The bi-monthly Resolve Strategic poll of state voting intention in New South Wales, produced from a combined sample of 1000 from its last two national polls, is a remarkably weak set of numbers for Labor, showing them on 30% of the primary vote – down two points on the last poll and seven on the 2023 election. The Coalition is up three on both to 38%, with the Greens 12%, up by one on the last poll and at least two on the election result. The pollster does not provide two-party preferred, but I would very roughly estimate 51-49 to the Coalition based on these primary votes. Chris Minns leads Mark Speakman 38-13, unchanged from last time.
I would normally be skeptical about such a result for a first-term government with no obvious reason to be listing so badly, and suspect that the Sydney Morning Herald might feel the same way, as its report leads with a finding that 56% support the government’s proposal to prevent “no grounds” evictions with 23% opposed. However, the only other state poll this year from a pollster other than Resolve Strategic, a RedBridge Group poll conducted from two waves in February and May, likewise suggested a close result on two-party preferred, though with substantially higher primary votes for the major parties (especially Labor).
Clarity could perhaps be provided by two looming by-elections should Labor choose to contest them, on which I have no information. These are for the seats of Hornsby and Epping, which are respectively being vacated by the erstwhile leader and deputy leader of the Liberal Party, Dominic Perrottet and Matt Kean. The date for both has been set at October 19, the same date as the Australian Capital Territory’s election and a week before Queensland’s. A Liberal preselection for Epping on Saturday was won by Monica Tudehope, daughter of Damien Tudehope, who held the seat from 2015 to 2019 and is now the leader of the Liberals in the Legislative Council. Monica Tudehope is a former policy director to Perrottet and unsuccessful contestant for last year’s preselection to fill the Senate vacancy created by the retirement of Marise Payne, which was won by Dave Sharma. Tricia Rivera of The Australian reports Tudehope was an easy first-round winner in the party ballot with 89 out of 115 votes.
The Liberal candidate in Hornsby will be Corrs Chambers Westgarth lawyer James Wallace, who won a preselection vote a fortnight ago after receiving forceful endorsement from Matt Kean and equally vehement opposition from many at the conservative end of the party. The latter included Tony Abbott, who endorsed Hornsby deputy mayor Michael Hutchence and accused Kean, newly appointed chair of the Climate Change Authority, of having “left the parliament to take a job with the Labor party”. Linda Silmalis of the Daily Telegraph reports Wallace won in the first round of a preselection ballot with 123 votes to 36 for Hutchence and 28 for a third candidate.
The other big electoral news out of the state is the Liberal Party’s failures to meet last week’s noon Wednesday nominations deadline for the September 14 council elections, estimated to have involved around 140 candidates across 18 council areas. Ben Raue at the Tally Room analyses the implications, finding the blunder has excluded the Liberals from at least 50 winnable seats across 16 councils. A request from the Liberal Party for an extension has been denied by acting Electoral Commissioner Matthew Phillips, who “was not satisfied that it is possible to lawfully extend the nomination period in line with the request and, even if it were, it would not be appropriate to do so given the very significant ramifications it would have for the conduct of the elections”. The party now says it will pursue action in the Supreme Court. The blunder resulted in the party’s state executive sacking Richard Shields as its state director on Friday, with Sky News reporting the party “had to scramble to get an interim acting state director in place so that the Epping by-election preselection could take place on Saturday”.
Can we please keep this thread for discussion of New South Wales politics. The open thread for general discussion is here.
More evidence for me that a plough a bit of a lonely furrow in terms of my political views.
I think Minna is doing a good job and can’t believe he isn’t further ahead in the polls.
But his one policy that I really don’t like (because I’m a lifelong fan of free markets) is his legislation to prevent “no grounds evictions.” And yet, if the polling is to be believed, the punters like this a lot more than they like his government.
They also seem to like Minns a fair bit. So is it possible that the 2pp result here is a little infected by voters’ attitude to the Albanese Government?
