NSW State Election Results to be a Cliff Hanger

The upcoming NSW State Election result may prove to be a cliff hanger as the ruling party is set to lose some of the marginal seats to Labour or Greens or independents. Current party positions in NSW Parliament are shown in the following table:

As can be seen from the above table, Labour has to recapture a minimum of 9 seats form the marginal liberal/National held seats in order to get over the line to from Government. Taking a close look at those marginal seats like East Hills, Swansea, Prospect, Macquarie Fields, Monaro, Rockdale etc., it seems a definite possibility because of many unpopular decisions made by the Liberal/National Government in the last 4 years. The voters directly affected by these unpopular decisions may register their protest votes against the current Liberal/National Government.

When Gladys Berejiklian took over as the premier of NSW following the resignation of Mike Baird, she had to tackle many of the unpopular decisions made by her predecessor. For example many of the residents are very angry about the WestConnex project which consumed the family homes of many long term residents living in the path of the road and the tunnel. The other unpopular decision made by Mike Baird was disciplining the “Grey Hound Racing” Industry which was blamed for animal cruelty and reforms were forced upon them which threatened to close down the entire industry. The NSW health system has buckled under the pressure because of increasing demands and inadequate resources, resulting in many procedural errors in various hospitals leading to fatalities. The council mergers was another bone of contention which saw processions taken out by disgruntled councillors and other council staff threatening legal action. The protracted delays to the CBD Light Rail Project has left many small businesses in ruins and the associated cost blowout has raised many questions about this Governments capacity to reign in the overzealous contractors.

The above unpopular decisions and actions have given Labour some ammunition to attack the Liberal/National coalition’s record and people can be convinced by Labour politicians of more of those unpopular actions coming their way if they re-elected the Liberal/National Coalition. The question is whether Labour has leaders who can effectively articulate and highlight these failures of Liberal/National Government and whether Labour can put forward credible alternate policies to win people’s hearts and votes? I am afraid the current crop of Labour politicians have neither the charisma of Kristina Keneally nor the political stature of Bob Carr to deliver a majority Government to Labour. Therefore I predict a cliff hanger result coming up in March 2019 NSW State elections