AUSTRALIAN POLITICS AFTER THE 2023 NSW ELECTION 

In the aftermath of the defeat of the New South Wales Coalition government in March 2023, the NSW Liberal and National parties had much to think about. Labor had made a comeback federally in 2022 and the lead up to the NSW election saw the Coalition with multiple challenges so often faced by long-term administrations. With the tide turning, two experienced Sydney journalists – Aaron Patrick, senior correspondent for The Australian Financial Review and Parnell McGuinness, columnist for The Sydney Morning Herald  – addressed The Sydney Institute on Monday 17 April 2023. Aaron Patrick’s paper is an edited transcript of his talk on the night.

AUSTRALIAN POLITICS AFTER THE 2023 NSW ELECTION 

PARNELL McGUINNESS

 Incoming Treasurer Daniel Mookhey has, in keeping with tradition, discovered a budget black hole left to him by his predecessor in the NSW Liberal government.

Mookhey, who knows the lines of this little post-election pagent by heart, says he wants to pay down NSW’s debt and audit the programs of the last 12 years to remove waste and overruns. Hearing those words is as reassuring as their fulfilment is unlikely.

“The Previous Government’s Budget Blackhole” is a comforting little set-piece because it reminds us that, when democracy works properly, it is essentially a rotation between tune-up crews tasked with fixing the inevitable failures of the complex and colossal machinery of government.

To my mind, the recent NSW election has revealed NSW to be the most functional and democratically healthy of Australia’s states. Not only was Dominic Perrottet’s speech as outgoing premier positively uplifting, the campaign itself was civil and focused on policy rather than personality.

Now you could argue that was because the two candidates were so similar. I say, if that’s what it takes to restore a policy focus to the political circus, bring out the clones. The key policy differences headlining the election, as it drew to a close, were privatisation of state assets, capping tolls (which are related to the privatisation of road assets) and pay rises for government employees (health and emergency workers, not bureaucrats).

Each of these issues has benefits and draw backs – the former being that they sound great, the latter being that they need to be paid for. But I’m all ears on how the Labor government plans to do that, as well as confident that if they try to do it in a way that is unpalatable to voters, a correction can quickly be made in the return of the alternative governing team. That is because though the NSW Liberal government lost the state election, it did not lose its dignity.

How the NSW Liberal loss compares to other Liberal losses nationally

The obvious comparison is, of course, the federal Liberal loss.

At the 2022 federal election the nation was determined to get rid of a do-nothing government led by a prime minister who had begun to irritate voters by slavishly following the polls, except when those polled turned on him and told him to stop being such a stalker.

In the lead up to the election, the 10-year old government was clean out of ideas (or too chicken to implement them). Moreover, the focus of the Liberal Party had shifted from thinking of ways to make people’s lives better to thinking of ways they could prosecute miniscule internecine squabbles in a way that would cause maximal public humiliation – to themselves. That famously resulted in candidate pre-selection being blocked to protect incumbent NSW powerbroker Alex Hawke. When pre-selections did go ahead, factional deals often ensured a candidate handpicked by the party not to appeal to the electorate. If this combination of personality-based antipathy and organisational self-harm isn’t enough to condemn the Liberal Party federally to at least two terms in the wilderness, it will be a Queensland copper miracle.

The other comparative loss is the failure of the Victorian Liberal Party to provide an alternative to a premier who literally locked up his citizens, ran his state into so much unnecessary debt that he’s now defunding vital services, and lets his police force run around like old-style Queensland coppers.

The New South Wales Liberal government didn’t lose in the same spectacular, inexplicable, or humiliating fashion of either of those losses. In fact, despite scandals caused by the inevitable scumbags and hucksters who seem to plague government at all levels but really come into their own at the zoning and phoning echelons, the NSW Liberal government managed to remain doggedly focused on coming up with good policy, not just good property development.

Indeed, one of the chief criticisms that might be made of the Berejiklian-Perrottet government just past is that it didn’t stand up for the property developers enough. It comprehensively lost the war against inner-city suburbanites bravely fighting off an invasion of grandchildren into their enclaves by opposing mid-rise accommodation within working distance of the CBD.

But, all in all, the policy program of the NSW Liberal government did not suffer from the same ideas drought or cowardice which brought down its federal counterpart. 

Instead of running out of ideas, the NSW Liberals ran out of demographic advantage.

 An analysis of the seats which the Liberals lost in the March election paint a clear picture of a demographic loss. In four cases – Parramatta, Riverstone, South Coast and Wakehurst – new candidates were unable to retain the seats of retiring incumbents.

In three others – Camden, East Hills and Wollondilly – a woman with strong local connections won the seat. In two of these, the opponent was a male candidate, while in East Hills, a traditional Labor seat swapped back from a Liberal woman to a Labor woman with deep and long-term local ties.

Just like at a federal level, the party lost because, between the member base and the factions, it found itself unable to source and preselect candidates who would appeal to voters. Now the party finds itself headless, struggling to find within itself the right person to correct course as leader.

So much for what happened to the Liberals. What happens to NSW from here?

Much like federally, the NSW Labor Party ran a cautious and conservative campaign. Before the election, Labor MPs were at pains to emphasise their religious values, that connect them with the Western Sydney constituencies they considered crucial to electoral success.

If they were being honest, the good work the Liberals did on establishing an evidence base for policy may be adopted by the Labor Party. Using those ideas would save them from an evidence-based attack by the opposition, once it regathers. In addition, it has a lot of good ideas of its own. And of course, there’s that necessary review of the waste and graft that sneaks up on any government.

But what happens next to Labor will depend heavily on the Independents the minority government relies on for supply.

Sydney MP Alex Greenwich, Lake Macquarie MP Greg Piper and Wagga Wagga MP Joe McGirr — have guaranteed the Minns government confidence and supply. Alex Greenwich has introduced a “New Equality Bill” as his signature policy for this term. This follows the Voluntary Assisted Dying bill which he successfully traded through NSW parliament, despite opposition from some Labor MPs.

This Bill is an omnibus bill which Greenwich says will “address all legislative barriers to LGBTIQA+ health and wellbeing”. This Bill will allow people to change their gender on their birth certificate and other state documentation without transitioning surgically, introduce a consent model similar to the ACT’s for medical procedures on people born with intersex variations, remove “targeted discrimination including in schools” – by which we can understand undermining the ability of religious schools to make decisions on staffing consistent with their faith doctrines. It will also “ban conversion practices”, by which Greenwich means forbidding parents or others from suggesting that gender transition hormones should not be given to minors.

This agenda might not be one Minns favours, but it will be popular with some of the Labor ministers and base. Greenwich dragged the Liberal government under conservative Dom Perrottet to the left; if he drags the Labor government to the left, Sydney might suddenly feel a lot closer to Victoria.

Whether this happens will in part depend on how well the Liberal Party reconstitutes.

 The corrective to that, if you believe it needs one, is of course that great weapon of voters: a functional democracy. If the NSW Liberal Party can find candidates who reflect the community, they will inherit a platform that is ready made to put them back into fray.

Healthy elections are a wonderful reminder of our democratic liberal tradition and provide an opportunity for our institutions to be cleaned up. And partly by design, they are also a time of wildcards thrown in by independents.