This still relatively new state government hasn’t really frightened the horses in any way, and Chris Minns as Premier seems to be well liked, even by the likes of Ben Fordham and Daily Telegraph editors, so I will attribute the results in this poll to federal factors – cost of living, Albanese federally, War in Gaza etc .
As for the state Liberals – total shit show!
Epping and Hornsby dedpir that should be easy retains for them, I will be surprised if Labor runs a candidate in Hornsby, maybe they will in Rpping because the Labor bloke who ran last time took a big chunk out of Dominic Pertotet’s then margin.
Headline in today’s DT – more fun and games to come.
I find it difficult to believe these numbers are what voters really think of the NSW state government-they look like what voters think of the Federal government. Speakman is a decent person, nothing like Dutton, but he’s ineffectual as a media performer. I don’t agree with everything Minns is doing-he’s soft on gambling reform for example-but he comes across as likeable and always on top of the issues of the day, and it’s hard to see that voters would want to swap him for Speakman. But if the poor ALP PV at state and federal level is being driven by voter reaction to interest rates/cost of living/high rents, etc, there is no way out of that, they are structural features of the economy, none of that is changing anytime soon. At least Minns doesn’t need to face the electorate until 2027, and by then it may well be the LNP who own the nation’s economic problems, not the ALP.
This is the 3rd/4th poll where ALP vote in NSW is tanking. Those polls come from a variety of pollsters.
And yet there’s disbelief…
While no doubt Albo is lead in Minns’s saddlebag, Minns’s total policy timidity and lack of any infrastructure plan (metro opening anyone) will be his epitaph if he doesn’t outline a plan.
Massive infrastructure was done for 12 years by the LNP and it’s now business as usual. Government by press release and atrophy- see 10 years of Carr – won’t cut it anymore.
Would be nice to see more diversity of NSW polling, there’s been only Resolve and one Redbridge so far.
I find it a bit rich of the NSW Liberal party to begin attacking the NSWEC for what is solely their own stuff up. The backroom of the Liberal party will need some serious fixing for them to run a campaign in which they manage to win back government at the state level.
The implications of their candidates not being able to stand at the local elections will be wide spread. For example, there will be less people to host fundraising in addition to the dissatisfaction that supporters are going to feel.
Labor aren’t losing in NSW while Minns is Premier, he’s largely a centrist which might not play well in the branches but does with the punters.
As long as he keeps the rest of them under lock and key who are largely incompetent he’ll be OK.
I’m surprised Natalie Ward didn’t look to move across to the LA through one of the by-elections, she’s probably the Libs best bet at the moment. Kellie Sloane is the only other option I see but she’s only been there for five minutes.
Speako polling at 13% as preferred Premier despite the Coalition being in front on 2PP says it all.
I wouldn’t say I found this a remarkably weak set of numbers, given Minns’ insane return to office directive, which doesn’t just affect public servants but also sends a shocking signal to the private sector to run with its worst impulses (i.e. it would be unsurprising if private workers forced back to the office in 2024 blamed Minns as well for setting the precedent).
There’s a lot of people who’ll remember that one – it’s both a morale and a substantial hip-pocket reason to be very angry with the Minns government, and it says something that this was one shift to the right both Jacinta Allan in Victoria and Steven Miles in Queensland knew to run screaming from.
Banning no-grounds evictions is a no-brainer and merely catches up NSW with other states. Anyone surprised by renters having the barest minimum of housing security being popular is probably not just a landlord, but the sort of person who shouldn’t be a landlord.
The willingness of some Labor partisans on this site to believe that copying the weakest and least popular Labor governments this century (i.e. “centrist” governments that seek to do little in government and cave easily to right-wing interests who hate Labor regardless) is the road to electoral success in spite of all evidence to the contrary will never cease to amaze me.
Minns needs to get smarter, or he’s going to make easy pickings for a vaguely competent Liberal leader, and might even give Speakman a chance to do a Bradbury next time around.
