The so-called “super Saturday” byelection results may be bad for the New South Wales government, but they are not surprising.
While the full results won’t be known for weeks thanks to an increase in postal voting, it was clear by Saturday evening that the government had lost Bega for the first time since the seat was created in the 1980s.
In Willoughby on Sydney’s lower northern shore it appears that only the ultra-wide margin established by Gladys Berejiklian saved the government from what would have been an embarrassing loss to independent Larissa Penn.
No incumbent government wants to face byelections, of course, and swings were always likely given the loss of Berejiklian as well as two popular local MPs in Andrew Constance in Bega and John Barilaro in Monaro.
But whatever expectation management was being played in the lead-up to the vote, the loss of Bega and the sheer size of the swing so far in Willoughby is a clear warning sign to a government that has rarely appeared so vulnerable during its decade in power.
For NSW premier Dominic Perrottet, the results are a troubling reflection of how voters have responded to his leadership since he took over in October. What has become increasingly clear is that his foot-to-the-floor approach to “living with the virus” has cost him electorally.
In some ways, that’s unfair. Perrottet might have been the first and loudest proponent of a path to Covid normalcy, but other premiers and prime minister Scott Morrison have eagerly gotten in line behind him since.
Given the clear electoral plus for governments which faced elections during the pandemic in Australia, Perrottet showed a level of bravery in pushing not just NSW but Australia to move beyond the unrealistic Covid-zero narrative and into the world “not as we want it to be but as it is”, as he likes to say.
But the manner in which he did it, briefly sidelining the immensely popular chief health officer Dr Kerry Chant and appearing not to heed health advice about Omicron’s transmissibility in the early days of the outbreak, have created an impression with voters which will be difficult to shake.
Perrottet still has 12 months to win over sceptical voters before the general election, and he has tried hard to modify his tone in recent weeks for example, by placing greater emphasis on the challenges facing health workers.
But first impressions are hard to shake, and decisions made in the early days of his leadership amid the Omicron surge continue to dog him.
As recently as Friday the head of Australia’s peak aged care body linked Perrottet’s decision to lift Covid restrictions on 15 December to the deaths of hundreds of aged care residents, while the secretary of the nurses union labelled Perrottet “disrespectful and tin-eared” over his insistence during the outbreak that the hospital system was handling the surge in cases.
Add to that the general sense that Perrottet is leading a government that after 11 years in power is beginning to show its wear.
Just this week the government received a series of extraordinary lashings from the state’s auditor general over a dodgy grants program and the treasury department’s withholding of key information associated with a controversial $40bn rail corporation set up to inflate the government’s bottom line.
For Labor and leader Chris Minns, the gain in Bega and swing in Monaro (Labor did not contest Willoughby) will be a boon for a party that appears finally to be finding its feet after a decade in the wilderness. Remember it was less than a year ago that former leader Jodi McKay resigned after a dismal showing in the Upper Hunter byelection.
It’s not all good news, however. The government held its ground in McKay’s former seat of Strathfield in Sydney’s west, a result some in the Liberal Party are hoping shows Perrottet is more popular in the areas hardest-hit by the Covid-19 lockdowns he vowed to do away with.
But when parliament resumes on Tuesday there’s no doubt it will be Labor with their tails up, and the sight of hundreds of nurses taking part in the first statewide strike action in almost a decade over pay and conditions will not help the government’s cause.
If the optics of an electoral drubbing three months after taking the top job aren’t bad enough, Perrottet also has a legislative problem on his hands.
The government has effectively been in minority since early last year, after two MPs were sidelined over separate scandals. Those two MPs have remained an electoral buffer inside the parliament, continuing to vote with the government, but the loss of Bega means Perrottet no longer has any room for error.
Under Berejiklian the government struck an informal agreement with crossbench independents Alex Greenwich, Greg Piper and, later, Joe McGirr.
Nothing was ever signed and their support on contentious legislation wasn’t guaranteed, but it had the practical effect of meaning they sided with the government more often than not.
But the agreement was a personal one between the crossbenchers and Berejiklian. After Perrottet took power in October, the crossbenchers might have expected a similar request to come from the new premier.
It still hasn’t, though. Perrottet met with the three independents as recently as Thursday and it’s understood the subject came up only in the context of reports the government has been courting the Shooters, Fishers and Farmers party for support. No request was made of the independents, though.
After the result in Bega began to trickle through, Perrottet remained publicly bullish, pointing to the government’s stronger-than-expected showing in Strathfield, and vowing to “win back your vote and win back your trust”.
How he does that will be fascinating to watch.
