NSW premier-elect Chris Minns ran a small-target campaign but appears to have won big in Saturday’s election.
Labor is on track to form a majority government, picking up at least nine seats from the Coalition and looking likely to get the 47 required to govern in its own right.
It’s the third time since World War II that NSW Labor has managed to go from opposition to government, and the victory comes after 12 years in opposition.
Minns took the stage at Novotel in Brighton-Le-Sands to thank his supporters for securing the win.
“It’s undeniably the case that this election campaign perhaps uniquely was a model of respect and civility and neither party took the low road,” Minns told the crowd.
“Neither political party took the low blow. And I think it can be a model for the way democracy is done right across this country.
“Now, I can’t say that every election campaign in the future will be conducted the same way. But from now on, no one will be able to say that it can’t be.”
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, who welcomed Minns on stage, told the Labor Party function the premier-elect represented the party at its best.
“Friends, tonight the people of NSW have come together to choose a better future,” Albanese said.
“I have had the very good fortune of knowing Chris for many, many years. And what I know, without doubt, is that he embodies all that is best about the Australian Labor Party”.
Dominic Perrottet called Minns to congratulate him shortly after 9pm, and then left his house in his electorate of Epping to travel to the Liberal Party’s election function at Sydney’s Hilton hotel.
“I believe this election was truly a race to the top, and a genuine battle of ideas — that’s when politics is at its best,” Perrottet told his party faithful, standing beside his wife Helen.
“That’s due to Chris Minns and the way that he’s carried himself throughout his campaign. And that’s why I truly believe and have no doubt that he will make a fine premier.
“I ask everyone across NSW, whatever your political persuasion, to get behind Minns.”
Labor ran a campaign focused on reforming education and health care, seeking to improve access to both and aiming to make salaries for workers in those industries more competitive.
There were promises to curb toll costs in Sydney, aimed at cutting the cost of living and wooing voters in the city’s west.
It appears to have worked: the must-have seats of Parramatta and Penrith were among the ones that were projected to fall to Labor at the time of writing.
Isn’t it good to live in a country where elections can be held freely, independently, professionally and in good faith?………………
………..where the worst a loser is liable to do is deliver a snide remark in their concession speech, not invite their followers to insurrection.
Where voters of a different stripe don’t think that their opponents are evil personified.
Where counting proceeds quickly, quietly and without election workers requiring armed escorts going home after work.
Where queuing voters are free to consume cool drinks and democracy sausage without fear of breaking the law.
Where someone is sure to offer an aged voter a lift down to the local school voting station without being arrested.
Where the only thing that is required in order to vote is being registered and knowing your address.
And yet some dwellers in an alternate universe want to adopt all things American as being self-evidently superior.
Well Yankees, read ’em and weep, because your corrupt, cash-driven voting system is no more democratic than Putin’s Russia, or Erdogan’s Turkey and the outcomes for your people are a poor shadow of the “socialist” countries of Europe you despise so much.
Look in the mirror some time.
Break your heart.
Overall it was a very good LNP time in office. From Baird (2014) especially on they conceived an incredibly ambitious infrastructure program which was well costed and delivered with discipline and flair. Sydney is in infinitely better shape than it was at the start of this period of excellent governance. Highlights have been the transport and health infrastructure programs, its nationally-influential leadership on climate change consensus, the structural modernisation of State government itself and some very smart fiscal management, not least the Generations Wealth Fund. This last decade has also produced some of the most competent and decent ministers Australia has seen, and until recently the NSW LNP has been improbably united, outwardly focussed and disciplined, given the split at the national level.
Lowlights have been some of the stupider neoliberal fiscal hypocrisies/blunders, which have often escaped a lot of attention but have created utterly unnecessary longterm structural headaches. From silly ‘little’ things like flogging off the land title office, to the long-term rent-seeker ripoffs like the restrictive ports deeds settlement which will continue to cripple regional productivity, and plenty of other similar rentseeking grifts, some of the early PPP screw-ups and toll contractual stuff. That iCare has yet to truly blow up in Perrotet’s face continues to mystify, and all the other pork-barrel/corruption stuff that’s been obvious for a few years will only now intensify in the bloodletting.
