Surely, not being corrupt is the easiest of all government accomplishment, and yet government after government in NSW slips on its own slime, every party, every decade.
One thing we all agree on is government should do better, state and federal. We want government to be more effective in tackling the big issues, more efficient in using our taxes, and we want government to be rid of the stench of corruption.
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Surely, not being corrupt is the easiest of all government accomplishment, and yet government after government in NSW slips on its own slime, every party, every decade.
The NSW Coalition government, under the leadership of Dominic Perrottet (pictured), having taken over from Gladys Berejiklian after her rounds of ICAC appearances, is likely to be the next to feel the boot of an electorate disapproving of backroom and bedroom deals over special grants, rezonings, property sales, and jobs for mates.
Only a decade ago NSW Labor lost office for the same reasons, and the electorate has been slow to forgive, rightly. Labor needs to win 10 seats from the Coalition to win the March 2023 state election. It won back only two seats at the 2019 election. Labor should be a shoe in, but the electorate needs assurance.
The battleground for the next state election will be in Western Sydney, for it is there that the Coalition holds marginal seats, and it is there that more needs doing by government to address unsustainable urban sprawl.
In contrast, it's likely to be a quiet election north of the Hawkesbury. Labor boasts a block of ten safe seats stretching all the way to Port Stephens. There's a popular independent in Lake Macquarie. The single Coalition seat is Terrigal.
Should Labor win office, though, the Labor block is well placed to exert real power. Labor MPs from the Hunter and Central Coast are well represented in the shadow ministry under leader Chris Minns, notably Yasmin Catley (member for Swansea), Kate Washington (Port Stephens), David Harris (Wyong), Jodie Harrison (Charlestown), Jenny Aitchison (Maitland), and Tim Crakanthorp (Newcastle).
Moreover, a Labor victory in NSW, delivering 10 local Labor MPs, six with ministries, would coincide with Labor holding power in Canberra, with all six federal seats in the Central Coast and Hunter held by Labor, including one (Pat Conroy, Shortland) as a minister.
The last time Labor held power in both NSW and federal parliaments was from 2007 to 2011. These were far from glory days for the party or our regions. In Canberra, faction brawling saw prime ministers Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard swapped in the top job, to and fro. In NSW, following the 10-year reign of Bob Carr, Labor ditched premier after premier - Morris Iemma, Nathan Rees, Kristina Keneally - as scandal after scandal tore the party apart. Is there anything in the Hunter and Central Coast that survives as a legacy of achievement from those years?
Much better was when Labor held power in NSW and federally during the 1980s, with Neville Wran's premiership overlapping the Hawke-Keating golden years between 1983 and 1988. The successful transformation of the lower Hunter from its reliance on protected, uncompetitive industrial sectors was underpinned by support measures delivered in concert by state and federal Labor governments from those days.
Are similar days ahead? Certainly, our local economies are as precarious as they were back in the 1980s. The transformation of the Hunter and the Central Coast business districts into agglomerations of professional services jobs has been tentative, at best. The success of advanced manufacturing initiatives in the lower Hunter has been similarly patchy. The big task, of course, is the exit from coal. The clean-up, the regeneration of productive rural landscapes, the reversal of the loss of native forests and habitats, the replacement of 13,000 mining jobs, there is a long list of tasks that needs to be led by politicians, and state and federal government agencies. In parallel, state and federal treasuries need to work together to fund the transition.
Has the Hunter faced a more challenging time? Perhaps, though, there is reason for optimism; perhaps the Labor fortress of MPs across the Hunter and Central Coast, state and federal, can build an agenda of change that they can fund and enact. By March next year Labor may control all the levers: our region's, our state's, our nation's. Can it deliver, we ask?
Phillip O'Neill is professor of economic geography at Western Sydney University.
