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

AARON PATRICK

Thanks Gerard. Thanks, everyone, for coming. And for everyone who is out there online, listening to us speak.

I want to start with a little story about a press conference that Dominic Perrottet gave in January. It was at the very start of the year, and we knew there was a state election this year. I went to watch Perrottet speaking at a press conference at the Sydney fish markets. We journalists were standing there, waiting. A young woman, next to me, introduced herself and asked me who I was. And I said, “Well, I’m Aaron Patrick.” She looked blankly. I’m like, “Well, you don’t know who I am?” So, I said, “Well, who are you?” And she said, “I’m a student at Sydney University and I’m doing an internship at Channel Seven.” And I said, “Okay, well, you know, welcome.”

The press conference started. And this young woman could not get Perrottet’s attention; she kept putting her hand up. They’re quite aggressive occasions and the other television journalists were too assertive for her. It got to the very end and Perrottet looked over. I had my hand up and he looked over to me and said, “Okay Aaron you can have the last question.” And I said, “Premier, there is a student here from Sydney University who wants to ask a question.” Perrottet said, “That’s the best university in the country, what is your name?” She told him and Perrottet said, “Well, welcome Laura”, or whatever her name was, adding “I bet this is going to be the best question of the whole press conference.” Laura raised her phone to read the question that some producer in town had sent her to ask.

It was, without doubt, the most boring question of the whole press conference. But Perrottet said, “Well done, Laura, you have hit it out of the park. Great question.” And his answer was almost as boring as the question. As he walked off, I thought – now that’s a good politician. He didn’t need to do that. But he made this young woman walk away, feeling ten foot tall. Just imagine the story she would have had, not only back at the office but back at home that night. Not all politicians do that. Perhaps it’s an obvious thing to do, or an easy thing to do. But, for me, that was the mark of who Perrottet was as a leader. I was really impressed.

Something interesting happened to Perrottet over the time he was premier. From 22 October 2022 to 23 February 2023, his personal approval rating rose approximately 15 to 20 points, according to Freshwater Strategy. That is a phenomenal increase. And even more so when you consider the context of who Perrottet was – and how he was perceived when he became Premier in October 2021. As I’m sure you all know, he was perceived in elements of society, or feared, to be a conservative Catholic. He had six children then and would have another with his wife, Helen, in office. He had gone to a school which had an association with Opus Dei, which most people only knew through the Dan Brown films and books. And there was a fear, I think, a genuine fear in society that he would introduce a conservative religious agenda. He did no such thing.

It wasn’t until the very end of 2022 and the start of this year, that Perrottet was really able to connect with the New South Wales community and become, to our surprise, popular. Something had happened, something crucial, in late 2022 which almost everyone was oblivious of. Perrottet hired Yaron Finkelstein and Ben Wicks in his office. Yaron’s title was principal private secretary. A great title that just means political adviser to the Prime Minister, to Scott Morrison. Ben Wicks was one of Scott Morrison’s press secretaries. And these were considered the Morrison boys. They came in and, if you listen to some people, they took over the show.

They were brought in for one big reason, which was the Barilaro affair, which hit in mid-2022. That was devastating for the Perrottet government. With Gladys Berejiklian having stepped aside due to the ICAC inquiry, the Perrottet government was perceived in general to be non-corrupt. Which is quite exceptional in New South Wales politics. Then, suddenly, they announced the former Deputy Premier John Barilaro had been appointed to a job in New York as Trade Commissioner, which he was not qualified for. Now, the Labor Party did something at this point, which was pretty good. They showed that they had learnt something from twelve years in opposition and they just wrang every drop out of the scandal that they could. They made it last for months. It was still going on in February this year. They skilfully exploited the Barilaro affair.

Perrottet felt that his government had lost control of the narrative. They should have shut it down much faster. So, he brought in some tough guys who’d been through the Morrison government. There’s a lot of criticism of the Morrison government, and a lot of that is deserved. At the same time, these were blooded, political operatives. Now, this did not go down well with all elements of the Premier’s Office. Some of the premier’s staff felt that they literally were cut off from Perrottet. That they only got to see him at press conferences, that they were unable to give him direct advice, that they had to go through what was called derisively, the “Morrison Boys”.

Perhaps more importantly, it contributed to serious tension between the Premier’s office and the Treasurer’s office. There was a huge degree of animosity there. There was a very small Whatsapp group and Yaron Finkelstein was on it, and I think Ben Wicks; Matt Kean the Treasurer was on it, as well as his chief of staff. Chris Stone, the Liberal state director was on it. This Whatsapp group ran the state. And it also seemed to run the Treasury. The Treasurer of New South Wales received directions from the Premier’s Office. And it seems to me that the Treasurer decided, early this year, there was no point pushing back against this direction, and that he would do what he was told, come what may. If things went badly, then you couldn’t blame him.

The Treasurer wanted to do various things in the election, which he wasn’t allowed to do. He had an idea to rent a beat-up bus. Now you all have heard about the buses. Chris Minns’ electric bus had a flat battery. I was on the Liberal bus when its battery ran flat and it wasn’t an electric bus. So, the Treasurer had the idea of renting the worst bus they could find. They would call it Labor’s bus of shame. They would drive around Sydney to places where there are projects the Labor Party was going to cancel. The first one was going to be an underground train station in Rozelle.

