O'Farrell's westies want more than shoe leather
Sydney Morning Herald
Friday April 1, 2011
BOTH sides of NSW politics agree: the next four years will be a battle for the hearts and minds of those who the new Opposition Leader, John Robertson, calls "the little people".Unfortunately for Labor, the election result shows that - at least for the time being - they have decided they can be best looked after by the Liberals.The Premier, Barry O'Farrell, has announced he will be doing everything in his power to consolidate that belief. Since the election he has declared that the Liberal Party is no longer a party of the north shore, noting that it now holds more seats in western Sydney.Labor needs a new approach. But based on Robertson's first performance as Opposition Leader, it has yet to come up with one.Much of what he said yesterday has already been heard by the electorate. They know the lines well, because they were repeated ad nauseam by Kristina Keneally during the election campaign. They have heard the apology, the admission the party has forgotten its roots and the promise to start listening to them again.So Robertson will need to offer a lot more than platitudes and do more than spend time in the electorates that abandoned Labor to win them back.Labor needs one thing above all else: good policy that differentiates it from the Liberals.Policy formulation will be Robertson's great test. His critics characterise him as a wrecker, not a builder. He will need to prove them wrong if he and the party are to have a future.On day one, he nominated cost of living as his policy focus. But given it is a pitch also being made by O'Farrell, Labor will need to do better than that.The party spent the entire election campaign telling the voters who abandoned it about O'Farrell's secret plan to ruin the lives of working people in NSW.The warning is unlikely to be proven correct: the Coalition won't risk a dramatic swing back to Labor with policies that upset the very people who delivered it such an enormous majority. As O'Farrell's performance during the campaign showed, he is too politically smart for that.His stated ambition is to make the switch permanent, to change the electoral map. Labor needs to find a point of difference, and fast, if it is to convince "its people" to come back.
© 2011 Sydney Morning Herald
