When the Labor leader, Chris Minns, spoke to the Guardian for a piece back in January, the aspiring New South Wales premier pushed back on the notion he had run an uninspiring campaign.
Minns has been criticised throughout his leadership for a lack of ambition. The party refused to back the Coalition’s ambitious push for gambling reform and had stuck to a narrow election platform focused on essential services and public sector wages, as it also attacked the government for its record on privatisation.
But in that conversation back in January, Minns made the point that the campaign’s focus was, he believed, a reflection of what voters wanted.
“My sense is, this is what the public is saying and we either say, no, you’re wrong and we’re going to try and jam you up with what we think the election should be about or … we address that,” he told the Guardian at the time.
On Saturday night, he was vindicated. Dominic Perrottet was keen to project a big vision for the state, pushing for stamp duty reforms and the so-called “Kids Future Fund” along with his gambling platform.
But the baggage of 12 years in government, the retirement of several high profile MPs and the continuing internal dysfunction of the Liberal party meant he was running on a handicap.
The party had put on a brave face in the lead-up to the poll, but most conceded that a fourth term in government was unlikely.
Hopes that Labor would be forced into a minority government faded quickly as the swings in safe Liberal seats such as South Coast became clear.
As the treasurer, Matt Kean, said early on during the ABC broadcast on Saturday, the government was always going to be “climbing Mount Everest”.
But Labor also deserves credit for understanding the mood of voters. While Perrottet campaigned in poetry, Minns was all prose all the time.
By putting a laser-like focus on issues such as tolls, wages, hospitals and schools, Labor made the election about the mortgage belt voters who would decide it. It has proven to be the correct approach.
As Labor’s deputy leader and incoming deputy premier, Prue Car, said from the party’s function in Brighton-Le-Sands on Saturday night, the party had campaigned on “the issues people are concerned about” in Sydney’s west.
It was those seats – where voters abandoned Labor 12 years ago in the 2011 electoral wipeout – which returned the party to government.
Gains in seats such as Riverstone, Camden, Ryde, Penrith and East Hills demonstrate the party picked the mood correctly.
The election creates new questions for the Coalition. While it was not quite the teal wave of the last federal poll, the Liberals lost the seat of Wakehurst to an independent (though not one associated with Climate 200) and appeared in severe danger of losing Gladys Berejiklian’s former seat of Willoughby to another. The seat of Pittwater on the Northern Beaches was also too close to call.
How then to win back the support both of the east and west of Sydney without having to alienate one or the other and will it be Kean – the flag-bearer for the moderates – who leads them post election, or a more conservative option?
For Labor, now begins the task of actually governing. It faces difficult decisions on a series of immediate energy issues including the Eraring coal-fired power station and the Narrabri gas pipeline, while also having to tackle some of its key election promises – such as bringing in thousands of new nurses, teachers and paramedics.
For now though, the party can bask in a return to government that even 18 months ago seemed unlikely. As Minns said in his victory speech: “New South Wales Labor is back and ready to govern.”
