Jodi McKay is no match for Gladys
If the NSW Labor Party want any chance of taking back the state one day they’re going to have to do a lot better than a leader who isn’t across the economy or the big issues, writes Miranda Devine.
Labor, in its wisdom, has chosen a hard-core EMILY’s Lister as NSW Opposition Leader.
The rank and file membership cast aside the party’s brightest and best leadership prospect in a generation: Chris Minns, a hunky 39-year-old former firefighter and father of three with a Masters in public policy from Princeton University who advocates reducing union control of Labor.
Instead, they chose a 49-year-old Jodi McKay, a socially progressive former regional TV newsreader who conceded she is not across her facts and figures. But, hey, she’s a woman.
That counts more to identitarian Labor than choosing the best person for the job with the ability to win over voters in the centre.
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According to a glowing biography in the LGBTIQ Star Observer magazine, before retaking the seat of Strathfield in 2015, McKay worked at Family Planning NSW when it was developing the Proud Schools pilot, a precursor to the Safe Schools gender fluidity program. Then she worked with the NSW Gay and Lesbian Rights Lobby and ACON to introduce Safe Schools into NSW schools. So she could count on the support of the Rainbow Labor faction.
And since she belongs to the abortion advocacy group EMILY’s List, along with 75 per cent of Labor women, she benefited from a bullying campaign from List conveners demanding feminist solidarity in the leadership ballot.
But McKay’s first public pronouncement about the Premier when she became Labor leader suggests she has an inflated opinion of herself.
“I’m more than a match for her,” she said.
“I never boasted about being the dux of the school. I was the girl who won the citizenship award.”
Well, sorry, but McKay is no match for Gladys Berejiklian. Not even close.
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The Premier has never “boasted” about her achievements. She is one of the nation’s humblest and most self-effacing political leaders. The fact she often topped her classes at North Ryde High is a testament to the work ethic of a child of Armenian migrants who spoke no English until age five.
She always works harder and more diligently than her rivals and it showed when she wiped the floor with McKay’s predecessor Michael Daley during a Daily Telegraph-Sky News debate during last year’s election campaign.
Simply by being on top of the detail of her policies she showed up Daley as a lightweight who hadn’t done his homework and thought he could skate into office on the efforts of his decapitated predecessor Luke Foley, who would have been a more formidable campaigner.
And now Berejiklian is reaping the benefits of the biggest infrastructure program in NSW history, as projects come online over the next four years.
Already tens of thousands of grateful commuters are shaving hours off their weekly commute thanks to the new Northwest Metro, not to mention seeing the value of their homes skyrocket.
She’s a winner, and she did it without a quota or the ideological straitjacket of an EMILY’s List.
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It won’t be an easy task to knock off her government with platitudes and an ignorance of basic economic detail.
But even though McKay has had three months to do her homework she couldn’t say what the state’s net debt is, guessing “about $800 million”, when the right answer is that NSW is in the black to the tune of $8.8 billion.
She couldn’t say what the state’s unemployment rate was either, when The Daily Telegraph asked, guessing wrong again at 3.2 per cent when the real answer is 4.6 per cent. Nor did she know how much GST revenue the state receives. But who cares. It’s just other people’s money.
That was a car crash interview which she tried to remedy with an appearance on 2GB. But she only made things worse.
“You’re right, I have to get across get across facts and figures,” she told with Ben Fordham self-evidently. “But I also want to make sure that we’re not just a party that is about data.”
No one would accuse her of that.
Surely the defeated Minns was being sarcastic when he tweeted congratulations to his new leader: “Her debating skills, mastery of policy and experience are what NSW Labor needs to win.”
RELATED: Jodi McKay struggles to recall key economic details on first day
McKay was chosen over Minns by 63 to 37 per cent by a rank and file which is moving left in a way that will eventually render the Labor Party so out of touch with the lives of people in the suburbs and regional areas of NSW that it will become unelectable.
Labor hardheads say the former Tourism minister’s solution to every challenge is “More Jodi. More spotlight. More ‘Look at Me’.”
McKay also benefited from the dislike Labor’s general secretary Kaila Murnain has for Minns.
Murnain, 32, disliked Foley as well. She is very good at getting up the leaders she likes, but no good at stopping them bomb at elections.
Liberal voters might be smiling to themselves at this stage, but it’s no good for democracy to have a hopeless Opposition.
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