There is an old saying that opposition’s don’t win govt but existing govts lose. State Labor has not done anything so far to deny them a second term in 2027. Either there is an error in the poll figures or on the ground in seats like Riverstone things are much better
Good on you Mick. Poll is wrong because ALp is behind. There’s a lot of science in that approach old son!!
Rebecca: “Banning no-grounds evictions is a no-brainer and merely catches up NSW with other states. Anyone surprised by renters having the barest minimum of housing security being popular is probably not just a landlord, but the sort of person who shouldn’t be a landlord.”
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I have no problem with banning no-grounds evictions during the term of a lease. But most of these laws (certainly NSW and I assume the others, although I haven’t found it easy to check) also ban no-grounds evictions at the expiry of a lease.
This means that you and I can sign a contract under which I rent my house out to you for a year, and then, at the expiration of the contract, I might potentially have to prove to some authority or tribunal that I have “valid reasons” to ask you to leave the house. But you can just waltz off at the end of the lease without having to explain yourself to anybody, as long as you have given me 30 days notice. How is this fair?
Rather than bother with all of this, I could alternatively put my house on airbnb.com.au or stayz.com.au and be free to make my house available/unavailable on the short-term rental market as I wish.
In future, anybody wanting to pick up work in a coastal resort town on the eastern or southern coasts of the continent will probably need to be prepared to sleep in a tent. There won’t be any long-term rental accommodation available for love or money, because why would any landlord bother?
“Banning no-grounds evictions is a no-brainer and merely catches up NSW with other states.
What’s a landlord to do when a tenant sells the key to a property for the price of the Bond? There’s now no lease in force, the landlord has a new tenant that they didn’t approve in the house and can’t legally evict them without a lease in place?
Solution: sign them to a 6 month lease, and give them Notice 4 weeks out from the end of the lease.
meher baba: That’s not an argument for banning no-grounds evictions. It’s an argument for cracking down on AirBNB, because there’s a clearly a need to further restrain bad actors during a housing crisis. You’re even perfectly well aware of the colossal detrimental impact of your own greed on society, so it’s not like it’s a hard case to make.
Badthinker: That’s not how any of that works, but that’s never stopped you just making up stuff out of whole cloth and running with it before.
This morning Dutton is pushing for a federal takeover of the NSW Liberals
Tonight Speakman is a saying “Forget it”.
Rebecca:
In Qld, tenants can make structural alterations to a house, even a Housing Commission House, yet that isn’t grounds to serve an Eviction Notice.
I wouldn’t be surprised if the same situation exists in NSW.
Bottom line:
if it becomes impossible to evict tenants who are destroying property values in the street due to unauthorised or antiusocial activities, Landlords will choose other options, including leaving the property vacant.
Property owners always have choices, a reality that drives stalinist types nuts.
Badthinker: Yes, you can’t evict a tenant for hanging their kids’ school photo on the wall, hanging a clothesline if you didn’t bother in the first place, or installing a window air conditioner. Stalinism? You are not a serious person.
Evicting people who are genuinely antisocial or genuinely not supposed to be there is straightforward everywhere. Of course, I doubt that’s what you had in mind.
The smarter governments are moving towards sticking owners who leave rentals vacant with steep land tax. Again, “look at how awful I am, you couldn’t possibly stop me” is probably not the most effective argument.
Rebecca: “meher baba: That’s not an argument for banning no-grounds evictions. It’s an argument for cracking down on AirBNB, because there’s a clearly a need to further restrain bad actors during a housing crisis. You’re even perfectly well aware of the colossal detrimental impact of your own greed on society, so it’s not like it’s a hard case to make.”
