Fresh Start for NSW: Premier Chris Minns Temporarily Extends Labor’s National Outreach

The AIM Network

2 years ago

By Denis Bright

The NSW election results were a historical milestone in Australia’s political history. Labor is in control of both the federal government and each of the mainland states and territories. Only Tasmania currently lies outside the national loop of Labor hegemony which will be tested again before mid-2025 in that state as well as in forthcoming elections in Queensland, WA and the ACT.

In welcoming the result, both Prime Minister Albanese and Premier Minns promised to work diligently to advance contemporary concerns such as a greater voice for indigenous Australians and struggling families of all cultural persuasions. The Australian Labor Party in government is indeed in a new phase of rebirth with a capacity to extend its outreach by canny policies deliveries, internal consensus building and innovative political communication to a more skeptical electorate. in the future.

Australia indeed has run against the trends evident in other representative democracies where centre-left parties are largely in political retreat at least in the short-term pending electoral breakthroughs in the currently unhappy electorates in countries like France, Greece and Britain.

Basically, there is a lot of pain in neoliberal societies here and overseas. One of the greatest cheers from the assembled Labor faithful when Premier Minns gave his acceptance speech was his commitment to stop the privatization of government assets. As the investment arm of NSW Treasury Corporation (TCorp), the NSW Generations Fund was built on assets derived from privatization by successive state LNP governments. This privatization continued under the reign of the outgoing state LNP government with the transfer of government assets in the Westconnex motorway project to the NSW Generations Fund.

In 2021, The West Australian announced that a cash desperate state government had managed the seed capital invested in the NSW Generations Fund established in 2018:

“Hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars are being invested in tax havens and dictator-led nations accused of human rights abuses through a government fund established by the NSW premier, Labor says.

Shadow treasurer Daniel Mookhey released documents showing where some of the money inside the NSW Treasury Corporation’s NSW Generations Fund is invested.

The opposition estimates at least $225 million is invested in countries which it says are too risky, including Russia, Cayman Islands, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.“

Peter Hannam of The Guardian (21 October 2021) made the following comments about the investment profile of the NGF:

“A controversial New South Wales government investment fund has hundreds of millions of dollars placed in countries ranging from Angola and Russia to the Cayman Islands tax haven, according to allocations made public for the first time.

The disclosures, obtained by the Labor shadow treasurer, Daniel Mookhey, reveal that the NSW Generations Fund has 12% of its $15bn-plus investments in so-called emerging markets.

The state’s new treasurer, Matt Kean, responded to questions from Guardian Australia saying he would a commission a review of the government’s managed funds to ensure they were ‘consistent with [environmental, social and governance] principles and in ways that build a better future’.

Set up in 2018 with $10bn in seed capital by Kean’s predecessor and now premier, Dominic Perrottet, the Generations Fund was intended to be used to repay state debt. However, with the budget now deep in debt and likely to remain so for years, the fund – earmarked to expand to $90bn by 2031 – will effectively rely on borrowing to expand.”

Capital growth in the NSW Generations Fund (GGF) is marketed as a Plan for the Future (Liberal Party of NSW):

Growing our economy so we can create secure and well-paying jobs and pay for the services NSW needs – and we’ll do it without taxing you more.
Reducing the pressure on household budgets by supporting you through the current challenges, while building the foundations for your financial security.
Investing in our frontline services for the long-term by hiring more doctors, nurses and teachers to recover from the strain of the pandemic.
Building for the future with our major infrastructure projects coming online, we’ll continue to invest in the roads, rail, schools and hospitals to keep ahead of future growth.
Empowering local communities because if we focus on our neighbourhoods, NSW will be stronger than ever.

Regrettably, the NSW Government has divested its financial interest in the WestConnex Road Project to top up the NGF’s Debt Retirement Fund. Treasurer Matt Kean praised this initiative which will increase the toll burdens paid for by motorists. The following details were included in the Third Annual Report of the NGF which was released on 21 December 2021.

Details of the most recent achievement of the Community Services and Facilities Fund (CSFF) were not available on the Treasurer’s Media releases and the list of achievements on the NGF’s Annual Report of course ceased at 30 June 2021. Appendix 1 does list the projects in the My Community Programme by state electorate to September 2021. Some have great merit such as the registered delivery van to provide emergency food relief in the Albury Electorate. Basically, this was pork-barrelling raised to exponential levels.

