying to tell people she would be a leader in the community, for the community — speaking to real people, and proposing solutions people actually wanted.

She followed up the next day with an appearance at a support group for grandparent carers to call on the government to give them more financial assistance.

Liberal MPs said the collective effect of Mettam’s new approach was already paying dividends.

In a matter of days they’d gone from barely speaking to community and business groups, to those same people suddenly picking up the phone and wanting to talk.

Once a basic duty for opposition party leaders, under the Liberals that has virtually been non-existent in recent years – at least until this week.

It’s just one of many positive signs starting to emerge for the party.

A good first week is far from the end of things though.

Another test will come today when Mettam delivers her first speech to the wider party at a conference to get them onboard with her vision for change.

And she’ll need their help, given Goiran’s real power remains in the party organisation where Mettam has far less power.

He’d sent mixed messages after being stripped of his shadow responsibilities this week.

The next day he was on commercial radio, then speaking to the media, to insist he supported his new leader “100 per cent”, but would not do as she’d asked and step aside as party secretary.

By Thursday though, he’d had a change of heart and decided to relinquish the role – which might be seen as either a sign of Mettam’s power to unite her small partyroom, or Goiran saving himself the embarrassment of losing a vote he had little chance of winning.

Mettam wouldn’t be drawn on what she saw his role in the party as being, and Goiran seems insistent he’s got plenty left to contribute.

In an email to his supporters on Friday morning, he told them to: “Rest assured. I’m still standing”.

“I’ll still be asking all the questions that need to be asked, whether it’s on information Labor is hiding from parliament or other promises they’ve broken,” he wrote.

But for his biggest critics, who are more concerned about his power outside parliament, they suggest there’s only one person who can strip him of his power.

“I know he holds his values highly and he is pursuing them, but he’s come to the point now where he has to decide what he wants — himself or the party,” former leader Mike Nahan said on Tuesday.

Having the party’s grassroots members onside will certainly help – especially in convincing the public the Liberal Party has changed, and its party faithful should return.

As the spotlight fades from Mettam, it will slowly drift out to the rest of her colleagues and what they have to offer.

If the government gets its way, questions might linger for a while about why Goiran’s Clan colleague, Collier, remains in shadow cabinet.

“Nick Goiran is not the single sniper in The Clan. Peter Collier is up to his eyeballs in the activity that has been revealed,” senior Labor minister Sue Ellery said on Tuesday.

“And it strikes me as odd that he remains apparently able to be in shadow cabinet.”

But that political tit for tat is unlikely to bother many voters, who are far more concerned about the issues that directly affect them every day.

There’s also likely to be just as little interest in how Mettam manages negotiations with the Nationals over their relationship heading into the election.

They’ll be looking at what the party can give them in exchange for their precious vote, which they won’t be able to get from the immensely powerful other side.

That the real test of Mettam’s leadership, and one we won’t get an answer to anytime soon.