Nationals’ win deepens ALP disarray on energy

As always in interpreting by-election results, important caveats apply in analysing Labor’s disastrous showing in the Upper Hunter NSW by-election on Saturday. Deputy Opposition Leader Richard Marles, understandably, wants to play down federal implications from the National Party’s win. It was, as he said on Sunday, a state election. While the Berejiklian government has had its share of scandals, it has managed the Covid-19 pandemic safely and well, keeping the state open for business. Voters did not have their baseball bats out for Gladys Berejiklian or Nationals leader John Barilaro. The Nationals fielded a presentable local candidate, construction manager David Layzell, after the resignation of their former MP Michael Johnsen, who has denied raping a sex worker in the Blue Mountains in 2019.

NSW Labor leader Jodi McKay, whose position is now in doubt, was honest in her assessment. Labor had “fundamental issues” of how it was connecting with the public. “We didn’t expect our vote to be torn away like it was”, especially to independents. Labor achieved a paltry 20.8 per cent of the primary vote, suffering a 9 per cent swing against it. On Sky News, Mr Marles was eager to deny that internal Labor divisions over coal and gas contributed to the result.

Harder heads disagree. Joel Fitzgibbon, who represents Hunter in federal parliament and who resigned from shadow cabinet in November, said the result highlighted the party’s image problem with blue-collar workers, its traditional base. A few days ago, the party and trade unions were in disarray over the decision by opposition energy spokesman Chris Bowen and shadow cabinet to oppose a $600 million gas plant in the region, announced by the Morrison government last week. “We had a primary vote with barely a two in front of it and it is a real wake-up call for the Labor Party,” Mr Fitzgibbon told The Australian.

Mr Fitzgibbon and colleague Meryl Swanson, also from the NSW Right, are backing the government’s plan to fund the plant, in a rebuke to Mr Bowen and Labor Treasury spokesman Jim Chalmers, who criticised the proposal. Ms Swanson represents the seat of Paterson, where the proposed plant will be built in Kurri Kurri, creating jobs. The project is also supported by the Australian Workers Union but opposed by the Left’s Australian Manufacturing Workers Union.

The government, predictably, is under fire from green advocates for its decision to approve the plant. Its goals are important: to ensure electricity supplies are maintained when the Liddell coal-fired power station closes and help put a ceiling on the electricity price at times of peak demand. It is expected to create up to 600 new jobs during construction, and will support 1200 indirect jobs across NSW in the longer term. The plant can be converted to run on hydrogen rather than gas if and when supplies become available at an affordable price. Nor, as we noted last week, does the plan contradict the International Energy Agency’s blueprint for net-zero emissions by 2050.

More important than energy or environmental issues, however, is the attitude of the major parties to workers whose livelihoods are on the line. In an interview with The Australian, the Prime Minister struck a chord when he said lower- and middle-income voters want to be empowered to be “in charge of their own lives”. They do not see themselves as “held back as some sort of a victim of the system” who could only be helped by government. Workers “don’t think like that at all. They haven’t thought like that, if at all, certainly not for a very long time’’.

One state by-election and one energy plant are not pointers to likely results in the federal poll due within a year. But the battle lines are emerging more clearly.