The Upper Hunter isn’t exactly a regional coal seat and part of the Labor Party’s traditional Hunter Valley blue-collar heartland. But the state seat forms part of the genuine heartland federal seat of Hunter, which was only narrowly retained at the 2019 election by Labor’s former energy and resources spokesman Joel Fitzgibbon.

Federal implications should be drawn cautiously from a state byelection, especially amid the extraordinary circumstances of the global pandemic. But despite the power of incumbency during the pandemic, the humiliating 7 per cent swing against NSW Labor in the Upper Hunter byelection has drawn to the surface the difficult political challenges facing federal Labor.