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– What should be the priorities for Labor’s next Premier before the next election?
15th August 2008
Ladies and Gentlemen,
Thank you for dragging yourselves away from the Olympics – just for a few hours - to talk about the mess in NSW and whether Morris Iemma and Michael Costa could really get any worse.
We are now almost half way through the parliamentary term.
It’s two and a half years to the next NSW state election and as we count down the months, let’s be clear on three realities:
- Voters will continue to turn away from NSW Labor at the 2011 election;
- If Morris Iemma privatises NSW Electricity, then he cannot win the 2011 state election; and
- NSW Labor are not stupid and will do whatever it takes to re-invent themselves to try to hang on to Government in 2011.
As part of that re-invention, Labor will launch a new NSW Premier by mid next year but possibly as quickly as after the Olympics and before Parliament resumes in September.
Labor’s new Premier will move quickly to distance himself or herself from the now entrenched incompetency of the Iemma Government.
And if the new Premier takes office in the next month, they will dump the Electricity Privatisation on Day One.
Today I want to discuss just what should be the priorities for Labor’s next Premier over the thirty months before the next election.
The new Premier will have an opportunity to belatedly deliver for the community or be trounced at the 2011 election.
But first let me briefly explain why my three assertions are in fact political realities.
First - Voters will continue to turn away from NSW Labor at the 2011 election.
Well, current polls show NSW Labor is taking a hammering but let’s keep it in perspective.
Polls go up and down depending upon current issues and a poll in the middle of a parliamentary term is simply an indicator of community sentiment at that time.
But poll trends over several years do give an indication of likely results at the next election.
At the moment in NSW, voters are not only expressing concern with Labor because of Electricity Privatisation and the so-called Toggle Effect (Federal/State Counterbalance).
They are also outraged by the almost comical self-indulgent and incompetent nature of the Government itself and last year they confirmed their concerns by turning against NSW Labor at the state election.
Voters turned because the Coalition Opposition held a tired, cynical and incompetent Government to account and we also offered attractive alternative policies and a good team.
Now we have to keep Labor on the run and voters on the hunt.
It takes two to four elections of falling votes for State Governments to lose office and conversely Oppositions will experience two to four elections of rising support at the ballot box before winning an election.
For example Nick Greiner won office after three elections (1981, 1984 and 1988) of increasing Coalition votes and Labor’s Bob Carr won office after two elections (1991 and 1995) of increasing Labor votes.
In our case, after losing voter support at four successive NSW elections (1991, 1995, 1999 and 2003) we finally fought back in last year’s 2007 campaign.
We lifted our state-wide 2PP vote to 47.74% and, despite Labor’s campaign fortress around key-seats, we achieved swings to the Coalition in 79 of the 93 seats with some of those swings as high as 14%.
We turned the tide against the Labor Party across the state, increased our vote significantly, won three seats from Labor, won back another three from Independents and turned many safe Labor seats into marginal targets for 2011.
Despite voters having turned against the Government at the election, Labor has done nothing in the last year to improve their performance or their appeal to voters.
In fact, in their usual “don’t care” post-election year collapse, Labor has further antagonised voters.
As long as the Opposition continues to aggressively do it’s job, ie oppose bad government AND propose alternative policies, NSW voters will continue to turn away from Labor.
If we do our job, then the real question will be the size of the anti-Labor swing at the 2011 election and whether it will deliver sufficient seats to the Coalition to form Government.
So as I said, voters will continue to turn away from NSW Labor at the 2011 election.
2. If Morris Iemma privatises NSW Electricity then he cannot win the 2011 state election.
My second assertion is that if Morris Iemma privatises NSW Electricity then he cannot win the 2011 state election.
Given voters will continue to turn away from NSW Labor, let’s also consider the political reality of “Electricity Privatisation”.
Australia’s experience with Electricity Privatisation began in earnest when Jeff Kennett sold Victoria’s gas and electricity businesses for $29 billion over the course of a few years to 1998.
The following year, Jeff Kennett’s Government was defeated at the 1999 election.
In NSW, Bob Carr and Michael Egan jealously watched the Victorian process through the mid-1990s and dreamed of spending similar billions by selling NSW electricity businesses.
But, the Carr/Egan plan was derailed at the 1997 Labor Conference when they were shouted off the stage. The NSW Labor privatisation plan died, or rather – it went to sleep.
