A New Species Of Strangeness In The West

It's a familiar polling story.  The long-serving government is looking rough around the edges and the Opposition has a moderate but handy polling lead.  The Premier is on the nose and has been rating badly for years, the Opposition Leader is well regarded and leads as preferred Premier.  There are rumours and rustlings, and finally a challenger indicates potential interest in the job, should his/her colleagues so desire it, and says that the current leader can't win the election.  We all know how this story ends.

Only in Western Australia, it's the Opposition Leader, not the Premier, who has been informally challenged - and even more strangely, the putative challenger isn't even in parliament.  In an extension of the Campbell Newman doctrine (in which a new leader can be drafted by the party from outside the parliament in order to take over), it is now possible for someone to raise an interest in the leadership when they:

* aren't in the parliament or serving in any current political role
* have no seat for which they are reasonably assured of preselection
* aren't being drafted by the party's current organisation or the parliamentary party, and whether anyone involved in the drafting is even a member of either isn't totally clear