The New South Wales premier Mike Baird will push ahead with plans to partially privatise the state’s electricity poles and wires, while the final composition of the upper house remains in doubt following Saturday’s election.
On Monday, Baird told Macquarie Radio the weekend’s decisive victory was an “incredible victory” and “very humbling”.
The Labor leader Luke Foley indicated that the party would consider its position on the Coalition’s policy to lease 49% of the state’s electricity assets.
“When you lose an election, all policies are up for review and discussion ,” he told Macquarie Radio. “I’m not going to make pronouncements on day one after an election.
“I respect caucus democracy and party democracy,” he said. “Everything is up for grabs.”
Foley pointed to the premier’s popularity and a sense that Labor was not yet ready to lead the state again as the main drivers of the election result.
“Mr Baird won the election despite that policy [privatisation], which is unpopular. He won it because he’s at the peak of his personal popularity,” Foley said.
A number of NSW Labor luminaries have called on the party not to block the policy.
“Mike Baird has a clear mandate to implement his plans, Labor ought to support it,” former NSW treasurer Michael Costa said.
But the premier faces resistance in the upper house, with the Greens and Shooters and Fishers party opposed to the move. The Christian Democrat leader Fred Nile has previously indicated that he did not support the move, but has historically supported Coalition legislation. Current polling trends suggest that Nile’s party will hold the balance of power with two seats. Nile wants a public inquiry into privatisation, and said he wanted the government to raise the legal drinking age to 21.
The Coalition has won nine seats in the upper house. It needs one more to gain control of both houses, but the Christian Democrats are favourites to win that contested seat. Baird is confident he will have the numbers.
“As I’ve been advised, it’s looking pretty positive. So that would be a great thing. That would enable us to negotiate directly, to get on with the plan we have,” he said of the privatisation proposal.
“We’ve made the commitment on the plan we’ve put forward. What we’ll see over the coming weeks and months is that scare campaign is unfounded.” Labor has been accused of xenophobia over its election ad campaign saying state assets could fall into Chinese hands if the Coalition won.
“They cannot in all conscience suggest that engaging in the sort of xenophobia they engaged in, that it was a clean fight,” the federal treasurer, Joe Hockey, said on Sunday. “The base politics of protest which Labor has embraced, and they think is a formula for government, has been rejected by the people of New South Wales, and it will be rejected by the people of Australia at the next election, because Bill Shorten is offering nothing. He’s a man with no principles and he is offering nothing – all he is offering is fear, and that is unacceptable.”
The federal assistant education minister Simon Birmingham said Labor had run a fear campaign that amounted to “scare mongering”.
“[There was] basically a tinge of racism to the Labor campaign against the Mike Baird plans for the future and I’m very, very pleased that New South Wales, despite some concerns about the policies, embraced the reform,” Birmingham told Sky News on Monday.
Labor senator Doug Cameron said that was “nonsense”.
“I think it’s a proper position if state-owned enterprises are going to take over our utilities in this country then we should have a debate about that. We should have a discussion. There will be different points of view. That’s not racism. That’s not xenophobia. That is about having a proper debate,” he told Sky News.
Foley has refused to back away from the comments.
Tony Abbott said the result showed that Baird, who took over as premier from Barry O’Farrell less than a year ago, was running “a highly competent government”.
“It also shows that people reject Labor’s scares,” the prime minister told reporters in Tasmania on Monday. “You look at the last few elections in this country, the South Australian election, the Victorian election, the Queensland election, the NSW election, all the Labor party has to offer is one long scare campaign.
“In this country the Coalition are the builders, Labor are the wreckers and I think the lessons from the NSW election are that Bill Shorten has got to start getting positive,” he said.
Foley, who took the reins of the Labor party only in January, said he was happy with the swing towards the party, and what that meant for his career.
“This election was a launching pad for my leadership, and I’m entitled to say we have lift-off,” he said. He said former federal Labor minister Martin Ferguson had “publicly sabotaged” the ALP campaign by appearing in a Coalition ad supporting its privatisation plans.
“I’m not interested in a witchhunt. I was disappointed at Martin Ferguson’s intervention in the NSW campaign,” Foley said.
Baird will make an announcement on the new cabinet in the coming days.
