The scenario of the federal Liberal chaos ending Australia’s best government, the NSW Liberal government of Gladys Berejiklian, has moved from nightmare to likelihood as the Liberals’ collapse into open civil war moved to centre stage following Malcolm Turnbull’s spectacular intervention over the last 24 hours.
Two separate polls on the weekend — one from Galaxy, one from Reachtel — had the NSW Coalition trailing NSW Labor on a 2PP basis. The polls had wildly different primary vote levels, and quite different preferred premier outcomes, but the best case scenario for the Liberals has new Labor leader Michael Daley on level pegging with Berejiklian as preferred premier.
That might reflect a honeymoon period for Daley — or perhaps simply relief that Luke Foley is gone from politics — but with the country about to clock off for summer and the election in March, the honeymoon could carry Daley all the way to victory. Daley has never led an election campaign before — but nor has Berejiklian. And with Scott Morrison apparently determined to save the far right’s Craig Kelly from his own party members, things aren’t going to get better any time soon for the premier.
When NSW Legislative Councillor Peter Phelps suggested weeks ago that the federal Libs should bolt to an election and get their electoral destruction out of the way so that Victorian and NSW Liberals could have a fair fight in their respective elections, it was dismissed as another of Phelpsy’s stirrings. Turns out, none other than Malcolm Turnbull — not exactly an ideological fellow-traveller of the conservative Dr Phelps — agrees. Turnbull had planned — with the agreement of then-treasurer Scott Morrison, no less — to go the polls in early March, ahead of the NSW election, in order to give Berejiklian clear air.
Turnbull evidently feels even more strongly on that point now, telling the ABC this morning:
There is a lot of people in NSW, a lot of NSW Liberals, who believe it would be in the party’s interest for the federal government to go to an election before the NSW government set an election date of March 23 so that Gladys Berejiklian, who is leading an outstanding government of real and considerable achievement, can go to the polls and judged on her record rather than being hit by the brand damage that arose from the very destructive, pointless, shameful leadership change in Canberra on the 24th of August.
Incidentally, he might have added the constant stupidity since then, including his own pot-stirring (even if it has normally been in response to reactionary provocation).
Morrison’s desire to cling on to power for a couple more months and go to the polls in May will ensure that NSW voters go to the state poll in March with baseball bats at the ready. The result may well be the destruction of a government that has delivered more for NSW than any since Nick Greiner ended the torpid, corrupt Labor years and brought Sydney into the late-20th century.
Worse, the deeply inexperienced, development-phobic and corrupt NSW Labor Party would be back in charge just eight years after being ousted amid scandal after scandal. The consequences for the country’s biggest economy and only global city could be diabolical.
Whatever their anger about Turnbull’s intervention, federal Liberals now face a stark choice: hold on and let Berejiklian take the fall for their own spectacular failures, or maximise her chances of holding off a party that would be disastrous for NSW and the country. Turnbull’s plan was the right one. The federal Liberals must bring this shambolic circus to an end sooner rather than later. Have their civil war and moderate-versus-reactionary bloodbath in opposition, where it can’t distract from the work of government. And let Berejiklian and her team get on with earning a richly deserved third term. The fate of one third of the Australian economy depends on it.
Problem is, the federal Liberals are so self-obsessed and so clueless that such common sense appears beyond them.
How will the NSW Libs fare with a May federal election? Send us your comments and responses: boss@crikey.com.au.
If Berejiklian’s NSW government is Australia’s ‘best government’, I despair. The NSW Planning department is riddled with corruption around coal licences; developers are destroying the character of Sydney and many other places; draconian anti-protest laws mean people like the Knitting Nannas risk jail or colossal fines for peaceful protest; grossly extravagant sports stadiums are to be constructed while rural and regional communities are deprived of basic government services, transport and health facilities.
Well, the clickbait Glad is the BESTEST Premier!! worked…here I am.
I list the privatisations, leading to higher costs and lower services.
An anti-nature assault as not seen for decades – vegetation clearing opening up (nicely in time for the dust storm), dam raising attacking World Heritage, regressive loosening of harvesting rules for State Forests (eg no longer required to leave replacement habitat trees, condemning hollow-dependent fauna to extinction when the pitiful few habitat trees left inevitably die) and more.
Light rail – cost overruns and Glad’s overt lies as to why.
Cost overruns generally.
Powerhouse move idiocy.
Stadia idiocy.
Greyhound idiocy.
Generally being a government – even the best is pretty woeful.
Just a start. Of course, she had the benefit of economic conditions such as the house price bubble delivering stamp duty by the truckload and the proceeds of selling the silverware.
Why do commentators credit those ‘luck’ factors and selling assets as evidence of the competence of the government of the day? The pollies do for obvious soulless reasons, but why do the commentariat as a whole…staggering blind spot.
Morrison also and Howard before him the same – one could call it the ‘Liberal Luck’, as they have little else as much as that might pain the commentators who are generally moderate Liberals, sometimes in drag.
“Australia’s best government, the NSW Liberal government of Gladys Berejiklian,”
I’ve decided that this continuing line from Bernard is just click bait to get us all het up and commenting.
This idée fixe of BK, unless it’s just the F7 hot-key stuck, is past a joke.
He knows that referring the the NSW Lib omnishambles as “bestest government ever anywhere” is B/S.
He knows the readers know it is B/S. The readers know that he knows that they know.
The question therefore is, why does he persist? Please don’t tell me that he has unrequited lurve for Gladys as well as the Kormanator!
Er… what all of the others said.
Gobsmacked at the description of this mob of rabid development-crazy road-loving money-wasting incompetent bunch of environmental vandals as “Australia’s best Government” – please STEP AWAY from the psychotropics and crazy-house glasses, Bernard.
NSW is a mess – city and country.
To all the other complaints listed so far, I would add the replacement of a perfectly good train line opened only 9 years ago (Chatswood to Epping line) to enable the installation of driverless single-deck limited seating metro trains as a transport “solution” for NW Sydney. Won’t it fun hopping on at Kellyville and standing all the way to the city… But hey, Constance (possibly the worst transport minister in the known universie) is thrilled because driverless trains will weaken the train drivers’ union! What a smash-hit to a favourite Lib target! And SO NEATLY set up for another privatisation venture going right to the heart of the “Sydney system”.
The forest of high-rise apartment blocks being built around Ryde, North Ryde, Macquarie Park, and Epping is changing the nature of not only the landscape and but how people live – massive traffic congestion and thousands of people who wake up every morning and look out their windows to see… the people in the block next door doing the same thing. Only the very wealthy at the top get the views – the rest of the apartment-dwellers can only see other apartments. Dismal. The only cheery sight in the whole area is the number of CFMEU and Eureka flags flying from the cranes.
And then there’s the environment destruction of forests and farmland… for what? (Other than short-term profit and political donations.)
Not a baseball bat. Not a cricket bat. Not even a flamethrower. I’m gonna do ’em in with my bare hands. (And a pencil. You need a pencil to mark the ballot paper.)