The New South Wales state election is upon us and before you groan with boredom at the thought of what lies ahead, think again.
We start this race to March 28 with the seemingly popular Liberal government of Mike Baird leading Labor by around 53-47, depending on the poll.
There will be a lot of glossy focus on the leaders. We have a very boy-next-door surfing premier who sits to the left of his federal counterpart Tony Abbott. We have a National party leader, Troy Grant, who can speak an Indigenous language. We have a Labor leader, Luke Foley, who worked in a call centre raising money for guide dogs and selling wine before rising to the top of the Labor party.
But in the middle of this room is the elephant known as the Independent Commission Against Corruption.
This is the standing royal commission which has brought the major parties in this state to their knees on issues of political donations and inappropriate influence.
So far, Icac has brought about the resignation of the former premier Barry O’Farrell, caused 10 Liberal members to resign or stand aside and uncovered the messy web of corruption spun by former Labor ministers Eddie Obeid and Ian Macdonald.
While no one seems to want to talk about the Icac legacy – given it would create a sort of Mutually Assured Destruction for the major parties – nor has either state party shown much appetite for reform.
On most measures, Baird looks set for a win but remember because of the distribution of votes – which sees Liberal voters concentrated in particular seats – the Coalition needs more than a pure majority of 50% to get across the line. And Baird has been brave enough to take a starkly different policy (on privatisation) to the electorate ahead of the election.
The key here is that after Queensland, no parties, analysts or commentators are prepared to predict a shoe-in for Mike Baird. The fact that this supposedly predictable election is not predictable, is precisely what makes it interesting.
These are the issues you will hear a lot more about over the coming weeks. So be warned, as the voters focus on the upcoming poll, it could be anything but boring.
Baird: Mr Nice Guy, friend and neighbour of Tony Abbott
No modern party can escape personality politics.
The all pervading commentary around this election has centred on Mike Baird as professional nice guy. The Liberal party is playing up this angle, making use of his image through social media, such as the video of him reading mean tweets. But it is worth remembering Baird was treasurer under the last winning premier, Barry O’Farrell, and this is his first real election test.
It is also the first test of his opponent Luke Foley, who replaced former leader John Robertson less than three months ago.
The other personality in the mix is Tony Abbott. By coincidence, Baird and Abbott’s state and federal electorates overlap. They are friends, surfers and strong Christians. But their approaches depart on softer issues such as refugees, where Baird was critical of Australia’s treatment of asylum seekers. Baird recently suggested Australia, as the lucky country, should “open our arms to those around the world who are much less fortunate than us”. The premier presents a different badging of the Liberal party, which is historically consistent with state and federal divisions of the party in past decades. The state Liberal party been softer than the more conservative federal party since the Howard government.
Widespread polling shows the prime minister is on the nose with voters, a feature particularly evident during the Queensland election campaign, when he did not appear with former premier Campbell Newman. After the Prince Philip knighthood on January 26, Queensland’s LNP made it clear they were absolutely capable of carrying on without the prime minister. However, Abbott’s absence then became an issue in itself, blowing a hole in the state campaign for at least a week.
But in Abbott’s own state, he could hardly be a no-show, so expect to see enough appearances to make the Baird-Abbott nexus unremarkable. Abbott has attended a number of press conferences with Baird, including earlier this week at the beginning of construction of WestConnex. Abbott, who declared in 2013 he wanted to be the infrastructure prime minister, predicted this week the WestConnex would have people “singing in their cars”.
Everyone will be watching for an Abbott factor in the NSW election, not least of which are his own backbench at a federal level. Already, Labor is running a line that that if voters support Luke Foley, they could get “two for one”. That is, by knocking off a relatively safe premier like Mike Baird, the pressure would probably be enough to knock off Tony Abbott by forcing a federal leadership spill.
On the flip side, well, the electorate is still trying to pick Luke Foley out of a line up.
