Sometimes defeat can come with small victories. In his NSW election concession speech, defeated Liberal-National Coalition Premier Dominic Perrottet remarked the campaign had been a “race to the top”. Voters seemed to agree. Perrottet’s opponent, Labor’s Chris Minns, brought the conciliatory tone he maintained as opposition leader into the campaign.
Combative politics, in NSW at least, might be a thing of the past. Minns went further, noting this campaign had set a standard against which Australian federal and state politics could be judged. That will largely depend on his ability to maintain a constructive tenor, as premier, in a parliamentary arena dubbed the “bear pit”.
