It was the promise that tapped into the anger of our times. Stalling wages, rising prices and a government focused on austerity.
Labor’s pledge to scrap the Coalition’s public-sector wages cap was, in hindsight, instrumental in delivering the party majority government.
The Coalition underestimated it at their peril — and it helped hand Chris Minns victory.
The Liberals misread the anger that its cap caused for so many of the state’s essential workers after the stresses sparked by the COVID-19 pandemic.
It was right outside their door, plain to see.
Industrial action over the past 18 months from teachers, nurses, paramedics and train drivers laid bare the frustrations.
But the anger goes far beyond public sector workers — voters feel overworked, underpaid, struggling under the rising cost of housing and essentials.
Premier-elect Chris Minns swept to power last night with a slender majority in the lower house, with big swings in crucial seats bringing the curtain down on 12 years of Coalition government.
It was an election winner, but how Labor actually pays for its popular policy is another question.
Voters went to the polls on Saturday not knowing how much Labor’s plan to negotiate wages with each sector individually would cost.
But in some ways it doesn’t matter — voters wanted someone who would be willing to negotiate.
The Parliamentary Budget Office found a 1 per cent wage rise on the current cap would cost $2.6 billion over three years.
Roughly 65 per cent of the state’s public 400,000 public-sector workers are women, and one-third of them are under the age of 35.
“Well, there is a slow realisation that this particular group, largely female, tertiary educated are overwhelmingly the biggest supporters of the red side of politics,” former Labor strategist Kos Samaras said on the ABC’s NSW Votes coverage.
Nice campaign
Public sector workers might have been bubbling with anger, but the party leaders certainly weren’t.
After 2022’s bruising federal campaign between two ideologically opposed leaders and a Victorian campaign full of venom, NSW was tame in comparison.
Perrottet and Minns even admitted during the campaign they liked each other.
“Elections can get ugly, but I truly believe this election was a race to the top, a genuine battle of ideas, and that is when politics is at its best,” Perrottet said in his concession speech.
A polite campaign? Yes. Boring? Yes. Effective? Definitely.
Minns played the ball, not the man, in the lead-up to the vote.
Labor MP Penny Sharpe, who is likely to become environment minister in the new government, said the low-risk approach had been vindicated.
“There is tiredness and fatigue in the community around that very aggressive style of politics,” she said on the ABC’s broadcast last night.
“I think after 10 interest rate rises in a row, people are really under the pump.
“Speaking to them about the issues they care about and providing a clear path, and some might say modest plans — I don’t think they were modest but some may suggest they are modest.”
Minns said neither party took the low road.
“We started effectively two years ago with the promise of running an election campaign, asking people [for a] positive vote for New South Wales Labor and not just a negative vote against the government.”
How the Liberals lost
They may have taken the high road, but the Liberal Party was certainly on the fast-track away from victory from early in the count.
After 12 years in power, a spate of retirements from current and former ministers — perhaps smelling change in the electorate — left the Liberals weak in key Sydney seats.
Labor, with a more organised pre-selection strategy, was ready to swoop.
Parramatta, East Hills and Ryde — all with retiring MPs — turned red.
Former minister Stuart Ayres lost his marginal seat of Penrith to the Labor challenger, Karen McKeown.
Terrigal, on the Central Coast, fell to Labor for the first time in its history.
Camden’s one-term MP Peter Sidgreaves lost to Labor’s Sally Quinnell. Neighbouring Wollondilly was on a knife’s edge, with Climate 200-backed independent candidate Judy Hannan slightly ahead, although, there is plenty more counting to come.
Further south, personnel upheavals, scandals and the impact of the Black Summer fires took their toll, with South Coast and Monaro falling to Labor.
Kiama — with its once-Liberal-now-independent MP Gareth Ward awaiting sexual assault charges — was too close to call, but it was certainly a Liberal loss and a race between Ward and the Labor challenger Katelin McInerney.
It wasn’t all Labor gains, with local mayor Michael Regan taking retiring minister Brad Hazzard’s northern beaches seat of Wakehurst. On the north shore, Willoughby also had an independent in the lead in a close count.
Recriminations and celebrations begin
The soul-searching has already begun for the Liberal Party, and not just in NSW, now that all the mainland governments belong to Labor.
“Not a great result and we have seen a disastrous result in WA, cataclysmic, terrible in South Australia, similarly in Victoria, on top of that poor federal result,” said former Liberal Party strategist Tony Barry, now with the RedBridge polling group, on the ABC’s NSW Votes coverage.
“While [the NSW] Liberal Party did better than other states … it is difficult to admit you have an ugly baby and the Liberal Party needs to have that conversation.
“We can’t get elected if we keep going down this path. Changes need to be made.”
NSW is a moderate state, and the Liberal Party has largely elected leaders in that vein. Perrottet, from the right faction, is a clear exception although he was installed with the backing of the moderates.
Outgoing treasurer Matt Kean is an obvious front-runner for the job, although he was demure about the prospect on ABC’s election panel. Ku-ring-gai MP and trade minister Alister Henskens has also been talked about as a possibility.
While the Liberal Party rakes over the coals of defeat, for Labor, a new start beckons.
Chris Minns has a tough job of his own, inheriting a state in the midst of a cost-of-living crisis with no clear path away from an economic downturn.
Voters have brought in change — and they’ll be expecting to see it.