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A landlord is not necessarily a bad actor for seeking a bit of flexibility in their leasing arrangements. Some landlords are not certain that they want to remain landlords in the longer term: eg, they might be intending to renovate their dwelling when they can afford to do so and then sell it, or may anticipate a need to move themselves or other family dwellers into it at some future point. Now, theoretically, these things are permissable under the “no-grounds evictions” legislation. But, as I understand the legislation, any decision by a landlord to terminate a lease is going to be open to disputation by the tenant, and one thing we know about government-run processes of resolution (from courts to mediation to industrial relations commissions, etc) is that the outcome is never 100% certain.
So landlords will look for ways of increasing their certainty: eg, Air Bnb: but you’d like to put a stop to that. Or they might leave their dwelling empty: and I expect that you’d like to use a punitive tax or some such to put a stop to that as well. And possibly also to put a cap on rental inreases. And so on and so forth. Soon the question arises as to who effectively “owns” the dwelling: the landlord or the government? Most people would think that if someone owns something, then that means that they get the opportunity to decide how they make use of it. But apparently this doesn’t extend to landlords.
I think that the longer-term trend will be for many landlords to get out of the housing market and put their money into the stock market.
BTW, I’m not a landlord. But I’ll stick up for landlords and say that 99 per cent of them are not motivated by a greed that has a “colossal detrimental impact” on society. Most of the landlords I know are keen to find good quality tenants to rent their properties over the longer term and will adjust downwards their expectations for future increases in rents in order to retain such tenants.
And, BTW, there are some shocking tenants out there.
meher baba: If a family member wants to move in, there is a straightforward process for that. If they want to sell, they can sell – they just can’t sell with vacant possession during the course of a lease (but can at the end). These are protections that should suffice for reasonable landlords.
“I think that the longer-term trend will be for many landlords to get out of the housing market and put their money into the stock market.” Yet again: this is a feature, not a bug. Either the landlord sells to a first home buyer and there’s one less household competing for rentals, or they sell to a better-behaved landlord who didn’t ragequit because tenant protections were implemented. It’s in every way a win win – for renters, for society, and for the former bad landlord who finally chose a more suitable route for their investments. It’s the one area in which Minns has absolutely successfully read the room.
Substitute “Kulak” for “Landlord”.
Then you get the full flavor of what he’s doing and why Labor’s polling is in the toilet.
Rebecca:
Exactly this. The properties aren’t going to cease to exist. If they become a somewhat less attractive option for investors, then that’s great: it reduces demand and puts downward pressure on housing prices, which is desperately needed at the moment.
There are definitely bad tenants out there. Which is why there are legal avenues available for landlords to deal with such tenants, and unlike many renters, a landlord will typically have the financial means to persue such avenues and a solid understanding of how to navigate the system.
I’m sure having a nightmare tenant is a truly frustrating and stressful experience. It costs the landlord time and money and emotional capital to deal with.
But a nightmare landlord isn’t just frustrating or stressful. It is existential. This person is the difference between you having a roof over your head or sleeping on the streets. If your landlord is a psychopath and there aren’t sufficient protections in place, your only options are to put up with it or to find a new place, and in the current housing climate, the second can be a pretty fucking difficult proposition.
Oh, and I probably should qualify the above that the problem actually isn’t generally with the landlords themselves, most of whom I imagine are decent people just trying to invest wisely. The real issue, IMO, is the real estate companies that the majority of landlords use to handle the day-to-day stuff. Those places too often seem to be staffed almost exclusively with genuine sociopaths.
It’s not like local government elections just pop up out of nowhere but run to a regular cycle that you can predict years in advance!
Here in the UK local parties select candidates months in advance so they can start campaigning and getting themselves known – it’s not like they are suddenly scrambling around for candidates unless there is a sudden drop out late in the day.
Blaming the electoral administrators just seems like a poor excuse for the Liberals lack of planning.
