Alan Jones ‘sacking’ may win Michael Daley as many fans as it loses votes

Michael Daley will sack Alan Jones — and the whole SCG Trust — if elected.

Michael Daley took a calculated risk yesterday in “sacking” Alan Jones, if elected, from the Sydney Cricket Ground Trust board.

The move alienated a powerful Sydney broadcaster but brought the stadiums issue back to the forefront, reminding voters in key battleground bush seats about the $2 billion the government has pledged to spend on city stadiums.

The announcement also raised Daley’s name recognition among voters, with him being Labor leader only since October.

When Barry O’Farrell became premier in 2011 after a big “small target” campaign, he and his staff — some of whom work for Premier Gladys Berejiklian — boasted that he wanted to “take state politics off the front pages” after the shenanigans of the Labor years.

What Daley did yesterday achieved the opposite, while risking alienating Jones and his listeners. Given Jones’s listenership, Daley’s outburst would probably have finished him if he was a Liberal politician, but as a Labor leader, it could win him as many fans as it loses him votes.

In 2005, Morris Iemma copped one too many bollockings from Jones over the desalination plant in Sydney and refused to go on his show any more.

This did not hurt his prospects in the 2007 election one iota. This is because many of Jones’s listeners are over-55s who vote Liberal but can swing to minor parties.

Contrast this to when Jones and his fellow 2GB broadcaster Ray Hadley took on former Liberal premier Mike Baird over greyhound racing — Baird’s govern­ment lost to the Shooters in a record swing in the Orange by-election and the Coalition’s prospects nosedived overnight.

In a way, what Daley was saying was self-evident. Given he opposes the new Allianz Stadium redevelopment, he could hardly keep the board that pushed so hard to make it happen.

There are also concerns that the SCG Trust is unwieldy with 16 members as people such as ­O’Farrell are accommodated.

There is no doubt an interview in Japan where Berejiklian said to me in 2016 that she could build two new stadiums at once (without her senior staff even knowing she was about to do it) has hurt the government and Labor is exploiting it in the bush.

Allianz Stadium is obviously one of those two developments.

Berejiklian until then had gone small target, small target, small target. With the stadiums promise, she went big target. Now she is back to small target.

That is why the stadiums issue still resonates. It has not been replaced by another narrative.

Berejiklian, meanwhile, took advantage of the Daley outburst to bring back the image of the old parliamentary version of Daley — the attack dog — and questioned his temperament.

With the polls at 50-50 and a minority-government outcome to either side looking more likely each day, Berejiklian decided her best target was the question of the fitness of Daley for office.

It is almost as if the Premier has taken her fate out of her own hands and is hoping for a Daley mistake in the final campaign weeks to retain government.