After a frenetic debate between the NSW premier and the man who wants his job, questions persist about the major parties’ signature policies nine days out from the poll.
Labor Leader Chris Minns ducked from guaranteeing teachers, police officers and nurses bigger pay packets under his scrapped wage cap plan.
Mr Minns stopped short of promising them a pay rise above the coalition’s limit of three per cent per year if Labor wins the March 25 election.
“If we sit down and we’ve got strict economic principles in place, then we’re happy to negotiate in relation to that,” Mr Minns said at a Nine News debate on Wednesday.
Premier Dominic Perrottet acknowledged he could not promise to bring down the soaring cost of groceries and was unable to put a dollar figure on the value of his own plan to “drive down grocery costs” with a supply chain commissioner.
He said supply chain obstacles had caused grocery prices to surge and curbing those would bring prices down.
“If we can get produce from port to plate faster, working with the industry, that will put downward pressure on grocery prices.”
On the Central Coast, disendorsed Liberal candidate Matt Squires went rogue, releasing a statement on Wednesday urging people in the electorate to vote for him.
Mr Squires was dumped as the Liberal Party’s candidate for Wyong on Tuesday over social media posts that included homophobic, Islamophobic and anti-vaccination comments.
He was quickly disendorsed by the NSW Liberal Party, with the premier saying he supported the move.
With candidate names already printed on ballot papers, Mr Squires will still appear on the Wyong ballot paper and could be elected to the lower house.
“For far too long now the people of my electorate, Wyong, have been intimidated into censoring their personally held convictions,” Mr Squires said on Wednesday.
Election analyst Kevin Bonham said Mr Squires appeared to be running for election despite his disendorsement, in a similar move to Pauline Hanson’s 1996 campaign.
Ms Hanson was elected as an independent to a federal seat, despite having been dumped by the Liberals.
However Mr Bonham told AAP the One Nation leader’s achievement was likely a one-off, and would not be replicated in Wyong.
“There have been a lot of these cases and Ms Hanson is the only one who has ever got elected to my knowledge,” he said.
Mr Squires did not respond to questions from AAP.
– AAP