The NSW Government has been highly co-operative with new federal funding initiatives from the Albanese Government. The McKell Institute in Sydney has published an article from Samantha Hutchison outline funding shortfalls for NSW under the Morrison Government (October 2022):

NSW Treasury established a special fund to promote infrastructure and community development in fifteen local government areas across Western Sydney. WestInvest funding will be provided to build new and improved facilities that will deliver community benefit and help turbocharge economic recovery across six areas:

Parks, urban spaces and green space;
Enhancing community infrastructure such as local sporting grounds;
Modernising local schools;
Creating and enhancing arts and cultural facilities;
Revitalising high-streets;
Clearing local traffic.

These financial intrigues assisted the NSW electorate to overlook the troubled history of NSW Labor which readers might like to research on the ICAAC web site.

As counting proceeds well beyond election day to allow for the surge in pre-polling and postal votes, there are still many seats in doubt and the prized goal of majority government has yet to be delivered by future counting as shown by the last releases from ABC News on election night. The final projections were probably a little too cautious in winding back the number of Labor seats to 45 over earlier projections of 47 seats.

It is still not certain if the NSW electorate has completely rejected the appeal of minority government from the cross-bench with every major policy item being subjected to the whims of Green and independent members. In the NSW Regions and the Legislative Council minority parties still had a field day on 25 March 2023.

The National Party’s only casualty was in the seat of Monaro. This was an epic result for a difficult to win regional seat which is of course influenced by the proximity of Queanbeyan to Canberra. Monaro is only won by Labor during the most favourable phases of the historical election cycles. The landslide to Labor in Monaro was not repeated in more marginal National Party seats such as Tweed and Upper Hunter.

Labor was largely triumphant against the Liberal Party along the Hunter-Metro Sydney-Illawarra Corridors which also extend west to the remarkable result in the seat of Blue Mountains. This seat is well covered in ABC News graphics with the sitting member Trish Doyle achieving a final result of 72.8 per cent after preferences.

In Western Sydney, Labor gained a 6 percent net swing after preferences. Only Badger’s Creek electorate offered some resistance to Labor’s campaign with the assistance of preference votes from One Nations vote of 8.5 per cent.

Mainstream politics in NSW is well nurtured by generous levels of government funding as defined by the NSW Electoral Commission for party endorsed candidates and independents in both houses of the NSW parliament. The eight-year term available to members of the NSW Legislative Council to re-elect half the chamber every four years is a colonial anachronism which offers government funding at a rate of $5.25 for each vote generated from a politically skeptical electorate.

Public funding rates have certainly not gone up as fast as real wages, housing prices and rents for struggling household across NSW.

The shadow of minority government has not been completely eclipsed from Australian political life. In government at federal and state/territory levels in mainland Australia, Labor’s tenure of government is always on trial from a volatile and difficult to please electorate. The Labor Movement’s political and trade union branches are opened to all comers.

The broader Labor Movement can welcome political dissenters back into the fold to restore greater stability to governments at all levels and less reliance on intrigues with foreign powers to the glee of military industrial complexes in Britain and the USA as commenced by the Morrison Government with its unfortunate AUKUS proposals.

Prepare for more financial instability for the next half century with new reservoirs of high-grade nuclear wastes when and if the proposed nuclear-powered submarines based in Port Kembla and other locations are pensioned off in the 2070s.

As an aside to the final results from the NSW elections, Premier Minns must work with the national Labor government to negotiate real alternatives to neoliberal financial frameworks. Half of all NSW state finances are dependent on grants and GST revenue carve-ups from Canberra. This is an agenda which the outgoing state LNP government chose to marginalize as a key public issue. Perhaps the electorate itself is more astute than our own cautious political establishment.

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Denis Bright is a financial member of the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance (MEAA). Denis is committed to consensus-building in these difficult times. Your feedback by using the Reply button on The AIMN site is always most appreciated. It can liven up discussion. I appreciate your little intrusions with comments and from other insiders at The AIMN. Full names are not required when making comments. However, a valid email must be submitted if you decide to hit the Reply button.