Michael Daley does not have long to offer fresh policies and pull Labor past last week’s leadership debacle
New NSW Opposition Leader Michael Daley does not have long to offer fresh policies and pull Labor past last week’s leadership debacle which saw Luke Foley resign over allegations he inappropriately touched an ABC journalist, writes Anna Caldwell.
Two things are abundantly clear in the wake of Luke Foley’s shock resignation last week.
The first is that despite the haranguing Prisons Minister David Elliot has received for first raising allegations under parliamentary privilege against Foley, there is absolutely zero moral equivalence between his actions and what the former Labor leader is alleged to have done.
And secondly, now that Michael Daley has been installed as head of Labor’s NSW parliamentary delegation, the government has an entirely new set of problems to deal with. Elliott’s intervention, while careless, brought to light an important allegation in the parliament which, in effect, stopped NSW from landing a premier who is alleged to have put his hands down someone’s pants.
As the dust settles over the horror of the allegations against Foley, the questions have continued to come thick and fast for Elliott and the government as both sides promised to hit the reset button on the politics of the moment.
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But still the questions remain. Will David Elliott be disciplined?
And, crucially, what does the Premier think of his behaviour?
Then there was this question that came yesterday at a press conference with Transport Minister Andrew Constance, ascribing an odd false equivalence between the government failing to sanction Elliott and Labor failing to expel Foley:
“Aren’t both sides guilty of a double standard? Labor is saying Gladys Berejiklian should discipline or punish the corrections minister for essentially putting an issue into a public domain when a victim didn’t want to come forward.
“She’s not doing anything on that. (The government’s) saying that Labor should be expelling Luke Foley from the party. Aren’t both parties doing the same thing here?”
Both sides are plainly not doing the same thing. One side of politics for months turned a blind eye to an allegation about a man it was trying to make premier.
There was one senior female Labor MP who even told The Daily Telegraph she did not want to be made aware of the details of the allegations.
It’s a truly problematic position to take when you are trying to install a man as premier of this state.
There is no doubt Elliott was right to apologise over the careless manner in which he raised the allegations.
There are certainly incredibly complicated ethical questions about outing allegations a victim does not want outed.
But Elliott did not name the victim.
And the allegations had already been made, albeit with scant detail, in a newspaper report in May.
At that point, the ABC and senior Labor figures were fully aware of the horror of the allegations.
As were many in the press gallery.
This was entirely a scenario of Foley’s making.
And Elliott’s actions have effectively stopped a man alleged to have harassed a woman becoming premier. Think about that.
Foley’s colleagues who knew of the allegations should have done precisely that behind closed doors, long before Elliott took the issue off their hands. I, like almost every other woman working in politics I know, have been harassed by men at work.
And I, like most women, have never made a complaint for precisely the same kinds of reasons Ashleigh Raper did not want to complain.
She is entitled to that choice.
However her private story, witnessed by a Fairfax-turned-ABC journalist, did not stay secret.
It got out.
And it was a story about a man who wanted to be premier.
It was always a cat that would never go back in a bag.
Both sides of parliament rightly agree they need to reset from here.
It is a blessing for Labor that Foley has decided not to show up to parliament this week, because any association with their former leader is now poisonous.
Daley now has a honeymoon period and he must seize it — Labor is within striking distance of government. He started his leadership this week with a solid announcement of free train transport for students — a sellable policy that will instantly win the support of families.
It tackles the government on the cost of living front which will be the key battleground of the election.
But Daley must do more. He cannot afford to rest.
He does not have brand nor name recognition in the suburbs he desperately needs to win. And time is not on his side.
But working for Daley is the fact that he is a stronger retail politician than Foley ever was.
The key though will be delivering bold policies that capture the hearts and minds of voters who can deliver him government.
He should abandon the old Foley plan of waiting until after Australia Day to announce major election policies and instead rev into campaign mode immediately.
The government is indeed already worried about a Daley bounce.
Ministers are showing the telltale signs of concern, trying had to sharpen attack lines on Daley, including Roads Minister Melinda Pavey delivering a stinging attack on his driving record yesterday.
The government needs to keep its eye on the prize and pitch out big, bold ideas to the public to capture attention like Gladys Berejiklian did with her calls to halve migration.
The scene is set for a brutal battle, but both sides need to focus on the main game and forget the Elliott red herring.
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