Antony Green on the cost of living election

Sam Hawley: Hi, I’m Sam Hawley, coming to you from Gadigal Land. This is ABC News Daily. We’re all facing the financial pressures that come with the spiralling cost of everything. But on the weekend it’s New South Wales residents who’ll get the chance to punish politicians for it. Today the ABC’s election analyst Antony Green on why the Coalition government might not survive Saturday’s state election as Australians find it harder and harder to make ends meet.

Sam Hawley: Antony, we all know that the cost of living is going up a lot right now, and that’s affecting all of us all across the country. But in big cities like Sydney, it’s hitting really, really hard. And that’s going to be a big factor, isn’t it, in this election?

Antony Green: Yeah, it’s how the cost of living manifests as an issue in people’s day to day lives, and it hits people in different ways and different parts of the country, but I mean to a large extent it’s much more of a city issue. The way cost of living works at this election in New South Wales is there’s a whole bunch of seats in outer Sydney which are marginal mortgage belt seats and higher interest rates are really hurting their standard of living.

Reporter: There’s anxiety in the air as home loan repayments soar.

Antony Green: There’s also a couple of seats where there’s very high rental levels, and rental levels are just appalling at the moment and there just aren’t vacancies and the rates are going up.

Reporter: Rents jumped 11% over the entire year and rents are tipped to continue to rise as vacancy rates are at less than 2%.

Antony Green: Both in terms of how people live and where they live, is important. But you’ve also got the specific issues for New South Wales, which is the number of toll roads Sydney has, which is more than the rest of the country put together, and people who are travelling for work every day are getting hit by that cost which didn’t used to be there.

Sam Hawley: Yeah. I try not to drive too much around Sydney, but when I do, you do ding a lot. Beep, beep, beep. As you go through those toll roads, it costs a lot of money. And as you say, it’s a double whammy then, isn’t it, for those people in those seats that you’re saying they’re paying more for their mortgages and they’re also paying more on tolls? It’s a lot of money.

Antony Green: It all adds up. And all pressures on families. You know, there’s people with mortgages everywhere in Sydney, but in some of these seats with new housing developments, there’s more of them with mortgages. And then on top of that, they get tolls and they get difficulties getting out of their suburb in the morning and their school hasn’t grown rapidly enough and they’ve got demountables instead of classrooms. There’s those sorts of issues and they all compound in a small number of seats. You may see larger swings than you’d expect because there is a certain selection of the public in those areas, particularly pee’ed off at the way government is going.

Sam Hawley: Is this going to play into Labor’s hands? Does this work in Labor’s favour?

Antony Green: Yes, it’s a bit hard to blame the Labor Opposition for these issues. It’s against the Government. If the Federal Government had been in power for longer then some people would translate that view of the Federal Government into state politics, so the Labor Party, I mean. There’s a long history in this country of, at elections, the party in power in Canberra has bad results in the state, but that didn’t happen in Victoria and it may not happen in New South Wales. People have got to remember the current Liberal Coalition government is the longest serving in Australia, except for the ACT, that’s a special case. But it’s also the longest period of Conservative government in New South Wales state history. New South Wales traditionally has been a Labor state, it governed the state for 52 of the 70 years between 1941 and 2011. In 2011 they were wiped out, and the 12 years since is the longest period that Labor’s been in opposition.

Sam Hawley: But it hasn’t been an easy ride for the Coalition over those 12 years. Gosh, they’ve changed leader a lot.

Antony Green: Yes, there’s the old saying, lose one, premier it’s an accident, two is a mistake, three’s getting really serious. But you know, they’ve lost, they’ve lost three.

Sam Hawley: We’ve had Barry O’Farrell.

Antony Green: Mike Baird, Gladys Berejiklian and Dominic Perrottet.

Reporter: It took less than a day to end a 20 year career forced out over a bottle of wine.

Barry O’Farrell: I will be resigning the position.

Mike Baird: As we approach the halfway mark of this term. It’s time for us to refresh. It has been clear to me that this refresh won’t include me.

Gladys Berejiklian: As I address you for the final time as your Premier. Please stay the course and stay safe. We will be shortly out of this lockdown and be able to get on with our lives.

Liberal MP: Our ballot has been held and I can declare that the Honourable Dominic Perrottet has been elected to the leadership position.

Antony Green: I would say. I mean, this is a personal view. I’ve been covering politics for 30 years. I’ve seen a lot of states where they’ve gone from a long, long periods of government have often been dominated by one premier and their successor promptly lose. I suspect if Gladys Berejiklian was there, they would have a good chance of winning. She was very popular and also some of the problems that occurred last year, I think her office was better at running. Dom Perrottet has been a bit more of an ideas man and I think sometimes they’ve fallen down on knowing what’s going on in another part of the government.

Sam Hawley: Okay, so he’s the fourth premier since 2011, but he’s had his own controversies, most recently when it was revealed, Antony, that he wore a Nazi uniform to his 21st birthday.