Unusually for a state Labor leader, Foley is from the left of the Labor party and rose through the ranks to become assistant general secretary of NSW Labor. He became a Labor member of the upper house in 2010, just before the 2011 election, replacing Ian MacDonald who has since been found corrupt by the Independent Commission Against Corruption. In opposition, Foley has held more shadow ministries than had hot breakfasts, as well as leader of the opposition in the upper house. In January it was announced the 44-year-old would lead the party from the upper house and run for the northern Sydney lower house seat of Auburn in this year’s election.
In normal circumstances, Baird would romp home but then, his major policy platform involves ...
Poles and wires: electricity privatisation
Privatisation is the most visible issue at this election. The premier, Mike Baird, is staking his all on the policy, famously declaring “there is no Plan B”.
It works like this. The government is planning to sell off 49% of the electricity distribution network infrastructure, which as a figure, looks pretty reassuring. But this includes 100% of high voltage transmission operator Transgrid plus 50% of Ausgrid and Endeavour Energy which provides power to Sydney and the major population centres in Newcastle, the Illawarra, the Blue Mountains and Hunter.
Apparently at the insistence of the Nationals, Essential Energy, which distributes in rural and regional areas, is not to be sold. Had it been touched, there would have been an electoral bloodbath in rural areas, where privatisation meets its highest voter opposition.
Labor opposes the sale, and the issue has galvanised the union movement, off the back of highly effective grassroots campaigning strategies in Victoria and Queensland. Union members, primarily the Electrical Trades Union but also other members such as nurses, firefighters and teachers, have been door knocking in marginal seats to talk to voters about the issues. The anti-privatisation campaign says the sell off will lead to higher electricity prices, local job losses, a less reliable network and the loss of current annual government profits of $1.7bn.
In the ABC’s Vote Compass survey of 27,000 voters found 55% disagreed with Baird’s plan while 21% supported it.
Economists, meanwhile, cannot agree on the wisdom of the sale.
Some, such as the Grattan Institute’s Tony Wood, (who worked at Origin Energy) and was an advisor for the Garnaut climate review, have said prices are likely to come down and that it is unlikely to cause any change to the electricity network operations. Wood said “provided it is a good sale”, it should generate more sale profits for NSW than ongoing operating profits.
Others, like economics professor John Quiggan believe it will cause an economic loss to NSW and described the plan as combining the worst features of previous of past Australian privatisations.
The key point is it is will give the Baird government a war chest with which to promise a whole lot of infrastructure. The sweetener is the $20bn fund raised by the sale which will be used for …
Infrastructure: state of disrepair
Anyone who has been stuck in Sydney road or commuter gridlock will agree the state has suffered from a lack of critical infrastructure and former NSW premier Nick Greiner’s State Infrastructure Strategy report confirmed it. Greiner, as chair of Infrastructure NSW, recommended a $20bn building program over 20 years. That was in 2012.
By happy coincidence, $20bn is also the price that has been put on the sale of poles and wires. Thus with every solution comes a solution. The report was updated in 2014 and that informed the government’s Rebuilding NSW which essentially details how the $20bn from electricity privatisation will be spent. It includes:
- An additional $1.1bn to invest in the northern and southern extensions to WestConnex along with the Western Harbour Tunnel
- An extra $7bn for Sydney Rapid Transit, to fully fund a second harbour rail crossing
- $2bn for schools and hospitals
- $4.1bn for regional transport
- $1bn for regional water security
- $300m for regional tourism and the environment
- More funds to sports and cultural infrastructure, up from $500m to $1.2bn
Labor is promising half the package, amounting to $10bn worth of infrastructure.
To pay for it, Labor will wind back promised stamp duty tax cuts for business (worth $5.1bn over ten years) and delay the projects they do not prioritise, such as putting off the second Sydney harbour tunnel. They will also add the $2bn Baird set aside to underwrite electricity privatisation and $2.9bn of uncommitted money from the existing infrastructure fund. Their spending will include:
- $3bn for health and education infrastructure, including funding for hospitals, schools and TAFE
- $2bn for urban and regional road upgrades
- $1.5bn on growth infrastructure for western Sydney
- $1.5bn for infrastructure for regional and rural NSW
- $1bn for upgrades to the passenger rail network
- $950m for sporting stadiums, cultural institutions, tourism and environmental infrastructure
This means much more in Labor heartlands and major populations centres of western Sydney, less so in rural and regional areas. This is surprising, given the challenge to National party candidates from the independents, Greens and the ALP, as a result of...
