Emerging from the margins: NSW Labor leader Chris Minns’ path to power

“I’ve got to win the most marginal seats in the state as well as guide NSW Labor to victory for the first time in 16 years”: Chris Minns knows the road ahead is tough. Here’s how he plans to do it.

NSW Labor leader Chris Minns in full campaign mode at the Revesby Workers Club. Picture: Tim Hunter

Chris Minns knows the scale of the challenge ahead of him in March.

After years in the political wilderness, and Gladys Berejiklian’s resignation the Labor leader is in with a real shot at becoming Premier next year. But he not only needs to pick up nine extra seats, he needs to hold onto the most marginal Labor electorate in the state – his own.

It is just after 10am on a Saturday in December, and the Labor leader is on the hustings in Hurstville, on the western fringes of his Kogarah electorate.

It’s unseasonably cold and windy and the Labor Leader is dressed in a trademark puffer vest, joining a handful of supporters to hand out material in English and Mandarin telling constituents what kind of services Minns can provide as a local member.

After about an hour of pressing the flesh, breaks for a coffee at a small cafe near the train station. But months of government claims that Labor is lacking in policy vision appear to be getting under Minns’ skin.

NSW Leader of the Opposition Chris Minns, meeting locals in Hurstville. Picture: Tim Hunter

When The Daily Telegraph spoke to Minns for this piece, Labor’s position on key issues remained unresolved: assistance for first home buyers, toll relief, and energy affordability policies among them.

When we join him in Hurstville the next day, he wants to highlight what the Opposition has already announced, to show that he is getting policy out the door.

Those efforts are quickly interrupted when the Labor Leader’s phone starts ringing – with a call from Prime Minister Anthony Albanese (phoning with Christmas wishes, apparently).

Minns takes a phone call from Anthony Albanese during his morning on the hustings in Hurstville. Picture: Tim Hunter

There are easy comparisons between Minns and Albanese. Like his federal counterpart, Minns heads into the election attempting to unseat a longstanding Coalition government. Like federal Labor was, he is also considered the frontrunner.

But Minns does not want his policy offering to be compared to the one promised by Albanese ahead of the 2022 federal poll.

“I just don’t look at politics as a binary choice between two recent federal elections,” Minns says when asked whether he will be closer to Bill Shorten’s “100 positive policies” or Albanese’s tiny target approach.

Minns in his parliamentary office at Macquarie Street. He doesn’t necessarily plan to follow in his federal counterpart’s footsteps. Picture: Richard Dobson

“I think voters make decisions based on a whole range of issues. You know, the big one is going to be policy. The second one is going to be government performance and record,” he tells me.

With major policy issues still to be announced, Minns says the public only have a certain amount of “bandwidth” to consume the Opposition’s ideas.

“In some ways, you have to sequence your policy releases,” he says.

“We decided to signal our intent in relation to education and health first, we’ve got more to say about energy, cost of living and housing as we get close to the election.”

Chris Minns hit back at the government’s claim Labor fall short on policy - he promises there’s more on the way. Picture: Tim Hunter

There is not much room for down time.

“I would joke (that) away from work, I work,” Minns says.

His day starts at 5am, when he gets up and reads the newspapers before checking in with staff.

Then he squeezes in a quick 30 minute home workout – “body weights” and “kettle bells” – before sitting down to “crunch out a lot of work” in the early morning.

He likens his day to a pinball machine, “bouncing around from one event to the next”.

At the other end of the clock, he is usually at a community meeting or party fundraiser.

“I basically say yes that everything that I could possibly go to,” he says.

He needs to.

A few days prior, Minns attended a seniors’ lunch in Revesby Workers’ Club, in the ultra-marginal seat of East Hills.

At Revesby Workers Club with his candidate for East Hills Kylie Wilkinson, Minns was popular with the seniors. Picture: Tim Hunter

There were plenty of friendly faces among the crowd, but even one self-proclaimed die hard Liberal voter liked what they saw in the clean-cut Princeton graduate.

Minns joined the Labor Party in 1997, he says, while still in high school. Since then, his professional life has been dominated by politics, and the Party.

“I’m really committed to the organisation, and I want it to succeed,” he says.

But Labor’s path to victory in March will be tough. Minns needs to win about 10 seats to govern in majority.

On top of that, Minns needs to win his own seat – held on a margin of just 0.3 per cent. That could distract him from the wider campaign.

This is not lost on the Labor Leader.

“I’ve got to win the most marginal seats in the state as well as guide NSW Labor to victory for the first time in 16 years,” he says.

“Someone’s got to do it.”