Mike Baird replaces consensus approach with driven leadership

The steady as she goes approach to leadership has been replaced as Mike Baird pushes ahead with favoured projects.

Mike Baird, centre, makes an announcement on WestConnex, where repeated design changes have led to claims of indecision, alongside federal Infrastructure Minister Paul Fletcher, right. Picture: Mark Evans

Only a year ago, Mike Baird seemed invincible. Fresh from an election victory that confirmed his popularity with a thumping ­government majority, the NSW Premier looked destined for a long reign.

Baird still carries the air of a confident leader. But gone is the smooth consensus style that marked his initial phase in running the nation’s largest state economy. Gone is the studied leadership ­persona of a man intent on projecting stability, above all else, after Barry O’Farrell’s abrupt, bizarre departure as premier in April 2014 for failing to declare a $3000 bottle of wine.

Baird is now grappling with a mounting list of political headaches, most self-induced, as he rushes out policy decisions and adopts what is widely perceived as a steamroller approach to implementing them. His willingness to bypass the NSW parliament and interest groups that would normally be backers of a Coalition government reveal this Premier to be a risk-taker. His critics go further, ­claiming dictatorial edicts are ­replacing expected democratic consultation processes.

Certainly the clean-cut Premier is fast using up some goodwill as he creates new enemies with the ­potential to do real damage to his stranglehold on office, even if the next election seems a long way off in March 2019. Baird’s office awaits the next round of opinion polls with interest but claims not to be perturbed. Says one senior ­insider: “It has been a turbulent ­period and I suspect we’ve lost some skin. But I’d be amazed if we were in a dire position.”

Opponents of forced local council mergers across NSW, some of them conservatives from Baird’s own side, are unlikely to forget that their suburban or ­regional fiefdoms were taken from them. They claim the amalgamations this year proceeded with undue haste, breaching commitments last term that there would be “no enforced mergers”. They dispute the hard sell from Baird that mergers across the state were warranted to reduce back-office inefficiency and unnecessary duplication of services.

The WestConnex motorway, a project meant to improve road ­access to the city from the west, where most of Sydney lives, is a big sore point for inner-suburb communities not wanting the disruption of construction work and eventual spillage of heavy traffic at exit points into their neighbourhoods. Repeated changes to the WestConnex design including amended routes, tunnel add-ons and larger numbers of potentially displaced residents are fuelling claims of indecision at the top — and a disregard for those affected at the bottom.

Strict liquor licensing laws ­related to late-night city pub lockouts and statewide takeaway sales were inherited after O’Farrell’s tough response to alcohol-fuelled violence at Kings Cross, but Baird finds himself caught between competing interests here too: a ­report due next month by retired High Court judge Ian Callinan on the implementation of the two-year-old laws pits victims’ groups, police, doctors and emergency services wanting to keep the status quo against the financial clout of the liquor industry pressing for a relaxation of the laws to restore ­alleged lost business. Younger generation revellers want back the freedom to drink ad nauseam.

Under Baird, NSW was the first state to regulate Uber as an alternative to traditional taxi services — but the change has incensed the closed shop of taxi owners who ­believe they paid high licence fees for a fixed market share that is now slipping away from them.

Against type for a supposedly pro-business Liberal premier, Baird has enraged cruise ship companies and parts of the tourism industry by requiring the use of low-sulphur fuels in Sydney Harbour, and eventually along the NSW coast. This decision stems from the complaints of Balmain residents, not known for their Liberal-voting proclivities, about pollution sickness caused by vessels docked in nearby White Bay. Cruise ship owners have hit back, saying low-sulphur fuels costing $250-a-tonne more than heavier fuels will push up prices and risk dangerous on-board leaks during fuel changeovers. Despite Baird’s ­insistence that his government is following international trends on the issue, shipowners say the new requirements are not based on scientific studies or local surveys of the impact of fuels with a higher sulphur output.

