Topics State Politics Hung Parliament in NSW ?
Extracted this from New Matilda, an op-ed piece by Greens MP Lee Rhiannon on her disenfrenchment with the current NSW government. While people are wary of keeping NSW labor government in power in the next coming elections, giving Liberals the vote is equally perilous. As the new federal Liberal headed by Abbott re-positions itself with more from the extreme right, it appears their NSW counterparts are headed for the same direction. In the end, she argues a hung parliament is the best bet. She wrote,
'... While the Liberal and National parties are light on policy details, their MPs are already out and about attending public events and making promises that it is hard to believe they will keep.
On the central coast, federal and state Coalition MPs have backed a strong, well-resourced local campaign to stop a Korean coal company, Kores, from opening up a coal mine. And Liberal MPs have apparently taken a stand against over-development in a number of Sydney suburbs and have singled out the notorious Part 3A of the Environmental, Planning and Assessment Act for repeal.
But these positions are out of step with the Coalition parties’ usual policies, which are traditionally geared to the interests of the big end of town.
The last Liberal premier in NSW, Nick Greiner, provided an insight into his party’s MO when commenting on how he won office in 1988:
"We ruthlessly separated the issues of getting elected from the issues of governing. I literally had a drawer for elections and a drawer for government … We had directions rather than policies that avoided the pitfalls of detail. I remember the transport one which managed to convey in positive terms the directions [in which] we were going to go rather than we are going to shed 33 per cent of the workforce … In most cases we had a directions speech, which we published, and in most cases we had a policy behind it, which we didn’t publish."
This honest assessment of how the Liberal Party operates from one of their own strengthens the argument that, despite their pre-election promises, the Coalition do not deserve to win government...'