Margetts was elected to the Western Australian state parliament in 2001, again losing her seat at the 2005 state election. Due to her concerns about the major Australian policy change which had been pushed through in Federal Parliament in 1994, she commenced her research for a PhD at University of WA (UWA) in early 2006, which was completed and approved in 2013, "A Critique of Australia's National Competition Policy: Assessing its outcomes in a range of major sectors". Thus, she is now Dr. Margetts. Margetts has the claim to fame of being one of the two people Paul Keating referred to with his 'unrepresentative swill' comment in 1993.