We’re nine months from the election but I am going to go out on a limb and predict that the Berejiklian Government will lose.
There are a couple of caveats.
One, Labor has to lose Luke Foley.
By lose I mean get another leader.
Foley is a nice, solid fellow who will make a very good minister but he just doesn’t have the personality to get those around him and the Labor Party supporters excited.
It’s true that governments lose elections, but you’d still want a prospective premier that’s got some fresh ideas about how to make NSW and Sydney a little better.
The second proviso to my prediction is that Gladys and her government don’t suddenly realise there’s a fairly big place called Western Sydney with a lot of electorates.
Not just that it’s there, but there are things that need doing there.
Hopefully the premier will start by kicking the backsides of the bureaucrats who drew that lovely blue line across Cobbitty and Camden for the Outer Sydney Orbital corridor using Google maps.
Will they ever learn?
In a word, no.
Bureaucrats may live under the illusion Greater Sydney ends on Burwood Road, but politically the Coalition needs Western Sydney seats to form government.
Seats like Penrith and Camden and Holsworthy and a few others besides.
There’s no doubt the premier and her colleagues would be worried some of these seats will be changing from blue to red after the election on Saturday, March 30, 2019.
If they’re not worried – and the signs aren’t good – they should be.
They would be well advised to look up issues such as lack of car parking at Leppington and Edmondon Park stations, timetables and train services to the city, Hurlstone High School, Scenic Hills, motor registries and funding for TAFE.
There’s a lot more, but even things that aren’t happening here have been resonating here.
When Western Sydney residents hear the government say there’s no money for vital services but two billion dollars will be spent to knock down and rebuild a couple of footy stadiums, well, someone in the government’s got the politics wrong.
Either that or they just don’t get Western Sydney.
Time will tell.
As a life member of the ALP I certainly hope that you are correct but I believe that we would be a certainty if we appointed s woman to lead such as my local member Kate Washington who is an extraordinary member who in her first term has shown very strong leadership in the shadow portfolios she has and has demonstrated her spirt by being regularly expelled from Parliament for getting under the skin of her opposite. I is time for a woman leader in our party to show that we care about the western suburbs as well as the regionals all that have been ignore by this city centric Coalition Government
Hear hear Frank.