In 1998, the NSW Coalition was approached by investment bankers amongst others and convinced of the net positives of privatising electricity – all that money to spend!
So the Coalition went to the 1999 state election proposing Electricity Privatisation and with the help of a few other problems we suffered a 7% swing against the Coalition.
Two years ago in 2006, Premier Beattie decided to chance his hand and privatise Queensland’s retail electricity. Labor reaped a few billion but within a year Peter Beattie left Parliament to hand over to a new Premier.
It is plain the Australian history of Electricity Privatisation is strewn with discarded governments and party leaders.
Prior to last year’s state election, the usual suspects went to NSW Labor and also came to me as NSW Liberal Leader and again promoted the privatisation of NSW Electricity and the subsequent spending of billions as an election policy.
My colleagues and I said “No” - privatisation was not a positive policy and transformation of the industry was a critical objective best done with Government involvement.
They persisted and we again said No but I also arranged research and confirmed the community’s view that Electricity Privatisation was political suicide.
Election Mandate – Electricity will NOT be privatised.
Importantly, before last year’s state election, Morris Iemma and I were both asked by the media, on a number of occasions, if we would sell electricity.
Several times, I confirmed we would not privatise and Morris Iemma also said Labor would NOT privatise electricity.
I must stress that Morris Iemma’s re-election platform specifically said he would NOT privatise Electricity.
But once the votes were safely in the ballot box, it was a different story.
Despite Iemma’s pre-election commitments NOT to privatise, Labor’s push to privatise Electricity began within a week of the state election.
In the days after the election, while still Opposition Leader, I was lobbied by sections of the media to support Labor’s privatisation push.
Iemma had the “Privatisation” support of the newspaper editors and others because the media believed the NSW Labor Government couldn’t run a chook raffle and the Electricity Industry would be better off out of their hands.
So last year, Morris Iemma rightly believed he would be given a painless run to quietly privatise Electricity.
But, it soon became apparent Iemma had underestimated the time it would take to privatise Electricity and he also underestimated the community’s sense of betrayal.
He further underestimated the strength of conviction of individual MPs on both sides of Parliament.
And he underestimated the anti-privatisation campaign the community could build, despite the Privatisation protection offered to Iemma by major Sydney newspapers.
Now Morris Iemma is in the full glare of community outrage over not only his Electricity Privatisation betrayal but also his arrogant defiance of strongly expressed community views.
With Labor on the nose in each state, if NSW Labor actually proceeds with Electricity Privatisation it will effectively sign their death warrant for the 2011 election.
While Iemma and Costa will be long gone from their jobs before the election, Labor MPs will be left in the frontline to take the heat at the ballot box.
That voter backlash is focusing the minds of Labor MPs on alternatives including alternative leaders.
Iemma’s planned quiet sell-off of electricity has in effect turned into a suicide mission.
Remember that even Morris Iemma’s mentor, Graham Richardson, suggested the obvious to the Premier last month - that if he wanted to dig himself out of the hole he is in then firstly he should stop the Electricity Privatisation.
But Iemma seems rigidly committed to his death wish and is, of course, being encouraged each day by Michael Costa and the merchant bankers. So a change of course for Iemma seems highly unlikely.
The real issue is whether his Labor colleagues will let him proceed with the Privatisation then get rid of him in 2009 and try to pretend to voters in 2011 that they had little to do with the Privatisation? Or ….
Will Labor MPs stop Iemma and Costa this month before they electrocute all marginal seat Labor MPs?
Either way there is no doubt Iemma will be gone well before the 2011 election.
If Iemma stays then not only would he wear the backlash over Electricity Privatisation but he would also wear the backlash over his other promises.
Remember on Election Night last year, Morris Iemma said:
"And to the people of this great state I repeat my message of yesterday - we will not let you down.
"Tonight we have been given another chance, and it's a mandate with a message and the message is get back to work.
"We will get back to work and build the services that you want, that you need and above all that you will be proud of."
Boy, has he failed to deliver on those words.
Since the election, voters have seen more and more of the bumbling and disingenuous Morris Iemma - not the TV Advertising look-alike they saw in the run-up to the election.
Voters have found out just who Morris Iemma really is and they don’t like what they see.
He will be gone soon.
3. NSW Labor aren’t stupid and will do whatever it takes to re-invent themselves to try to hang on to Government in 2011.