Coal seam gas and mining issues
The Baird government is facing strong opposition in a number of seats on the north coast and west of the divide as a result of land usage issues around mining and coal seam gas. Effective campaigning by the Lock the Gate alliance has drawn landholders and the environment movement to campaign against Liberal and National party members. This is in spite of the fact that the former Labor government issued the original exploration licences.
On paper, National party members hold the seats of Ballina, Lismore and Tweed by large margins. But increasing concern over land usage has engaged conservative voters like none other and in local communities, independent, Green and Labor MPs are suddenly getting a second look.
In Tamworth, for example, independent Peter Draper is challenging sitting National MP Kevin Anderson over the NSW government approval of the massive open-cut coalmine proposed by Chinese state-owned Shenhua. It’s footprint sits on the edge of the Liverpool Plains foodbowl. The 2GB broadcaster Alan Jones, whose intervention in the Queensland election became an ongoing irritant for the deposed Newman government, is pushing equally hard in the NSW election and particularly on the Shenhua mine. ABC election analyst Antony Green has Anderson’s margin on 6.8% and the state of the preference flows could place Draper – a former sitting member until 2011 – back in contention.
In Lismore, the seat which contains the old Metgasco gas licence, Thomas George has taken a lot of flack for the NSW government’s decisions. Eventually, the coalition suspended the drilling licence in May last year but Labor and the Greens are both running hard in the seat - likewise in the neighbouring electorates of Tweed and Ballina. In the latter seat, the long standing sitting MP Don Page is retiring.
Landholders celebrated the decision but their “near death” experience has led them to look west to the Liverpool Plains and south to the village of Bulga, effected by the Mount Thorley-Warkworth coal mine. The NSW Planning Assessment recently recommended the mine extension could go ahead and suggested the entire village of Bulga - 350 people - could be relocated to resolve the issues. Landholders and environmentalists from other regions have fallen in to support the people of Bulga. In this way, mining and coal seam gas issues have mobilised support for anti-mining candidates across the state.
A highly coordinated campaign, extensively shared throughout social media by landholders and others, is pushing the mining/CSG issue ahead of the state election. While there are big margins to scale for outsider candidates, it is not out of the realms of possibilities that some safe coalition seats may fall. The issue will also have some impact in the …
The upper house and minor parties
The Coalition has needed the cross bench support to get anything through the NSW upper house since the last election unless the government had Labor support. As it stands, there are 12 members each for Liberals and Labor, seven Nationals, five Greens and two each for the Shooters and Fishers and the Christian Democrat party (CDP). As a result, the most likely deals involved the Baird government winning over the Shooters and Fishers and the CDP.
The Baird goal would be to win back the upper house majority but given a swing against the Coalition is almost inevitable following the high watermark at the last election, that outcome is not likely. The question is about how many crossbenchers any government has to deal with.
Half the upper house – 21 members – are up for re-election and there are a range of minor parties and independents in the mix. Already, they were invited by the so-called preference whisperer Glenn Druery to a meeting designed to inform them how to maximise their chances. Those attending included potential candidates including the Liberal Democrats campaigning as the Outdoor Recreation party, the Building Australia party, the No Land Tax party, the Animal Justice party, the Democrats, the Australian Motorists, the Shooters and Fishers, the Ungrouped Independents and the Group of Independents.
Druery’s advice was that minors and independents would have the best strategic chance if they did not preference the Coalition or the Greens in how to vote literature. Run dead, he said. Incidentally, Labor is telling independents and minor candidates the same message. Druery says he is not working for Labor.
The final list of candidates will become clear by the end of this week after nominations close.
The most likely scenario is that any government will have to deal with more minor parties in the upper house, possibly replicating Tony Abbott’s problems in the senate.
