Sam Dastyari: Crash or crash through for both leaders

Gladys Berejiklian and Michael Daley each have very different, but very achievable, paths to victory next week.

Brace yourself. The final week of the state election campaign is going to be the dirtiest, meanest and most ­vicious in the state’s history.

If you have the misfortune of living in a marginal seat, you might want to turn off your TV, stop listening to radio, not check your mail and suspend your facebook account.

Consider avoiding train stat­ions, bus stops and shopping malls too. The election is about to be everywhere. Welcome to NSW.

Columnist Sam Dastyari. Picture: Jonathan Ng

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A place where ‘whatever it takes’ is a way of life, the parliament is called ‘the bear pit’ and the rum corps isn’t a distant memory but a how-to-guide.

Nobody wins elections here by being nice. You win them by pounding your opponents into the dirt and keeping them there until after Election Day.

It’s brutal. It’s ugly. It’s NSW.

Nobody expected this state election to be competitive — least of all the Government. A new Labor leader (Michael Daley) and a big infrastructure spend was meant to see them through.

That’s not how it is shaping up. With a little over a week to go, both the Liberal/National ­coalition and the Labor Party have a path to victory.

The question is whether they are prepared to embrace what it takes to achieve that.

First to the Liberals.

There is no way to soften this message: Glady’s Berejiklian’s ­­re-election campaign is a dumpster fire.

Of course, most of it not her fault. The contamination from the federal Liberal Party is a tremendous weight in her saddle. The Morrison Government spends its days consuming media oxygen with resignations, petty scandals and archaic policy disputes.

It hasn’t helped that the drunk uncle of Australian politics, Barnaby Joyce, decided to launch an ill-fated comeback two weeks before a state poll. It all has the feel of a D-grade political sitcom with poor script ­writers hacking out the scripts.

Not that the NSW Liberals are helping themselves.

Regardless of the merits of their achievements, this campaign has been a dismal sales job.

What exactly is the reason they are giving people to vote for them?

Is it ‘Don’t trust Labor?’, or is it ‘Let’s get it done NSW?’, or is it ‘Gladys is a really nice person?’.

I honestly don’t know anymore. And the problem is, neither do most voters.

Gladys has one path to victory: burn the village and salt the earth.

An uncompromising negative ­attack campaign. And that, I am ­informed, is exactly what she is now planning to do.

The NSW Coalition has not spent their election war chest.

Advertising insiders are talking about a huge campaign that is starting this weekend.

Sunday to Wednesday will be wall-to-wall TV advertising and then digital advertising will be pounded until polling day. It will be a relentless assault on Michael Daley.

The Liberals know that when you throw enough mud, some of it sticks. Pulling off a negative campaign while protecting Glady’s squeaky clean image isn’t easy.

NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian and Deputy Premier John Barilaro on the campaign trail in Lismore. Picture: Nathan Edwards

But her and her team remaining in government depends on it. ‘Everyone hates negative campaigns’, Bill Clinton’s pollster Stan Greenberg once told me.

‘Everyone is disgusted by them. Do you know why we do them?’, he went on to ask rhetorically.

“Because they work.”

The Government’s positive message hasn’t worked and now they will try to tear down Michael Daley. It’s the time and tested NSW politics approach.

The Labor path to victory is different. Michael Daley knows what he has to do is not blink. That’s it.

A win is unlikely but if Michael Daley talks about anything except the Government’s plan to rebuild stadiums for the next eight days, he will certainly lose.

Stay the course and push the bush is the internal mantra in the Michael Daley camp.

Meaning, keep on message and ­remain focused on regional NSW, where the idea of spending money on Sydney stadiums is kryptonite for the Government.

It would be easy to be distracted, to try to venture onto new turf. To say and do more.

But that would be a mistake and the team around Michael knows that. Labor’s campaign director Kaila Murnain is the best in the country.

She’s not going to let the campaign deviate. Cutting through with one message is hard enough for an opposition.

When you are getting traction you stick with it.

With only days to go, both major parties will be doing everything they can to get your attention. So brace yourself for the onslaught.

NSW Labor leader Michael Dale. Picture: AAP

I spent the week trying to convince Kyle Sandilands and Jackie Henderson to host a debate between Gladys Berejiklian and Michael Daley.

A proper debate. Not the ABC stage managed rubbish that no one watches.

A no-holds-barred, ‘this is what I think of you’ slugfest before polling day. Moderated by two radio hosts who know this city but couldn’t care less about Labor or Liberal. But I’m struggling to get them interested.

“We just don’t care that much,” Kyle tells me. The ‘we’ being his ­listeners. You don’t get to No. 1 in the FM ratings, and stay there for a ­decade, without knowing your audience. Knowing what they are interested in hearing.

And that’s the problem.

Both Gladys and Michael have a path to victory.

Both can win this election. But is anyone listening?