Thirdly, NSW Labor aren’t stupid and will do whatever it takes to re-invent themselves to try to hang on to Government in 2011.
As we all know, the NSW Labor Machine is enduring and powerful.
Despite their increasing problems, Labor will not give up fighting to retain office at any cost.
As they did three years ago after Bob Carr resigned, Labor will try to re-invent themselves with a refreshed Cabinet.
As I said a little earlier, as part of that re-invention, Labor will launch a new NSW Premier by mid next year but possibly as soon as after the Olympics.
As to who the new Premier will be, I really don’t know.
But I’ll let you in on a secret.
It definitely will NOT be Michael Costa or Frank Sartor or Joe Tripodi.
And of course it won’t be Reba Meagher or Eddie O’Beid.
But the new Premier could be any of the other Labor Ministers.
As with Iemma, the less the public initially knows about the person the better for Labor.
So maybe that does suggest Nathan Rees is the candidate and Labor’s advertising machine will shift into gear to create an acceptable public persona for their new Premier.
But I would have thought Labor will still pin their hopes on Deputy Premier John Watkins despite his history of waste and mismanagement.
Whoever it is, Labor’s new Premier will move quickly to distance himself or herself from the now entrenched incompetency of the Iemma Government by blaming Morris Iemma and Michael Costa for every problem.
And if the new Premier takes office in the next month, they will dump the Electricity Privatisation on Day One.
For the community, the big issue now is what exactly will the “new” Premier do in the remaining two and a half years before the election?
What I’d like to discuss now is what they SHOULD do. But I doubt they will do it.
What should be the priorities for Labor’s next Premier before the next election?
Given we turned the tide at last year’s election, I believe we will be elected to Government in March 2011.
And we will be elected to clean up Labor’s mess – that is usually our job at both state and federal levels.
But Labor’s new Premier could start the clean-up this year.
NSW was once Australia’s leading state but regrettably NSW is now No. 1 only in traffic congestion, state taxes and crime.
After a decade of the Labor Government milking instead of investing in our future, NSW excels in nothing but mediocrity.
We must turn this state around to lead the nation again.
It would indeed be amazing to think in their final few months, Labor finally saw the light and began to clean up – belatedly doing something for the community after four terms in office.
And a great deal can be achieved in the thirty months before the election as long as it is done with political will, energy and commitment.
On election night last year, I said:
…the people of NSW have given Labor one last chance to fix the problems in this state.
We have laid out a policy framework in every single area of interest in NSW to fix those problems. And I say to Morris Iemma and John Watkins adopt those policies. Take them on board, because if you take them on board and fix the problems we will applaud you.
So in the next few years we would really like to see the new Government do that. Adopt those polices that we’ve laid out so clearly and make a real fist of fixing those problems across the state.
Since the election, Labor have adopted very few of our policies. They don’t seem interested in anything other than trying to fix the headlines – and they’ve failed there too.
NSW Government needs a total Cleanout
There is no doubt over the last decade of prosperity, Australian Governments have grown fat, self-indulgent and insulated from community concerns.
The NSW Government is no exception and is probably the worst offender.
And it explains why Labor’s own MPs complain to their senior ministers that they are living in a parallel universe.
While senior ministers are chauffeured from one glitzy party to the next, hordes of bureaucrats and spin-doctors compete to bed down the latest embarrassment or dream up tomorrow’s spin.
The fact is the NSW Government needs a total cleanout from top to bottom.
Not a spring clean – it needs to be turned upside down and shaken.
After years and years of gross excesses, the public administration of NSW needs rebuilding.
The entire Government needs to be re-engineered to serve the frontline instead of just protecting ministerial backsides.
Get rid of the spin-doctors who now populate every level of the public service.
Get rid of the political hacks masquerading as departmental officers.
How to do it?
First, stop employing the spin-doctors.
Stop the recruitment of anyone associated with media management or PR. Just as rats leave a sinking ship, the current spin-doctors will leave soon enough.
Second, freeze all bureaucrat recruitment.
As someone retires or resigns, don’t recruit from outside the public sector unless the position is frontline or immediate support of the frontline.
As we found in the run-up to last year’s election, a bureaucrat freeze is not only good policy - it is good politics.
Third, Labor’s new Premier could re-employ Michael Knight to restructure Government down to nine departments in the original Kennett model.
