NSW election: Dominic Perrottet campaigning by seat of his pants

Standing in Marriott Park in the heart of Nowra, NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet is pitched his first curveball question of the campaign: Is he standing in the seat of Kiama or South Coast?

Dominic Perrottet in Junction St, Nowra. Picture: NCA Newswire / Gaye Gerard

Standing in Marriott Park in the heart of Nowra, NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet is pitched his first curveball question of the campaign: Is he standing in the seat of Kiama or South Coast?

“We are standing in the seat of Kiama, just on the border,” Mr Perrottet replies confidently.

“We’re actually in the seat of South Coast,” the journalist corrects him, with the border lying less than 2km to the west.

Compared with Anthony Albanese’s infamous cash rate gaffe on the first day of the federal election campaign, the slip-up hardly ranks – but then again this is a low-energy campaign where both parties have rarely strived.

Mr Perrottet is seven hours into the Liberals’ first election bus trip of the campaign – two days after pre-polls open and five days before the March 25 poll – venturing into the vulnerable seat of South Coast, representing an expansive enclave from Shoalhaven Heads to Durras.

Devoid of Liberal Party branding or personality, the unassuming white bus is the most fitting metaphor for the battle between Mr Perrottet and Chris Minns to be premier – like, as someone quips, watching two guys interview for a job at KPMG.

Unlike Labor’s Minns-branded and range-limited electric bus, the Premier’s bus runs on diesel – take from that what you will.

In an effort to spruce up the anodyne atmosphere as the pack of journalists waits to depart NSW Parliament House, the Premier’s advisers play tracks from the his campaign launch in the marginal seat of Leppington, in Sydney’s west, two weeks prior.

Mr Perrottet, Liberal South Coast candidate Luke Sikora, Kiama MP Melanie Gibbons, Education Minister Sarah Mitchell and retiring South Coast MP Shelley Hancock in Marriott Park. Picture: NCA Newswire / Gaye Gerard

The chorus of Mr Perrottet’s signature campaign tune – The Distance, by Cake – seems to get stuck on repeat; a foreboding sign of what is likely to come. Even the grey weather seems to lament the lacklustre campaign.

At the WestConnex control centre in St Peters, in Sydney’s inner west, the Premier announces his party’s next election policy: increasing the Transurban-owned motorway’s speed limit by 10km/h. The battle of ideas has really reached full tempo.

Overlooking WestConnex, and interrupted sporadically by the deafening noise of planes overhead and two-tonne trucks passing, the Premier’s eyes seem to glaze over as he works his way through the usual talking points.

It goes to the heart of the Coalition’s key themes: Labor can’t be trusted to manage the economy; only the Liberals have a long-term economic plan.

But with costings from the independent Parliamentary Budget Office released later that day, Mr Perrottet is unwilling to engage in whether his election commitments will see the state’s eye-watering gross debt ceiling increase.

A question on whether he has abandoned his ideological support for asset recycling in light of ditching putting a line through privatisation almost elicits a slip-up. “I will always believe in …,” Mr Perrottet begins, before catching himself and correcting course.

With just days left in the campaign, we may never know.