Baird has boosted his pro-environment credentials with Greens and wildlife protection groups for resisting pressure from some businesses, surfers and media to put shark netting and traditional drum lines along NSW north coast beaches after a number of shark attacks, including two fatalities, over the past two years. While Baird is a keen surfer, he has preferred to side with environmental scientists who say the harm to other marine life could be catastrophic if traditional methods were used along the coast. Rejecting an extension of the shark netting system that runs between metropolitan Wollongong and Newcastle, Baird has instead backed alternative high technology “eco shark barriers” and “smart drum lines” for the north coast. Despite further pledges to tag sharks and send “real-time” tweets to alert surfers to nearby sharks, the critics are not happy.

No decision better epitomises the new-model Mike Baird, and the political script to go with it, than his announcement that the big-money NSW greyhound ­industry is to be shut down next year. An industry review conducted by former High Court judge Michael McHugh, following the airing of an ABC Four Corners program last year, made damning findings about the large-scale slaughter of underperforming greyhounds and the cruel practice of using live-baiting to train racing dogs. McHugh did envisage a ­response by parliament. But Baird did not wait, his excuse being that the report was delivered when parliament was in recess and he ­needed to act now.

The outcry from the $335 million NSW greyhound ­industry of gambling interests, the owners of 7000 dogs registered for racing in the state and punters was not surprising. What Baird did not expect, unless he was simply willing to risk it, was the emergence of some unusual alliances arrayed against him. One senior insider in Baird’s government puts it this way: “It’s a weird combination. You’ve got Ray Hadley on radio, commentators from News Limited ­papers and the ALP locked in ­behind the industry. Those alliances were not foreseen but if you ­actually read the report by McHugh you’ll see it is very conclusive.”

There lies an important clue to Baird’s motivations, and his desire to act sooner rather than later on important issues, so his supporters say. The Premier is not content with being a timeserver who breaks records for lasting more than a decade in office. He wants to look back knowing he tried to drive positive change consistent with a modern state. He wants progress on social issues. He wants to oversee the physical transformation of Sydney and NSW generally with roads and rail infrastructure that can cope with future population expansion.

It sounds idealistic, especially when so many politicians are captive to the 24-hour news cycle. But Baird’s message seems to be that he would rather leave with a legacy than be remembered as a do-nothing premier. Baird and the team in his office are keenly aware of Bob Carr’s record as Labor premier. But they are also mindful that, the environment aside, many big issues were left ­untackled.

The flip side of downplaying populism is the flak Baird now cops. Critics argue he is turning ­arrogance into a virtue and even imposing a nanny state. “So what is Baird saying?” asks one. “That it’s OK to be a bene­volent dictator?”

Baird does not see it that way. He tells The Australian he has ­always taken the view that he came into politics to make a difference. “That involves difficult and often controversial decisions,” he says. “It is important to take people with you on those decisions, and we’ve tried to do that.”

Supporters of Baird add ­another element to help explain his approach, for example, to dogmatism on greyhounds. He has ­expressed sympathy for owners, saying after a meeting with industry representatives: “I can’t ­imagine how they feel. I know they are gutted.” Yet at the same time Baird remains steadfast that there is no prospect of changing his mind. This is not inflexibility, say insiders, but Baird looking at everything he does through the prism of “what is the right thing to do”. So Baird is thinking about legacy — but he is also apparently ­applying the ethics and values of his Christian faith. “An important side to Mike Baird that you should consider is that there is a strong moral conscience at work in the decisions he makes and how he comes to them,” says a senior Liberal source.

There are two sides to Baird. He is the son of Bruce Baird, who served as transport minister in the Greiner state government. He is an economic dry committed to budget surpluses, lower debt and working where possible with the private sector in partnership deals. He went to the last election with a plan to privatise the “poles and wires” of the NSW electricity grid still in state-owned hands, and ­angered unions bitter about probable job losses. Baird’s pro-business attitude reflects not just his Liberal Party lineage but past ­career as an investment banker with Deutsche Bank and HSBC.

