A preview to the 2023 NSW state election
The last state election (cast your mind back to 2019) was against the backdrop of a booming economy, physically manifested in the sheer number of construction cranes which dotted the Sydney skyline.
Budgets were recording surpluses, the infrastructure pipeline was nearing $100 billion and the election campaign was dominated by the question of where to spend all this money (see the stadium debate).
In retrospect, Sydney and New South Wales were in a very different place four years ago: the lockout laws were still in place, abortion was still a crime, the first metro line was still months away from opening, George Street was still a construction zone, and the back-to-back crises of the 2020s had not yet unfolded…
Gladys Berejiklian was vying to become the first elected female premier of NSW, which at the time did not seem likely without cancelling the government’s ‘stadium splurge’.
Michael Daley was the opposition leader who had full confidence in NSW Labor winning the ‘referendum on stadiums’, until the surfacing of a video that changed the tone of the final week of campaign.
And so it was that the 2019 election led to the seemingly unlikely third term being won by the incumbent Liberal–National government, with a one-seat majority.
2019 result
In terms of seat changes, only four seats actually changed representation at the last election. The Libs lost Coogee to Labor. The Nats lost two seats to SFF in Barwon and Murray, and also lost Lismore to Labor.
The major parties saw a decrease in their first preference vote, a trend which has since continued at both federal elections.
Notable changes included the election of the newly-installed leader of One Nation NSW, Mark Latham, the switching of Liberal Damien Tudehope to the Upper House, and the election of The Greens’ Abigail Boyd to replace their former colleague Jeremy Buckingham.
The past 4 years
Much has changed in this 57th Parliament of New South Wales during the past four yearrs. There have been several major leadership changes, 5 by-elections and 7 MLAs defecting from their parties.
There was interestingly a period of two years when both the Premier and Opposition Leader were both women, but both have since resigned and replaced by men. Nevertheless, it was still a historic achievement for the state at the tail-end of the 2010s decade.
The leadership which had formed at the beginning of the government’s term, with Premier Gladys Berejiklian and Deputy Premier John Barilaro, has now been replaced. Dominic Perrottet and Paul Toole now lead a largely new ministry and government into re-election after a series of resignations and recent announcements by many in the ministry that they will not recontest this election.
On the opposition’s side, the leadership also had a period of instability after Jodi McKay’s resignation as Opposition Leader in the aftermath of NSW Labor’s Upper Hunter by-election defeat.
A ‘Super Saturday’ of by-elections in 2022 saw the seats of former leaders Gladys Berejiklian, John Barilaro, Jodi McKay, and high-profile minister and Bega MP Andrew Constance go back to polls. Barilaro’s seat of Monaro and McKay’s seat of Strathfield were easily retained by their respective parties, with Jason Yat-sen Li becoming the first member with Asian ancestry to represent Strathfield (an electorate with more than 40% of residents with Asian ancestry). The seat of Bega was lost to Labor’s Dr Michael Holland, after a 12.0% swing against the Liberal candidate, showing the effect of Constance’s personal popularity in the electorate. Berejiklian’s seat of Willoughby was narrowly retained by the Liberals, after independent Larissa Penn received close to a 20% swing.
In addition to the by-elections, 6 members of the Legislative Assembly defected from their parties and became independent:
- 2 from the Liberals (one resigned during an ICAC investigation and one during a criminal investigation)
- 1 from Labor (resigned and declared the party is ‘not ready to govern’)
- All 3 SFF MLAs (resigned after misogynistic comments made by the party leader)
The member for Port Macquarie, Leslie Williams, defected from the Nationals to the Liberals over policy disputes on koala protection.
The Legislative Council saw 6 members replaced by their parties:
- 3 from the Liberals (one retired, one resigned after the Federal Government’s response to the early 2022 Northern Rivers floods and one to pursue other opportunities)
- 2 from the Nationals (one resigned to serve as a magistrate and one after receiving threats over handling of the drought)
- 1 from the Greens (resigned after switching to federal politics)
MLC Justin Field left the Greens to become an independent after expressing concerns about the party’s culture, while Liberal MLC Matthew Mason-Cox briefly became an independent after a presidency dispute. Long-serving MLC Fred Nile also announced his retirement after 41 years in parliament.
Furthermore, a redistribution of seats occurred last year led to the creation of new seats, the abolition of others, and the ‘switching’ in notional party status of one seat: Heathcote. I’ll leave the explaining of all the redistribution’s changes and implications to Australia’s very own national treasure, legendary psephologist Antony Green, who wrote an incredibly detailed post on the topic.
And of course, the 2022 Federal Election set the stage for a new way of Australian politics. It’s been slowly emerging unnoticed in the past decade, but had not resulted in seismic changes to the make-up of our parliaments … that is, until the ‘Greenslide’ and ‘Big Teal’ in May last year.
Whether the trend continues at the state level has been uncertain, with the main challenge to overcome for non-major party candidates being donation caps and the optional preferential voting system.
Nevertheless, seat races are becoming more politically diverse with more ‘non-traditional’ contests being fought — we’ll cover more on that once candidacies are confirmed on 9 March.
As the election campaign ramps up, we will be providing in-depth coverage on Medium and Twitter. Follow us at @nswpol23 to keep up-to-date with the latest in news, opinion and exclusive interviews.
