Turmoil in battler territory
Sydney Morning Herald
Saturday March 27, 2010
THE polls say voters are itching to give state Labor a thrashing come the NSW election in a year's time, but the Coalition may not be headed for victory as easily as the raw numbers suggest.When the Herald ventured out into Sydney's battler territory last week, in the vulnerable Labor-held seats of Mulgoa and Penrith, the prevailing mood seemed to be cynicism and indifference, coupled with a marked ignorance of Barry O'Farrell and his team."Bob O'Farrell?" wondered one undecided voter at Penrith's Westfield last week. "Is he Labor or Liberal?"There is also much genuine confusion about which tier of government is responsible for the problems people are encountering in their everyday lives."In 50 years of research I haven't known a picture that was as hard to read," says the commentator Hugh Mackay.He identifies four "uncertainty" factors that could muddy the waters between now and next March.The first is the "eclipse" effect of a federal election, which has to come before the state poll. He argues that NSW voters traditionally like to have opposite parties in power in Canberra and Macquarie Street and "while it would be a brave person at the moment who would say that the Rudd government will lose office, it would be a fool who would say they are safe."A second factor is confusion: confusion over how federal and state responsibilities divide in areas like health and education; and confusion over broader issues like the global financial meltdown and global warming. Was there a crisis or not?Voters are reeling from the roller-coaster ride of the past two years. The other uncertainties are Kristina Keneally's unexpectedly good run as Premier and the comparative invisibility of the state opposition, Mr Mackay adds."The only smart response is to say you could not possibly say yet who will win next March," he concludes.John Stirton, the research director of the Herald's pollster AC Nielsen, is more convinced of an inevitable Labor defeat but agrees there are risks for the Liberals.He believes NSW Labor was lucky not to lose in 2007 when the case for change was already strong in voters' minds, and says Nielsen's most recent polls put the Coalition in the ballpark to win, with 55 per cent of the two-party preferred vote over Labor's 45. But he cautions that an outright coalition victory is a "tougher job than it looks because the Liberals have so many voters concentrated in Sydney's lower north shore".So a strong statewide swing (the Coalition needs at least 7.6 per cent, according to the election pendulum of the analyst Antony Green) may not carry it over the line if the votes are not in crucial marginal seats.It is a lesson reinforced by last weekend's result in South Australia - where the Coalition fell short of victory despite winning the most votes - and the NSW Liberal Party director, Mark Neeham, is busy hammering that message into his own team.The Liberals are concentrating their firepower on 24 seats, including those on the Central Coast, south down to Kiama, and out to western Sydney, the Blue Mountains and areas like Riverstone in the metropolitan north-west.Mr Neeham has ordered preselections six months earlier than usual in these seats, to maximise candidates' exposure to the electorate.But, he says, "the battle will be a lot harder than people think. There are Labor members in marginal seats distancing themselves from the ALP, pretty much running as independents".And while many voters may want to change a government they see as a spent force, they don't always wish to dump their own local member.The election analyst Antony Green is adamant the government will fall. "I can't see how the hell Labor could possibly win," he told the Herald. And he believes the swing could well be big enough to pick up Labor seats like Penrith and Mulgoa, which are sitting on margins of 9.2 per cent and 11.1 per cent respectively.If so, O'Farrell and his team will have to garner a whole lot more recognition out there than they are getting at the moment.Damian Robins, 36, and his wife, Melissa, 31, are two Penrith voters who told the Herald they were thinking of switching their vote to the Liberals "because they seem a bit firmer on law and order".But they have little idea who O'Farrell is. "I've seen Kristina Keneally on TV, but the other one, I'm not really aware of," Mr Robins said.
© 2010 Sydney Morning Herald
