Anna Caldwell: Why silence is golden for the Berejiklian government
Key members of the Berejiklian government are keeping a low profile before next week’s Upper Hunter by-election, with the Coalition running an agenda of silence.
Opinion
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Matt Kean is in political witness protection, set only to be released to freedom on May 23. You won’t hear a peep about Mark Speakman’s divisive and controversial drugs bill until after that date either.
In fact, any major government decision that could have the slightest blowback is effectively on ice until at least next Sunday.
These are the calculations the government has made in its bid to win the Upper Hunter by-election.
The government’s private joint-party room meeting last week openly joked about Kean being in witness protection.
It’s no coincidence that after weeks of not saying too much, he popped up on Tuesday talking about an area entirely unrelated to his portfolio — but right in Coalition heartland territory of law and order — when he called for an inquiry into the Luna Park ghost train deaths.
Conservative and regional ministers are privately admitting that what has been required in this campaign is clear acknowledgment that the government’s progressive agenda — and blow-ups over social issues — hurt the Coalition in the bush.
They already knew as much from the bruising experience of blow-ups past, including over energy, koalas, abortion and drugs.
But now, for their mind, the election strategy, reflected right through to a cabinet level, confirms it.
More broadly, every single announcement of note (of which there aren’t many) is currently being signed off by the office of Deputy Premier John Barilaro, who has been running a tight ship in a bid to reverse historic trends and hold the by-election seat.
The discipline, a display of which has not been seen in the government since the last state election, has worked well locally in the Upper Hunter.
But it raises the question of when you strip away these policies, what is left?
In fact, so much so, that cabinet on Monday night ran for only an hour.
While it’s tempting to subscribe to the old adage that a quick meeting’s a good meeting when it comes to politicians on the taxpayers’ dime, it’s very hard to make the case that record-short cabinet meetings are a sign of good governance.
Even in parliament itself there has been limited government businesses up for discussion for the past fortnight.
None of this is a sign of efficiency. It’s a sign there was very little on the agenda.
The Upper Hunter poll is just about as critical as by-elections come — it will be a test for both Berejiklian and Labor leader Jodi McKay.
If Labor manages to win the seat, Berejiklian will find herself even more captive to the crossbench, solidifying her loss of majority government.
If the Nationals win the seat, McKay’s leadership will face a fresh assault and struggle to survive.
McKay has pulled out all stops for the campaign, ramming home her status as a “Gloucester girl” and using parliamentary time to flesh out Labor’s by-election strategies.
If she can’t win a seat on a 2.6 per cent margin after a sex scandal, her future will be on the line.
McKay showed the perils and pitfalls of getting policy wrong against a by-election backdrop this week.
She badly bungled her own law and order credentials by trying to water down a proposal for blood testing offenders who spit on police.
In doing so she managed to infuriate colleagues on both the left and right of the party — no mean feat.
The twist is that it was McKay who put up a proposal for blood testing offenders in 2019, which her colleagues say was to endear herself to pro-law and order forces.
“She’s now alienated the only constituency she was actually winning by making up the policy in the first place,” one Labor source said.
It hasn’t been all smooth sailing for the government either, even with an iron clad approach to discipline.
The breaking news late yesterday of government MP Gareth Ward under investigation for sexual assault only adds to the mood that the 10-year-old Coalition government is scandal-plagued.
This allegation hurts the standing of the whole team, particularly on the back of former member for the Upper Hunter Michael Johnsen resigning after a sex allegation was made against him.
The discipline shown during the campaign also belies deep tensions within the upper echelons of government over Berejiklian’s willingness last week to make captain’s calls putting NSW on virus restrictions in response to the COVID-19 cases of only a man and his wife.
Some of the government’s most senior officials only learnt via Twitter on Sunday that Berejiklian had decided to extend restrictions for a week despite there being no further cases.
With just over a week until polling day, it remains the case that anything can happen and everyone is walking a political tightrope to avoid a vote-losing step.
But conservative MPs will remind the government that there has been a clear admission that they know full well some of their policies and people don’t do the Coalition any favours in seats like the Upper Hunter.
And the real question will be just how they negotiate this tension until the next election.
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