But it was a pretty good period of government indeed. Not that many hereabouts will concede them much. A lot of what the NSW LNP achieved since 2011 holds no real interest to the Crikey readership. But the Minns government will change/challenge very, very little of the solid legacy they’ll inherit. A Labor majority would be a very good outcome for the state. More focus on service delivery and fairness/staffing of all the new hospitals and schools, a clean out of the rent seekers that accumulate over multiple terms, an injection of talent and energy…people like Minns, Pru Car, Jihab Dib, Jo Hayden etc are very much in the Hazard, Kean, Constance, Baird mould. They’ll be decent and diligent ministers and you’d think this could be the start of another period of good and stable government. it does depend a lot on their resistance to old Labor habits but I think that’s history now.
Perrotet’s speech was terrific. So was Minns’s. It was a dull but as both commended, a decent campaign. But you do worry about the LNP’s future now. Everywhere. Or I do, anyway. The NSW model was as Rundle wrote very perceptively at least a viable pathway ahead for Australian non-left/progressive politics, and the voters clearly didn’t buy it. You soft pap progs are all absolutely entitled to celebrate but I’m less sure the the left/progressive red (and teal) wave across the mainland is as either left or as progressive as you think. The polarisation in the country is real and a lot of it is still invisible, and the NSW LNP in government was in fact a rare remaining brake/mitigation of that. Those of you salivating at the imminent death of Menzies’ broad church should be careful what you wish for. Especially as this victory, like Albo’s, came via a ‘small target’ approach, but knowing that that ruling ‘sea of red’ will now have to lead us through an economic catastrophe. The near-future might demand big, bold, proactive ‘ideas’ leaders, not tip-toeing technocrats.
Crikey’s coverage of the NSW election has been really great. Thanks for that. Now it’s definitely time for me to shut up.
I presume you are living in a different NSW from the rest of us.
Your first paragraph displays a truly Trumpian disconnect from reality, where black is white and up is down.
“Highlights have been the transport and health infrastructure programs”
Perhaps you haven’t noticed, but both are falling apart.
“some very smart fiscal management”
Otherwise known as cooking the books or financial engineering. The TAHE fiasco is yet to hit the budget, but there is a $20 BILLION loss hiding there, courtesy of Perrottet as Treasurer.
“This last decade has also produced some of the most competent and decent ministers Australia has seen”
Apart from a marginally acceptable Matt Kean, name ONE who has not been a walking disaster.
From “Baby-Face” Baird castrating the ICAC purely for political payback, to St. Gladys wilting under the spotlight, this has been the most secretive, scandal-ridden, corrupt government in NSW since the days of the Rum Corps.
Their war-cries were “Commercial-in-Confidence” and “Cabinet-in-Confidence” for absolutely ANYTHING the voters were entitled to know.
I conclude that you do not in fact, believe half the nonsense you spout.
You merely require constant attention and justification for a sad and meaningless existence, by seeing your name in print.
I fear Leonardo described you most aptly…………………
“Some there are who are nothing else than a passage for food and augmentors of excrement and fillers of privies, because through them no other things in the world, nor any good effects are produced, since nothing but full privies results from them”
no i was always in good faith in my comments at crikey – said what I think, think what I said, always open about who i am..
Yes. Who can be the most anodyne, boring, uninspiring candidate and have similar policy platform for NSW in the election of 2023? This was not the nicest state election but the most boring, cynical and uninspiring and it is run by politicians and parties who have such an unambitious program for this state.
I would like to claim a small credit for saying that whatever the result, Minns wouldn’t lose his seat and would be returned with an increased majority. Whoever was the journalist that posed this question or hope for a headline a la Derryn Hinch, should have been sacked. What a dingus. Of all the issues he could have dealt with – education, health, public transport, roads, tolls. No. Let’s invent a furphy. Why not place bets on what happens next time if the Libs win but Matt Kean loses his seat to a teal and we get Dom Perrignon back. Or if Dom loses to Labor what then. It’ll be like 1976-1984 all over again and I would love that. What about the next federal election. I’ll make a grand prediction. I’ll put a bet on that Dutton loses his seat of Dickson, if he is still the leader, even if he is not the leader, I bet Dutton loses Dickson and whoever is leader of the Libs then, Dutton or otherwise, will face a challenge and the new leader will be the mouth from the Shire, in an attempt for a Lazarus with a triple bypass – SCOMO baby!! That’s right. Dutton’s seat is marginal, 2% is his margin. Scomo’s is about 10% from memory. Fraudenberg is out, I’d love to see “well done” Angus as leader and even he may not retain Hume. Remember you heard it first here on Crikey by Metal Guru.