Dominic Perrottet: I’m deeply ashamed of what I did. And I’m truly sorry.

Antony Green: I mean, look, the problem when he came to office, he had a very negative attitude about him. You know, he’s he’s a very strong Catholic. He’s got seven children. And, you know, it’s quite unusual to have seven children these days. And that was what people thought about him. They thought, oh, he’s anti all sort of modern social change like abortion reform and euthanasia. It’s interesting. In the last term under a coalition government is that both reforms to abortion law and euthanasia, voluntary assisted dying, were introduced in this term by conscience votes. Now, some of that was because the government only had a very small majority and they’re committed to the crossbench to allow those votes in the areas of social social issues. The last year they have done a few things and they’ve done, you know, Dominic Perrottet has put an Aboriginal flag on the, on the Harbour Bridge. There’s lots of issues like that. He’s, he’s, he’s broadened his image. So I think the narrow view people had of him when he came to office has been broadened. He’s a generally quite amusing man. When he gets onto, you know, when he talks, he’s quite engaging.

Dominic Perrottet: I’m not Scott Morrison here. I don’t run every single ministry. I have ministers to do their jobs.

Sam Hawley: And the Opposition leader, Chris Minns. What do we know about him?

Antony Green: Well, he’s much less known today.

Chris Minns: Chris Minns here, the New South Wales Labor leader. A lot of people talk to me about how expensive it is to live and work in Sydney. We’re taking action.

Antony Green: He’s had his own fights within the party to get leadership. Like most oppositions, there aren’t many of the shadow ministers who are well known. I think that’s a particular problem they’ve had and so it’s a not well known opposition, but it’s against a well known government, but it’s against a well known government that’s been there for 12 years. And in the end, opposition, it’s governments that lose elections.

Sam Hawley: Okay. Antony, I want to ask you about the Teals, because, of course, the Teals were a big factor at the federal election. Are we seeing something similar?

Reporter: The rise of the six teal independents was one of the big stories of the May election. They vanquished opponents.

Antony Green: The issues they ran on which made it possible for them to win seats at the federal election aren’t there. The issues they ran on at the federal election were against Scott Morrison, against problems with women in the Liberal Party. They were that the Federal Government wouldn’t introduce an independent Commission against Corruption. The Independent Commission Against Corruption in New South Wales has got the strongest in the state and the Government has said very clearly that it supports it. On climate change, they’ve got a very active climate change policy. You can argue it’s not strong enough, but it’s certainly a darn sight stronger than the Federal Government and they haven’t got Scott Morrison there. But there are a number of independents, particularly in the seats which were won by Teals, who are running as independents, not all backed by the Climate 200 group in New South Wales. The seats they’re running on have a history of electing independents.

Sam Hawley: Mm. Okay. So, Antony, now the big question, the polling is tight. We can see that. But who’s going to win in your view? And is it in the end that cost of living issue that will be front and centre of people’s minds when they cast their ballot on Saturday?

Antony Green: Cost of living and how long the government’s been in power? Well, the longer government has been in power, the more they blame them for cost of living. And sometimes voters will go for a change of government just to get a different set of faces making the same excuses. But I mean, that’s that’s the way politics works In the end, it always remind me of an old lecturer who described, you know, periods of government are like, you know, those third world buses where there’s people hanging off the side. You know, there’s packed buses. That’s what a government’s like. You start off and you’ve got all these people hanging on the side. And as time goes by, you know, a few of them drop off at the curves and the difficult parts of the road. And government’s like that. You lose people along the way and you lose the public along the way. So I think that’s a, you know, an interesting metaphor, but that’s the problem the government faces. The polls are actually quite clear that Labor’s got the statewide vote to win. I mean, if Labor gets 52.5% of the vote, which is what some of the polls are suggesting, it’s very hard to see them not getting more seats than the Coalition. It may be that they don’t reach a majority, but it’s hard to see them not getting more seats. I remind people after the Gillard government election in 2010, all the seats were known. On the Monday it was clear who’d won all 150 seats on the Monday, but it then took two weeks to negotiate who was going to form government. There’s two types of doubt where it’s unclear what the numbers are because you haven’t got all the seats decided, or it’s unclear because you’ve got to negotiate who’s going to form government.

Sam Hawley: Are you going to have a have a bet here? I mean, which way is it going to go or do you dare not do that?

Antony Green: I, look, the polls are indicating Labor’s got a better chance of winning. That’s all I’ll say.

Sam Hawley: Okay. Antony Green, thank you very much.

Antony Green: Thank you.

Sam Hawley: Antony Green is the ABC’s election analyst. Catch him on Saturday night for full analysis of the election on ABC TV’s News Channel or on iView. This episode was produced by Flint Duxfield Chris Dengate and Sam Dunn, who also did the mix. Our supervising producer is Stephen Smiley. I’m Sam Hawley. You can find all our episodes of the podcast on the ABC Listen app. Thanks for listening.