NSW Labor faces the unusual risk of being without a leader even if it wins the March state election, insiders say, as Opposition Leader Chris Minns’ seat of Kogarah in Sydney’s south is the most marginal in the state.
Kogarah is on the razor-thin margin of 0.1%, meaning it would only take about 60 of the electorate’s roughly 60,000 voters to swing the seat for the Coalition. That’s if the government can find a candidate. Liberals have told Crikey the party still hasn’t found anyone to run.
“We actually don’t have someone willing to put their hand up,” a Liberal source said.
Labor sources told Crikey the party had not planned for the scenario that it takes government while Minns loses his seat. One Labor source said Minns was dedicated to his electorate and there had been no discussions about finding him a safer seat.
However, the person conceded it would cause a lot of problems for the party if Minns lost: “If he loses the seat we’re in a lot of trouble.”
Minns suffered a swing against him at 2019 election, when he faced off against local Chinese-Australian entrepreneur and Liberal candidate Scott Yung.
Since then, the state’s electoral districts have been redistributed, adding several Liberal-voting areas to Kogarah and trimming the margin even further.
“You’d think the Liberal Party would want to keep the pressure on Minns — you want to keep your opposing party leader working as much as you can to keep their seat, rather than letting them relax,” professor of politics at Sydney University Rodney Smith told Crikey.
He said several scenarios could play out if Labor won and Minns lost.
The party could either select someone else to be premier, or try to get someone else from the team to stand aside so that Minns could run for their seat in a byelection — a risky move, according to Smith.
“The third scenario is that Labor doesn’t win a majority, but are in contention for a minority government while Minns loses his seat,” he said. “That would be tricky too, and you would have a Labor Party that’s damaged.”
Smith said it could be constitutionally possible for Minns to become premier even if he lost his seat, but only if the governor agreed and Minns ended up winning a byelection.
“An MP in his party would have to cooperate and the byelection might be seen as a decision about whether Labor or the Coalition governed, if the numbers in Parliament were tight,” he said.
While it remains to be seen who the Liberals will nominate for the seat, an independent challenger has already emerged.
Gaming industry whistleblower Troy Stolz told The Sydney Morning Herald earlier this month he would run for Kogarah in part to protest against what he saw as Labor’s “lack of any meaningful action on pokies”.
Labor has vowed to run a trial of cashless pokie cards if it wins the election.
The Coalition has yet to announce a detailed gambling policy, even as Premier Dominic Perrottet has vowed to introduce cashless cards.
The Australian Financial Review reported last week there are 36 lower house electorates where the Liberal Party still hadn’t selected candidates. Liberal sources pointed out there are several battleground seats where Labor hasn’t found candidates either.
The Daily Telegraph reported at the weekend a YouGov poll showed Labor was favoured to win the election, with 56% of the two-party preferred vote to the Coalition’s 44.