Michael Knight did a good job in delivering the biggest logistical challenge on the planet – the Olympics.
Labor could now use that former minister to carve out a new NSW Government structure for the 21st Century.
Fourth, the new Labor Premier can read a speech I gave at The Sydney Institute before the last election in which I set out my vision for NSW. (Vision speech is on my website peterdebnam.com.au)
Labor’s new Premier can implement that plan.
If he or she doesn’t do it before the next state election, then the Coalition will do it in Government after the election.
I want to repeat some of that speech today.
That Sydney Institute speech in late 2006 discussed our vision for NSW.
And I said – It shouldn’t be about process and it’s not about rhetoric.
It’s got to be about people, it’s got to be about outcomes in New South Wales.
State Government is not about finding a formula for world peace. It’s actually about managing some of Australia’s largest businesses to deliver services and infrastructure.
It is an accident of history that the public sector in New South Wales actually has some of the largest businesses in Australia. And if you take your eyes off them, they go off the rails.
So whatever we do in this State it’s got to be very focussed on that management approach.
At the macro level, the new Premier must acknowledge that we have to turn New South Wales around to lead Australia again as the nation’s economic engine room - which we were 10 years ago. We’re not today.
We must lead Australia again as the most competitive investment market. We’re not today.
We must lead in infrastructure delivery instead of failing with project after project.
We have the greatest need to be the most effective in service delivery but any comparison across States will tell you that that’s not happening today.
And we must be a dynamic innovator in public sector reform. And that’s something that has not happened in New South Wales since Nick Greiner left the job.
NSW must have a transparent and accountable public administration.
And it’s very important we answer the question that everybody in NSW has been asking over the last few years - where’s the money gone?
It’s very important we find what this Labor administration did with $400 Billion over the last 12 years. $400 plus Billion that was paid out in expenses and on infrastructure projects and yet the back log in projects now goes on for miles itself and in delivery of services we’re below par.
To do that, establish a Commission of Audit to report next year on exactly what happened to all that $400 plus Billion of revenue that came into the State and also report independently of Treasury on the structure of the Budget and the weaknesses of the Budget and the forecasts.
Drive economic renewal and do it from the top with the assistance of an Economic Development Advisory Board drawn from the business community, the universities and the finance sector to make sure that we have got this State headed in the right direction economically.
As part of that economic renewal, we must rationalise the structure of Government and swap bureaucrats for nurses, teachers and police.
Take the funding out of the bloated bureaucracy and move it to the front line, move it to front line services or tax cuts.
Institute performance bench marking. Something we’ve spoken about in NSW since before I came into Parliament 14 years ago. State Government has just never done it and this Government’s resisted comparisons with other States in most portfolios.
Reintroduce ministerial accountability with ministerial salaries based on outcomes at the end of the year. Ministers should be judged against performance benchmarks and how they’ve performed during the year. If they perform badly, sack them.
Introduce Open Government by reversing the FOI concepts so information flows freely to the public unless an independent authority sees the need to withhold it.
They are just a few points from my Vision speech and our election policies.
There is much more and the Government has the complete list - as we do.
They can adopt them whenever they like and be applauded for doing so.
Ladies and Gentlemen, in summary, NSW is at a critical point:
Voters will continue to turn away from NSW Labor at the 2011 election.
If Morris Iemma privatises NSW Electricity, then he cannot win the 2011 state election.
NSW Labor are not stupid and will do whatever it takes to re-invent themselves to try to hang on to Government in 2011 including presenting NSW with a new Labor Premier soon.
Let’s get in early and suggest a straightforward ten-point plan for Labor’s new Premier to implement in the remaining time before the next election.
- Sack Michael Costa from Treasury;
- Refresh the Cabinet by demoting or sacking other failed ministers;
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Apologise for the Government’s past arrogance and incompetence;
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Stop the Electricity Privatisation & Significantly Lift Investment in Clean Energy;
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Freeze all Bureaucrat and Spin-Doctor Recruitment;
- Employ more Nurses, Teachers and Police;
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Re-employ Michael Knight to restructure Government down to nine departments;
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Institute real Performance Benchmarking;
- Establish a Commission of Audit; and
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Read the Sydney Institute Vision Speech and implement it.
That is what the new Premier SHOULD do …. but I wouldn’t bet on them doing it.
Thank You |