The other side to Baird is his ­religious faith. He keeps his faith private and does not push it on other people but it undoubtedly provides ballast to his political thinking. A former student at The King’s School, Parramatta, Baird seriously considered entering the Anglican ministry at one stage. His employer gave him a year off to study at a Canadian theology college. He then switched direction, back to banking and eventually to politics.

Morality is said to be driving the NSW Premier’s refusal to blink on the greyhound racing ban. In tweets, Baird has highlighted parts of McHugh’s report, in particular that the industry has implicitly condoned and caused “the ­unnecessary deaths of tens of thousands of healthy greyhounds” and “engaged in the barbaric practice of live baiting”. Baird will not countenance even a compromise to gradually wind down greyhound racing in the face of arguments that a sudden end could lead to a further, wholesale slaughter of retired dogs and cost tax­payers billions of dollars in compensation to owners.

Baird’s morality aside, it is evident that hard-headed pragmatism does operate inside the Premier’s brain — and his office. Risky or not, Baird obviously thinks the greyhounds issue will disappear as a problem. “We think the community is over greyhounds,” one government source tells The Australian. “An ­Essential poll found 55 per cent supported the ban and 20 per cent opposed it. We haven’t done any polling but we are doing some ­surveying as part of the transition.” So much for the “gutted” racing ­industry? Not so, say those who know Baird and insist he is empathetic.

Baird admits he and his government could do better on consultation and communication, particularly with WestConnex and “those several hundred residents who are going to have to go through the trauma of leaving their homes”. Part of dealing with this headache is to handball the matter of compulsory acquisitions to the state’s customer service commissioner, Michael Pratt. Baird says “real people, real families” losing their homes must be treated with fairness, dignity and compassion — but he remains unbending on WestConnex, saying the benefits will be enormous. He does not accept the arguments that the project will merely shift the traffic choke closer to the city or that constant changes can be made without added costs.

Baird’s inner circle of senior ­advisers is hardly a prayer group. All hard-nosed pragmatists, they meet every morning at 8.15 to map out strategy for the short and long term. Meetings are chaired by chief of staff Bay Warburton, a former McKinsey executive. They ­include Nigel Blunden, a former Nine Network reporter and press secretary to Joe Hockey and Brendan Nelson; Clive Mathieson, ­director of economic infrastructure and state priorities, and former editor of The Australian; Imre Salusinszky, media director and former state political reporter for The Australian; Philippa King, ­director of social policy seconded from DFAT; Caroline Hutcherson, director of parliamentary business and formerly press secretary to Chris Hartcher; Jodie Doodt, director of programming and events and formerly in a similar role with Tony Abbott; and ­adviser Tim Robertson, formerly with minister Brad Hazzard.

Baird meets weekly with this group and with the head of his ­department. His advisory group is weighted in favour of people with considerable media experience, and how the NSW Premier is taking a different approach to spreading his message. Determined not to be trapped by the 24-hour media cycle, Baird often goes for days without engaging the media pack. He is a frequent user of Twitter and Facebook, which has irritated some news organisations that claim he is attempting to bypass traditional media.

Baird disagrees, arguing he does not want to be just a daily commentator on events and that traditional media still gets what it wants. Says one insider: “We don’t govern as much through The Daily Telegraph as previous governments have. We do try to use social media. It can’t be helped if that rubs the Tele up the wrong way.”

Baird irritated some journalists by using Twitter and online videos to talk directly to voters to call for a rise in the GST, and to announce travel concessions for asylum-seekers. Media adviser Salusinszky denied making a remark to staff, as quoted in the Telegraph, that Baird wanted his own TV channel “like North Korea”.

There have been other stresses in media relations ­between Baird and top commercial radio broadcasters, notably Alan Jones and Hadley. Baird has been criticised for bending to Jones on the ships sulphur-level issue, yet the pair remain at loggerheads on councils and other issues. Baird seems to take a similar attitude on council mer­gers as on greyhounds. “The issue has died down in public,” says a senior source. “People want their rubbish collected on time and their potholes fixed. We may have upset Alan Jones, but we don’t see it bubbling along as a major negative any more.”