The final domino in mainland state politics has fallen, with Labor’s Chris Minns winning the NSW election over the weekend — bad news if you’re a gambling reform advocate; terrible news if you’re a Liberal.
So how have the conservative party and its media allies been reacting? Predictably well.
This does not reflect the will of the people
“We don’t want Labor! Now we’ve got Labor! Thanks, Liberals. That’s what you’ve given us. Thanks, Matt Kean. Thanks, Dominic Perrottet. You’ve given us a Labor government! We don’t want a Labor government. That is not what the people of NSW want,” said Rowan Dean (who would presumably be yelling this whether on camera or not) on Sky News’ Outsiders, which is increasingly resembling a hard-right primal scream therapy session.
He quickly added a touch of nuance to his argument, demonstrating an admirable understanding of psephology to point out: “OK, they might have voted for it …”
It’s the woke wot lost it
Dean’s contention that it was the amorphous spectre of “woke” that smothered the Liberal Party’s electoral chances is one that pundits have returned to with diminishing energy and returns at pretty much every electoral catastrophe the Liberals have faced in the past five years.
“You can’t chase the Greens and the teals and the Labor Party to the left, try and replicate their policies — you actually have to have some points of difference,” echoed Sky News host Chris Kenny.
Former federal Nationals leader Barnaby Joyce also blamed the loss on former treasurer and moderate-faction leader Kean, arguing his relatively progressive stance on issues such as his “green inflection” climate change “hurt” the Coalition.
Ditto former Queensland senator and inevitable Sky News host Amanda Stoker, who asked: “How many elections will it take for a chunk of people in the party I so love to realise that the path forward doesn’t consist of pretending to be the Diet Coke version of Labor or the Greens?”
This analysis, as it has in the past, misses an important detail. Despite polling predictions by unnamed “industry bodies” leaked to Sky during the campaign — regarding furious Liberal voters abandoning the party and heading to the right — parties such as One Nation had a very modest time of it over the weekend.
We’re all trying to find the guy who did this
A special mention to retiring senior minister David Elliott who made a similar argument to those above, about how chasing the teals voters had cost the Coalition “heartland” votes. Yep, that David Elliott is pretty keen to get to the bottom of what might have made it difficult for the Liberals to stay in power.
Nothing to see here!
John Howard, former Liberal prime minister and emissary from the before times (the decade where we had one prime minister preceding the decade where we had six), had a far more chill take. In The Australian, Howard simply warned against the Coalition descending into a “woe is us” mentality.
“After 12 years it is hard to stay in office, I can tell you. That is the nature of life, no matter who is in charge,” he said, which is fair enough. He further added that Labor’s control of Australia’s mainland was “not a reflection of a coherent nationwide policy movement” and that “attempts to suggest it was because of this or that stance on something is wrong”. Which seems a bit more of a stretch.
