In the west, this was a cost-of-living election and Labor’s key promises were proxies for financial relief.
Liberal Geoff Lee won the seat of Parramatta off Labor in the Coalition’s landslide victory of 2011. But after 12 years in government, and with a toddler at home, he decided to hang up his boots. Lee announced his departure in August 2022, but as in so many Coalition seats, his replacement was not selected until late January, two months before the election. The delay gave Labor’s candidate, Parramatta Lord Mayor Donna Davis, a significant advantage.
The migration of government agencies and departments to Parramatta also worked against Mullens. Public servants lean to the left of politics anyway, and their pay became a key election issue when Labor said it would remove caps on potential wage rises, but former Premier Dominic Perrottet defended them as necessary for fiscal prudence. This was personal for the electorate’s 1348 nurses, who cluster near Westmead Hospital and felt burned out and underpaid after the pandemic.
Rarely has a mood for change been as clear as it was in 2011, when NSW voters went to the polls with baseball bats after 16 years of Labor. Barry O’Farrell’s government ended up with 69 lower house seats, picking up 12 in the west. The people of NSW chose a new government last weekend, but the decision was less emphatic.
NSW Labor Leader Chris Minns and his wife, Anna, visit an early learning centre in Condell Park on the campaign trail.Back in 2011, O’Farrell used his mandate to make major changes to industrial relations in NSW and cap public sector wage rises at 2.5 per cent. When inflation was low, it wasn’t an issue. But as the cost of living climbed, the pandemic tested frontline workers, and hospitals and schools began facing serious staff shortages. Resentment grew.Minns said he would scrap the cap.
Labor’s campaign on Sydney Water also cut through. Privatisation has long been electoral poison; it was one of the reasons for the demise of former Labor premier Morris Iemma. Still, the Coalition’s Mike Baird took the sale of the state’s poles and wires to the 2015 election and won. But electricity prices are soaring now, and Labor’s anti-privatisation strategy worked.
Reed described the election result as a “shoulder shrug” change in government, rather than the angry “fist shake” by voters. “Many people seemed to say: ‘I don’t think there’s much risk to change, let’s try something new’. The alternative to the Perrottet government appeared acceptable and fairly safe.
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