The Nationals have held the Upper Hunter for 90 years. But their weekend byelection victory has quickly been interpreted as a disaster for Labor at a state and federal level.
The obituaries for Jodi McKay as Labor leader are being written. A triumphant Scott Morrison says Labor has lost touch with blue-collar workers, and plans to target outer suburban and regional NSW seats at the next election. Labor’s federal Hunter MP Joel Fitzgibbon wants the party to stop calling people racist.
Everyone’s got a hot take about the byelection. But did it actually tell us anything we didn’t know?
Jodi McKay is cooked
McKay’s leadership is cooked. Even before the byelection, Liberal Premier Gladys Berejiklian was preferred leader among Labor voters.
Mckay was having a year from hell. She was revealed to have provided a character reference to a man accused of indecently assaulting a child. After the Health Services Union released diabolical polling showing Labor’s vote at its lowest in a century, McKay accused it of “coward-punching” her. The union then disaffiliated with NSW Labor.
But what hammers home McKay’s cookedness is she seems to have no solutions. Shell-shocked by Saturday’s loss, she appeared to offer no answers to the party’s malaise: “I just don’t know why we are not connecting.”
NSW Labor is cooked
McKay also said the byelection came too soon for NSW Labor, still scarred by 2019. But the party has been in opposition for a decade, without coming close to government. Under McKay, it seems to be going backwards.
While Upper Hunter has always been a Nats seat, it became pretty marginal in 2019, and that was before former MP Michael Johnsen resigned over rape allegations. Labor clearly had a chance, but instead copped a 6.9% swing against it. Its primary vote fell to just over 20%.
NSW Deputy Premier John Barilaro said Labor’s problems go beyond McKay: “You can’t just replace the jockey. The horse is broken.”
Four samey-looking white men are being touted to replace McKay. One, Michael Daley, has already had his turn, before a racist gaffe getting close to two years ago upended his final week before the election. At a state level, the party continues to look lost.
PM targets ‘quiet Australians’
The byelection result excited Morrison. This morning The Australian’s front page thundered about him targeting “ALP true believers”, with the Coalition’s NSW strategy focused on flipping lower- and middle-income voters in areas like the Hunter and Sydney’s suburbs. The Sun-Herald ran a similar story yesterday on the Coalition’s 10 NSW target seats.
But none of this is particularly groundbreaking. Morrison’s narrow path to an unlikely election victory last time involved picking up votes in aspirational mortgage belts and regional mining areas. Suburbia swung to the Liberals. And to win again, he has to keep, or expand, that voter base.
Coal wars continue
The Upper Hunter byelection was all about coal. Nearly all candidates spent the campaign in high vis, falling before the altar of a dying industry that has been the backbone of the region for decades. In the aftermath, pro-coal politicians like LNP Senator Matt Canavan were gleeful about what the result meant. Meanwhile Fitzgibbon has been on a typical media blitz this morning, attacking his own party for not supporting mining enough.
It’s unclear what more they could’ve done — the party picked a former miner and CFMEU official in candidate Jeff Drayton, and McKay explicitly pledged her support for the industry. No matter what happens, Labor will continue to be wedged by the narrative, pushed from both inside and outside the party, that it can’t deliver for coal communities.
Don’t speculate too much
This was hardly a resounding win for the Nats, who picked up just 30% of the primary vote. It was a reasonable result for One Nation — a 13% primary vote — following a big swing at the 2019 federal election that spooked Fitzgibbon into abandoning the frontbench to become a mining lobbyist.
While Labor is worried about the result, it’d be foolish to make any bold predictions about the next federal election based on the weekend’s results. Labor annihilated the Coalition at state elections in Western Australia and Queensland. The Liberals lost five byelections less than a year from their 2019 win.
The Upper Hunter is but one seat, and the only poll that matters is yet to come.
Do you think this result is something for the Coalition to crow about? Let us know by writing to letters@crikey.com.au. Please include your full name to be considered for publication in Crikey’s Your Say section.
As long as Labor continues to try and walk both sides of the street on coal mining it will continue to be rejected by coal mining communities. These people are not stupid. They are repulsed by a political party that refuses to talk honestly with them. For labor to come clean they must own to the facts:
Well said, GL! Since the electorate in question is State based…and held by the gNats for over 90 years…who in their right mind expected Labor to win in this Covid-obsessed atmosphere?
The MSM needs to start telling the truth, and stop misleading the public…and Joel Fitzgibbon needs to be expelled from the Labor Party, ASAP!!
Spot on and it’s high time Labor realised the truth of what you say. The country is cooked otherwise because we certainly cannot afford another term of Morrison’s mob in Canberra.
In WA there is no coal mining. The old coal town of Collie overwhelmingly voted ALP in the last state election earlier this year. Doesn’t this say something about the longevity of the so-called fixed coal vote?
One can only agree with what Griselda has said, except that the statement, “These people are not stupid.” needs some nuance. Given the enormous amount of material-even in the MSM–about the destructiveness of coal/fossil fuels in its impact on global emissions, why are people still voting for the LNP and other right-wing parties? Even with the constant denial of the truth from the Murdoch press, in particular, the evidence is everywhere available for the need to undertake drastic changes to reduce the outflow of destructive carbon emissions.
