Byelections often have a simple story and, beyond that, a broader political message.
The top line of Saturday’s Kiama byelection on the New South Wales south coast will be who replaces the convicted rapist Gareth Ward as the local MP in Macquarie Street.
The premier, Chris Minns, and various ministers have made numerous visits to the seat, suggesting Labor is optimistic that it will win on Saturday. The party has poured resources into the campaign.
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Labor’s candidate, the journalist Katelin McInerney, came close in the 2023 state election, securing 49.2% of the two-party preferred vote. It won’t take a huge gain for her to get over the line this time, although there is always the risk, as in every byelection, that voters see it as an opportunity to kick the government.
Kiama is rapidly gentrifying, from a working-class seaside town favoured by retirees to a sea change destination for professionals.
According to the property website Domain, Kiama is now the second most expensive NSW regional market after Byron Bay, with a median house price of $1.48m. Prices have surged 63% in the five years since the Covid pandemic began.
That has created its own type of housing crisis, leaving longtime renters, young families and key workers struggling to find accommodation. Labor has focused on promoting its policies on social and affordable housing and planning changes.
McInerney is up against Serena Copley, a former Liberal Shoalhaven councillor, who is well known in the area.
“There’s definitely a feeling in the community that we’ve been forgotten by the Minns Labor government,” Copley says.
The Liberals are also focusing on the housing crisis, promising incentives for those downsizing and restoring the option of a property tax for first home buyers, while highlighting infrastructure pressures.
A teal independent, Kate Dezarnaulds, is running as well. A business owner from Berry, Dezarnaulds ran in the federal election in the overlapping seat of Gilmore as a Climate 200-backed independent. She won 7.5% of the primary vote and came third. Her stronger booths overlap with the state seat of Kiama.
To win Dezarnaulds would need to come second in the primary vote – ahead of the Liberals – and then she would need to get a strong preference flow, which is more problematic in NSW because it has optional preferential voting.
But the strange and twisted political history of the seat, combined with its changing population, makes everyone wary of being too cocksure.
The former Liberal MP Ward won the seat in 2011, after Labor had held it since its creation in 1981. It had been regarded as a solid Labor seat.
More surprisingly, Ward retained Kiama as an independent in 2023, with 50.2% of the two-party preferred vote, despite having been charged with sex offences against two young men.
“Ward was a bit of a weirdo but he was our weirdo,” was how one local political figure explained the forgiving nature of Kiama voters. “He was always at events in the community. He just worked so hard.”
Ward was also relentless in seeking resources for his seat: road upgrades, a new Shoalhaven hospital and funds for schools. So Kiama voters gave him the benefit of the doubt, despite the charges.
In July he was convicted of three counts of indecent assault and one of rape. He resigned in August, on the morning parliament was going to expel him.
While Labor is definitely the favourite, a nervousness hangs over predicting where Ward loyalists might go.
With 13 candidates in the field, the vote will be spread and it might take some time to count, particularly if Dezarnaulds does well.
The result will tell a bigger story about the future of the state’s Liberal leader, Mark Speakman.
He is already under pressure from within his own party.
His troops admire and like him, and they know he’s smart and works hard. But they worry that after two and a half years in the top role he has not been able to engage the broader public.
There has been rising anxiety, fuelled by a Sydney Morning Herald Resolve poll in July, which showed Labor’s state-wide primary vote strengthening to 38%, up five percentage points since April, and the Coalition vote sagging by four points to 32%. The analyst Poll Bludger says this would imply a two-party result of 57 to 43 – a thumping win for Labor if a general election were held now.
The Coalition has gone from thinking that Labor, already in minority, might be beatable in 2027 to worrying about saving their silverware.
If the Liberals end up with a two-party preferred result in the low 40s, or worse, on Saturday then Speakman will be in trouble. Even though who might mount a leadership challenge remains unclear.
The Kiama byelection will be significant for Labor, too. It could bring the Minns government, now in minority, within one seat of the magic 47 it needs to pass legislation on its own right in the lower house.
A win would be important for Minns as leader. It would demonstrate that his style of pragmatic, populist and transactional politics is working. It would vindicate his strategy of carefully managing the tabloid media, boosting public-sector wages while keeping the purse strings tight in other areas and keeping business onside.
The lack of a “Labor vision” might disappoint some on his own backbench but marching relentlessly toward a bigger majority and a second term will thrill MPs in marginal seats. A win in Kiama would cement Minns’ claim to be a shrewd political leader.
