Congratulations to Chris Minns and NSW Labor on their election win. Minns won a comfortable victory in a polite election campaign against an equally civil premier in Dominic Perrottet.
These two gentlemen played the ball and not the man and were both gracious in their comments about the other on election night. Such decency and manners augur well for the new government and premier. We are all Australians, after all, and I’m sure most candidates stand because they genuinely feel they want to make a difference for the betterment of their fellow citizens.
Dominic Perrottet and the Liberal /National coalition leave NSW in a better position than when they first won in 2011 and it is now up to Chris Minns to continue to move that great state forward. He is a member of the NSW right and comes across as a steady hand and a man who is modest by nature and practical. Time will tell.
Like last year’s federal election, the Nationals did well and were let down by their Liberal colleagues. They may have lost Monaro, but they picked up a seat in northern NSW. I cannot understand why the NSW Liberals have developed the habit of preselecting at the last minute. It makes the job of winning seats so much harder. The factions also have to pull their heads in. It never ceased to amaze me how the NSW party failed to recognise just how much of an outstanding asset the late and great Jim Molan was, and continued to put him in unwinnable positions on the senate ticket. A bit of soul-searching is needed to get the NSW Liberals back on track for 2025 federally and 2027 at state level.
Locally, congratulations are in order to Steve Whan, who makes a return to state parliament. Nichole Overall can consider herself unlucky to lose. As I said last week, she was an outstanding candidate and I hope she considers running federally in 2025 against Kirsty McBain, the sitting Labor member for the federal seat of Eden Monaro as Nichole would make a very good federal member. Were she to do so and fail, then she can always go again for the state seat in 2027. In her 12 months as the local member, she showed great promise.
Australia now has only one Liberal government left. Tasmania. However, politics is cyclical, and I can recall in the halcyon days of 1996 there was only one Labor government at state and federal level – NSW. I well recall forming a very good relationship at education minsters meetings with my NSW counterpart, Labor’s John Aquilina, a fine man and a good state minister. Over time, the Labor party came back to the extent that at my last ministerial meeting as ACT Attorney-General in mid-2001, there were five state Labor ministers and only four Liberals – me, the SA, NT and Commonwealth AG.
Over time, the Coalition will come back, too, but now is the time for analysis and to iron out the bugs.