The problem is that the ‘quiet Australian’ appears incapable of sufficient critical thought to see what needs to be done, even if what is necessary is hammered home to them. The LNP superficially offer continuity and certainty when change besets us all the time. As such, though the adjective “stupid” may be incorrect, an absence of critical thought and intellectual laziness are not false descriptors of many people.
Yes the ALP needs to be much more honest and straight forward with the alternatives it intends to give to those small numbers employed in fossil fuel producing industries, but even then will they understand it. The reaction against Labor in the 2019 federal election suggests not.
One might argue that the ALP should be adopting a five year program for return to office by presenting a consistent narrative that is as full of imagery as it is of argument. Here is the problem though: we simply don’t have the luxury of that time period, as climate change is beginning to hit us so hard and the massive changes in lifestyle required to confront us will be beyond the understanding of many of the ‘quiet Australians.’ I hope I am wrong.
Upton Sinclair — ‘It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.’
People who live on junk food and junk thoughts cannot be described as other than heedlesss, of their own wellbeing and that of their children.
What chance of their suddenly expanded comprehension this side of disaster?
Their decision not to say that say that didn’t work so who knows, maybe someone brave enough will insist on saying it. Don’t know who that will be. As for a Lib-Nats win, they’ve got a chain around their leg in WA where Porter is shaky and he and other Libs along with Scomo supported Palmer’s attempt to tear down the WA border closure. That did not go down well, as voters here hinted in the recent state election where the Libs finally achieved gender parity in the Legislative Assembly: one of each gender.
Unfortunately Labor takes pretty much the same contributions from oil, gas, mining, etc as the LNP so it makes it difficult to throw straight dice and be tough on those industries. LNP is very upfront – they are happy to continue business as usual, spinning shamelessly. The only winner in the Upper Hunter was the coal and gas industries – they aren’t making contributions/donations to just one party to help facilitate the win of their guy – these companies are hedging their bets evenly and of course they took home the prize – Australia takes another step backwards…it doesn’t help that our news agencies/outlets don’t fact check anything these awful politicians say before it spews out over the airwaves…I’d say the LNP would do a lot worse with a bit of sunlight shone on their dishonest rhetoric.
Been saying that for a while GL. Worst case, you can hold your head high. They can’t win with their pusillanimous bob each way crap. May as well try political courage. At least they can know they’ve never tried it before.
Once preferences were distributed, Labor dropped 2.7%. Where did that drop come from, is the big question? Lots of exhausted votes too, which is an interesting stat.
Don’t know how much you can extrapolate from state to federal elections, this result seems to follow the nation-wide pattern of rewarding incumbents for Covid-defence. Still, if I were the ALP, I would definitely remain alarmed about the fossil fuel beast that lurks, ready to pounce.
How about a transitions proposal that has an income guarantee attached, region specific, something in the spirit of the JobKeep/Seeker strategies? The bottom line seems to be, people worried about not having a job anymore, and being left stranded.
A transition plan, tailored specifically for a region, to allay the fears of all locals, might be what’s needed.
The Labor progressive vote went to the non coal Independents.
So does that mean a lot of the votes that went to the non coal indies, didn’t preference either major party and so ended up in the exhausted pile?
According to Poll Bludger, 63% of minor parties preferences exhausted.
So true – the real message was that both the gNat & “Labor” primary votes fell, 2.8% & 7.3% respectively – hardly a ringing endorsement of the status quo.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/elections/upper-hunter-by-election-2021/results
Griselda you are right on the money!
Labor is failing heavily by having in-charismatic leadership, pore political strategy, and trying to please all people by walking both sides of the fence. If they want to have any hope they must forget trying to be a shadow of the LNP and stand firmly on principles – working for ALL of Australia, being progressive, following world trends. Unless they can SELL hugely better they are gone. The electorate is crying out for policies that Labor espouses, but they have failed to sell them and now the COALition has stolen them……..
They also need an msm that writes the truth, not just be PR writers for the Libs. I’d love to know what other deal Morrispin has made with these media barons, because there has to be something for them to be so one-sided in their ^reporting^ – if that’s what they’re calling it, seems more like kids’ faity stories to me.
Labor are equivocating about coal and a pathway to transition. Perhaps Upper Hunter was a test of their resolve. No one believes them on coal, so why not increase the progressive profile by preparing a plan for the future and honestly adhering to it? Fitzgibbon is hopelessly compromised, and may as well be disowned. He is Labor’s Barilaro and will only be a drag on the party’s national ambitions. Stop equivocating, Labor, and work on the new vision. The people will eventually catch up.
The Nationals won Hunter by being the most cowardly in the face of the obvious anachronism that cola mining has become. That and the confused cowardice of the Labor Party. Until Labor has the courage to state the obvious that coal mining must be gone this decade and present a rational playoff transition, we are doomed to the politics of dishonest and corrupt cowardice.