How Berejiklian and Coalition dodged a by-election bullet

The 11.06pm email on Monday from the Nationals’ pollster James Lantry to party powerbroker Jack Piggott was worrying.

NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian. Picture: Jonathan Ng

The 11.06pm email last Monday from the NSW Nationals’ pollster James Lantry to Nationals head office staffer Jack Piggott was worrying. “You won’t like Murray,” it said. “Too close. Far too close.”

Indeed it was. The tabulated poll numbers attached to the email showed the NSW Shooters, Fishers and Farmers party at 50-50 with the Nationals in Murray, the NSW seat that had been vacated by former state Nationals education minister Adrian Piccoli.

This represented a 22 per cent swing against the government. The Excel sheet of results showed the Shooters’ candidate, Helen Dalton, had 36 per cent of the primary vote to the Nationals’ 40 per cent, with Labor on 15.

In Griffith, Nationals state ­director Nathan Quigley had been waiting up for the poll result in the rental accommodation he was using during the campaign.

He decided to retire and woke up on Tuesday morning to the poll. It “took the wind out of the sails” of Quigley and the whole campaign team for several hours.

As things stood, they looked like losing Murray, even if they were hanging onto the other seat about to go to the polls, Cootamundra.

But there was another aspect to the poll that was more important in terms of the final result: in the wake of the Las Vegas massacre, those polled in both rural seats showed a greater than ­expected disapproval of any change to the gun laws.

One National said: “It gave us a pretty clear direction of what we had to do.”

The Nationals knew they now had the green light to attack, and attack hard when it came to the Shooters’ stance on gun laws — with policies that included unwinding John Howard’s post-Port Arthur national firearms agreement and reducing the age children could be trained in shooting from 12 to 10. The ­Nationals had found this sort of anti-shooter sentiment wash through during pre-poll voting, but the poll confirmed it.

Asked in Murray whether Australia’s gun laws should be “stricter”, “more relaxed” or “about right”, 34 per cent of voters thought they should be more strict, 17 per cent “less strict” and 48 per cent “about right”. The figures were similar in Murray, with “more strict” at 40 per cent, “less strict” at 10 per cent and 50 per cent of people thinking they were “about right”.

Asked if they were in favour of US-style gun laws, 82 per cent said no in Murray and 87 per cent no in Cootamundra.

The aim of the Nationals in the wake of the polling was to get voters off the issue of local Nationals members bailing mid-term amid criticism not done enough was being done for the regions and onto their “extremist” rivals.

Deputy Premier John Barilaro’s experienced chief of staff, Mark Connell — a former tobacco executive and political veteran who worked for John Fahey when he was federal finance minister at the turn of the century — decided to ask former prime minister John Howard to write a letter condemning the Shooters.

It was also signed off on by former deputy prime minister Tim Fischer.

Barilaro texted Howard with the same request.

The decision was made to print and distribute material showing the Shooters’ support for semi-automatic weapons.

Mr Barilaro and Premier Gladys Berejiklian went on a frontal assault in the parliament and the press on the “extremism” of the Shooters.

On October 8, the figures for Murray in the Nationals polling had the Nationals and Shooters level pegging on 50 per cent on a two-party-preferred basis with the Shooters on 36 per cent and the Nationals on 40 per cent in the seat.

On election day, the result ended up being 31 per cent to the Shooters — a drop of 5 per cent — with the Nationals on 39 per cent. Labor’s vote rose from 15 per cent to 20 per cent.

It was the same in Cootamundra. The Shooters’ vote in the polling had been 28 per cent to the Nationals’ 42.

Come election day, the result was Nationals 46 per cent, Shooters 23, with Labor able to come second on 24 per cent, knocking the Shooters out of the preference count.

The tactic had worked.

That great Neville Wran invention for NSW — the “optional preferential” system where voters do not have to fill out all the squares — saved the Nationals in Murray as more than 4000 voters decided to “just vote 1” and not go near the Nationals or Shooters, Fishers and Farmers party with their preferences.

These were people who did not want to vote Nationals but could not bring themselves post-Vegas to vote for the Shooters either.

In all, about 50 per cent of ­people who did not vote Nationals or Shooters in Murray decided to exhaust their votes.

The weekend’s results are critical for Ms Berejiklian and Mr Barilaro on so many levels — it stops the Premier’s majority being eroded from seven to six or five seats — and it stops the march of the Shooters, Fishers and Farmers as a potential third force in NSW politics.

The result also should stop the sort of destabilisation or division that could have occurred had a seat been lost, with the government then likely to spiral into panic ahead of the March 2019 election.

The Nationals did what they should have done in Orange last year, where they lost by 50 votes to the Shooters party leading to then deputy premier Troy Grant’s resignation.

They went hard and went dirty. Word is that it was former premier Mike Baird and his team who discouraged Grant going down the route of attacking the Shooters, Fishers and Farmers as extremists in the lead-up to that poll.

What this result in Murray means is that the Shooters, Fishers and Farmers, despite holding the seat of Orange, are now likely to be confined to a party of the NSW upper house, where a victory would have ensured they were a genuine threat to hold the balance of power in the lower house after the next election.

Shooters MP Robert Borsak begs to differ. “This is the beginning, not the end,” Mr Borsak said.

“We’re going to run in all country seats where we can find a good candidate.”

He could not see One Nation getting organised enough to take the Shooters’ support.

Borsak claimed to The Australian yesterday that the Vegas “lunatic” involved in the mass shooting there had cost his party Murray.

“That lunatic in Nevada cost us,” he said.

But as one seasoned political operative said this week, “There’s a reason why parties go negative. Because it WORKS.”

The Nationals have held Murray, despite a two-party-preferred swing against them of 18-19 per cent.

Yesterday they were ahead 53.4 per cent to 46.5 per cent.

In Cootamundra, the party suffered a primary-vote swing of 20 per cent, but a two, party-preferred swing of 11 per cent, meaning there was a 59-41 result.

Yesterday Mr Barilaro told The Australian there was no doubt in his mind that the Vegas massacre and the campaign against the Shooters’ “extremist” policies had saved his bacon in Murray.

“We were trying to say to people have a look at who you’re voting for,” Mr Barilaro said.

For their part, the Nationals now will come up with their own “Pork Barilaro” ahead of the March 2019 election to attempt to hang onto their seats.

A $1.3 billion “Regional Growth Fund” from last year’s budget is set to be rolled out.

The Nationals’ polling had an extraordinary result when it came to the male-female divide in the Shooters’ support too.

In Murray, the Shooters support was 55 per cent to 35 among men, but the Nationals’ support was reversed (55 to 36) with women. Angry older white men is where the Shooters and One ­Nation are getting their support.

Berejiklian conceded to reporters yesterday she was “extremely relieved” with the result.

Believe it. If you’ll pardon the pun, she really did dodge a bullet at the weekend.