Damaged Liberals can’t blame Scott Morrison for latest teal trouncing

On Sydney’s insular peninsula, which has always voted blue except for a dalliance with an independent in 2005, the NSW Liberals were not prepared to accept that an opponent quite similar to their own – albeit with a tinge of green – would claim their prized seat of Pittwater.

Surely, the Liberals told themselves, the teal wave that helped oust their federal colleagues from power in 2022 was a shortlived experiment? After all, the party had staved off the teals at the last state election. The teal tide was done, or so they hoped.

Much in common but only one victor: the teal Jacqui Scruby on polling day, flanked by the poster of her Liberal rival, Georgia Ryburn.Credit: Steven Siewert

But a sense of entitlement to the once-safe state seat has made the Coalition’s chances of winning back government in 2027 much harder. The Liberals lost Pittwater to teal Jacqui Scruby on the weekend, in her second shot at the seat. For the first time, Macquarie Street has a teal MP.

Byelections rarely favour the government, but in Pittwater’s case they did not favour the Liberals, either. The last time an opposition lost a seat in a byelection was 2005. It was Pittwater, when the Liberals surrendered it to independent Alex McTaggart after the resignation of the then leader John Brogden.

Labor did not contest Pittwater in this byelection; nor did it run in Epping or Hornsby, which also went to the polls on Saturday. The Liberals held Epping and Hornsby, but even that was not great news for the party. A government sitting out a byelection is not uncommon, given voters have a tendency to take out their brickbats. Since 2011, the average swing to an opposition in a byelection, where the government did not contest it, has been 11.6 per cent.

That did not play out in these byelections. In Epping, the swing to the Liberals was only 7.8 per cent. In Hornsby, it was 6.7 per cent. In Pittwater, the Liberals took a 3.1 per cent hit.

The one-time Pittwater mayor McTaggart only served as an MP for two years before the Liberals seized the seat back. Now it is gone again, but the seat’s flirtation with an independent is unlikely to be as brief. And as much as the Liberals might wish the teals to have been nothing more than a protest vote against an unpopular prime minister in Scott Morrison, the Pittwater result should give the federal Coalition plenty to worry about ahead of next year’s election.

In Pittwater, the Liberals were initially the underdogs. They went to a byelection under the worst of circumstances; the party lost an MP after he was charged with child sex offences, which he denies. Rory Amon, who had beaten Scruby only 18 months earlier by just 606 votes, resigned within hours of being arrested.

The party also had the humiliating spectacle of failing to nominate 140 candidates for September’s local government elections. The administrative debacle of missing a deadline resulted in the sacking of the Liberals’ state director, then the party’s federal arm swept in and took over the NSW division.

Unsurprisingly, the Liberals feared their chances of holding Pittwater in the byelection were slim, but they grew increasingly bullish after selecting a highly capable and electable candidate to take on Scruby for round two. After years of being criticised for not ensuring talented women run for office, finally the Liberals had one in former Northern Beaches deputy mayor Georgia Ryburn. A victim of the council nomination snafu, Ryburn was being talked up as the next federal candidate for Mackellar. Then the Pittwater byelection emerged.

Ryburn and Scruby are decidedly similar: intelligent, educated women with young children. Scruby’s camp seized on the fact that Ryburn lives outside Pittwater’s boundaries, in Frenchs Forest. Ryburn kept acknowledging Scruby’s attack, as if voters would be incensed by such petty warfare (while seemingly forgetting that it is not called the insular peninsula for nothing). To return serve, Ryburn’s campaign focused on an independent MP’s supposed inability to deliver for voters.

Ultimately, a damaged Liberal Party and an electorate which has not yet given up on teals resulted in another number on the crossbench, which is increasingly taking up more real estate in the NSW parliament. This is a bigger concern for the Liberals than for Labor.

Only once before have there been more crossbenchers in NSW than there are now, and that was in 1999 after the infamous “tablecloth” election when several micro-parties managed to get elected. There are now 10 independent MPs in the lower house, all in what voting traditions have cast as conservative seats, with the exception of Lake Macquarie and Sydney.

The lesson for the Liberals? Even in blue-ribbon seats, when the brand is on the nose, for whatever reason, voters look elsewhere. The concern for the Liberals now must be: can they ever tempt those voters back?

Alexandra Smith is state political editor.