Minns has passed one big political test, now he faces another

NSW Premier Chris Minns may have faced the judgment of voters a little over a year ago but the first-term Labor leader will come up against a far mightier force this weekend when the party’s state conference – the last before the federal election and the first since the NSW poll – must achieve two crucial objectives.

Chris Minns is congratulated by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese after his election win last year.Credit: Janie Barrett

It will need to cement the Minns government’s policies for the next year (at least). It will also need to land a compromise motion on Israel and Palestine, an issue that has bitterly divided the ALP and is a real threat to the party in its key western Sydney federal seats of Werriwa, Watson and Blaxland, where there is rising anger at Labor’s rhetoric around the war in Gaza. The party must placate core constituencies before the federal election.

The NSW state conference is a bizarre case study in theatrics where 823 delegates – split evenly between party rank-and-file members and affiliated unions – debate policy, party reform and campaign strategy.

The party faithful stress that to understand NSW Labor, you must understand the supreme power of its conference. Inside the Labor’s so-called “secular cathedral” – Sydney Town Hall – Minns can demand policy change as much as he likes, but without the backing of the delegates, he is largely impotent.

NSW’s long-serving Labor premier Bob Carr and his treasurer Michael Egan experienced this spectacularly on the floor of conference in 1997. The pair presented a determined plan to privatise NSW’s electricity network. They were howled down and Carr swiftly dumped the idea.

Bob Carr, then premier, at the 1996 NSW Labor Conference at Sydney Town Hall.Credit: Andrew Taylor

He had no option. Conference reigns supreme.

Aside from the national conference, where policy decisions are binding for the federal government, no other branch in the country treats its annual conference with the same sense of sanctity as NSW. No other branch is as powerful, large or dramatic.

This year’s Victorian ALP state conference was held at the low-key Moonee Valley Racecourse. In Queensland, the party gathered in 2023 at the nondescript Mackay Entertainment and Convention Centre. NSW Labor, in contrast, has held its conference at Sydney Town Hall for more than a century, and delegates still lament the year they had to relocate to the Darling Harbour Entertainment Centre while their traditional home was being renovated.

That conference, in 2008, was nothing short of a disaster, where renegade state treasurer Michael Costa went ballistic at the crowd and state Labor ministers were heckled over plans to revisit power privatisation. An unedifying period of internal warfare followed, which ultimately ended Costa and premier Morris Iemma. The party could not wait to return to Town Hall.

Minns and his team may be fresh from victory, but the policy direction of the government will be determined by others. The Left have made it clear that it wants a debate at conference over the Minns government’s hastily introduced legislation to tighten bail laws for children in response to worsening crime in regional areas.

Protest laws are another burning issue for the Left. In opposition, NSW Labor supported the Coalition government to pass a bill to jail protesters who block roads, ports or rail. Unions and sections of the party were outraged at what they saw as Labor’s refusal to defend peaceful protests. Minns will be reminded of this in no uncertain terms.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese will speak at the conference on Saturday, and Minns on Sunday, which itself has historical importance. A first-term prime minister and first-term premier have not addressed NSW state conference since 1941, when John Curtin and William McKell led the country and state respectively. But the Albanese/Minns show is certain to be overshadowed by what takes place outside Town Hall.

Party officials are bracing for ugly scenes. Mass pro-Palestinian demonstrations are planned for Saturday and security has been ramped up to unprecedented levels. Officials are terrified of a repeat of the Victorian conference, where pro-Palestinian protesters barged past security, chanting and yelling at delegates. MPs had to be locked down.

NSW could be worse. Anger is not only directed at Albanese but also Minns, who has taken and maintained a strong pro-Israel stance. Just days after the October 7 Hamas attacks, he lit the Opera House sails in the Israeli flag colours. Fury from Muslim communities has not waned in the intervening months, it has only intensified.

And this is where the real strength of NSW Labor will be tested. The branch may be the engine room of the national movement, but the usual argy-bargy over domestic policy will take a back seat this weekend. Landing a palatable position on Israel and Palestine that will placate members and calm Muslim communities in western Sydney will be the focus. Anything less will be a fail.

Alexandra Smith is the Herald’s state political editor.

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