The Premier’s Office heard about this and thought it was a ridiculous idea. They told Kean not to do it. Perhaps of more significance was tension over the privatisation of assets. Perrottet had a formal wording which he would use to deflect questions when asked, “Are you going to sell assets?” He would say, “We have no plans.” And he’d roll this out all the time. He’d just be really emphatic about it and would say it enough times that he hoped people would get bored. There was a debate on 2GB, in February, where he was pursued hard over privatisation by Chris Minns because Chris Minns was wanting to run a privatisation scare campaign. Perrottet pushed back. Then he flew up to Taree where the Nationals were having their launch. And he was out of the Sydney news cycle.

The next morning, Matt Kean did an interview with Patricia Karvelas on the ABC Radio Breakfast show. She asked, “Do you have any plans to sell Sydney Water?” Sydney Water is particularly crucial in the whole privatisation debate because it’s a monopoly. With any chance it could be sold, the Labor Party could credibly run an argument that water prices would go up. This was the pointy end of the privatisation debate. Asked if he would sell Sydney Water, Matt Kean departed from Perrottet’s form of words and said, “No, of course not. We’ve got no plans to sell it.” So, at this point, you had the appearance of two different positions from the Premier and the Treasurer over a key policy point.

Chris Minns hammered them over it. He hammered them so much, that around ten days later, Perrottet felt compelled to drop his “no plans” formulation wording and just rule out privatisation completely.

This, then, made Perrottet look inconsistent, and it disappointed some of his own team. It shut off what many people regarded as a pretty sensible policy option. And it didn’t shut down the privatisation debate either, because then Minns just ran the argument “They’re lying, they’re lying”. On election day, as many of you would have seen, there were very large posters hung from the fences and polling booths saying “Liberals cut services sell assets”.

This conflict and difficulty of coordination had real problems. There was so much tension there at one point, the daily talking points were distributed for all Ministers and MPs in the Liberal and Nationals. Yaron Finkelstein circled in red the position on asset sales and texted it to Matt Kean, just to make the point very clear. Matt Kean, I’m told, didn’t enjoy this. He felt he was being side-lined. From people I’ve spoken to, Matt Kean felt that he’d been the one doing huge work in energy to stop the Liberal Party being wiped out in what we primarily call the Teal seats.

 Perrottet’s office, I’m told, felt that Matt Kean wasn’t across the detail of the Treasury portfolio. Perrottet felt he didn’t have an attack dog who was across all the policies, who could go out every day and get stuck into the opposition, leaving the Premier to rise above the fray, to the extent that might be possible.

These were some of the main problems at the heart of the government, which I don’t think were apparent at the time. Now, there are plenty of other reasons or problems, which I’m sure Parnell will go into in some detail. I’ll just mention them very lightly. The most obvious one was late candidates and poor localisation. Labor was very good at creating election material which spoke to problems or policy issues in specific seats. Most of the Liberal material I’m told was just state-wide, which made it feel generic. You also had a whole series of retirements of Coalition MPs. Some very long-standing Liberal MPs were retiring, particularly Jeff Lee out of Parramatta and Brad Hazzard on the northern beaches, Victor Dominello in Ryde. And these are politicians who had been very good, very good at working their electorates and they vacated the field. Then you had the Barilaro debacle.

At the same time, we had a very disciplined and well-oiled Labor campaign. They borrowed from the Anthony Albanese playbook and presented themselves as a low risk, safe option. Chris Minns was very disciplined. And you could tell that he had changed the rules of politics when he started refusing to call for anyone to resign. I’m not aware of Chris Minns’ calling for any minister’s resignation. Usually, these calls are a dime a dozen; they happen all the time. But Minns said no. And he never said, even when the Liberal Party fell into minority government, and even further minority government, “Let’s have an election now.” He always said, “Let’s have an election when the time is appropriate.” He would back the government on certain policies.

Minns very self-consciously presented himself as an unthreatening centrist. He promised not to spend too much. On his list of released policies, he wasn’t presenting a big spending agenda. He carried himself in a pretty unthreatening way. He would be friendly to Dominic Perrottet, he would not shout, he wasn’t seen as erratic. I noticed on election night, when he won, there was a camera outside his house, and he got into the car. It was a pretty intense moment. He got into the front seat with two others behind him – I assume one was his wife, and someone else was a friend or relative. They were grinning from ear to ear, you could just tell how excited they were. But Chris Minns wouldn’t smile, you could tell he was restraining himself, because he didn’t want to look like a grinning victor who was really pleased with himself. He wanted to look like a sober, responsible man who was preparing for the responsibilities of office. It was that it was that kind of discipline that I respected. It was an example of why Minns was so effective as an opposition leader.

Ultimately, a lot of what I spoke about tonight is background noise. It’s very interesting. But it’s not as important as the fundamental reason we had a change in government. After twelve years, people in New South Wales felt this government was tired. They felt that it would be healthy, for the state and for democracy, to let a new government have a shot. And that is possibly one of the beauties democracy, which is it keeps political parties on their toes. Maybe sometimes when they don’t necessarily deserve defeat, but I think it’s probably healthy for democracy overall.