Interesting comments re bans on no-fault evictions. As a landlord, I’d have no problem with a ban on no-fault evictions, provided you can still evict bad tenants who damage the property or otherwise breach the contract. Only once in 25 years have we ever had a need to do that. But at the end of the 12-month lease contract, I’d expect to have the right to offer a new contract with new conditions, using an agent of our choice to a tenant of our choice. It’s our property! In practice, we’ve always rolled over into a new 12-month lease with the same tenant, unless they chose to move on. Why would a landlord want to wear the costs and risks of switching tenants if there was no reason to do so? There is no detail as yet on the proposed new laws on this in NSW, let’s see if they get the balance right.
Re the Headless Chooks Party’s “desperate legal fight to force the electoral agency to reopen nominations” (SMH, quoted by citizen above): someone who knows tells me that they still hadn’t filed any court process by late yesterday. I would have thought that if they were serious about it they could have managed that – so maybe their lawyers have thought again and said “forgeddit”.
Newcastle Moderate
That all sounds reasonable to me.
I am rather bemused by the … antics(?) … of the NSW Liberal party and their council nominations (or, lack of).
If, as they say, it is an error on behalf of the NSW Electoral Commission, how come no other groups or parties seem to be complaining about the process. As far I can tell, they all managed to complete the nomination process.
Oh, and if it is an error by the NSW EC, why did the Liberals sack their state director? How could he be at fault for another organisation’s failure?
Grasping at straws?
Asha and Newcastle Moderate: I totally agree with what you both consider to be reasonable. And, yes it’s true that we haven’t seen the proposed NSW legislation yet. But all the indications are that it is going to go a fair way beyond what Newcastle Moderate has suggested that they would like to see.
Around the country, the advocates for tenants’ rights & etc. have long been lobbying for a system in which, regardless of the term of a lease, a tenant cannot be evicted from their property at any time without some sort of government authority approving the landlord’s grounds for evicting the tenant.
In response, Queensland has adopted the system that both of you have posted that you think is reasonable: that is, that no grounds evictions are allowed with an appropriate period of notice on the expiration of a lease. As a consequence, the Queensland Government has been roundly criticised by tenants’ rights advocates for not going far enough. I note that Minns’ press release (see below) studiously avoids mentioning Queensland as being one of the states with which it would like to bring its legislation into line.
Victoria has adopted a strange approach in which no-grounds eviction is ok after the end of the first term of a lease (eg, after 12 months of a 12 months’ lease) but, if the lease is then renewed, no grounds evictions would then be impossible for as long as the tenant remains in the property. But I understand that the ACT and South Australia have adopted a system that is a bit like what Minns is now proposing for NSW, and which is of the type that will most please the tenants’ rights advocates.
And what exactly is Minns proposing? Well, here is his press release of a few weeks’ back.
https://www.nsw.gov.au/media-releases/making-renting-fairer-nsw
As I read it, valid grounds will now need to be provided to evict someone during the term of a lease, and also when the tenancy is in month-t0-month (“periodic”) arrangements. The periods of notice required for evicting someone – seemingly even if they are running a meth lab onsite, have severely damaged the property or are simply point blank refusing to pay their rent – will be increased to 60 days for periodic leases and for leases of less than six months, and to 90 days for leases of more than six months. These seems to be a ridiculously long time for landlords to have to wait to get rid of toxic tenants.
The press release is (perhaps deliberately) is unclear as to what happens when the term of a lease comes to an end, but given that it says explicitly that it wants to get NSW legislation in line with that of the ACT, South Australia and Victoria, I strongly suspect that no gounds evictions will also no longer be possible when a lease expires. Which rather begs the question of why a landlord would bother putting any sort of expiry date in a lease at all.
It is also unclear to me how landlords will ever be able in future to increase the rents charged to existing tenants, given that a tenant would appear to have the right to refuse to sign an updated lease featuring a high rent without any threat of being evicted if there are no other grounds. But no doubt real estate agents and their lawyers will come up with things like multi-year leases for tenants with escalation clauses and the like.
I suspect the outcome of these developments will be that many “Mum and Dad” landlords will seek to get out of the sector, leaving it to larger operators who can afford to employ lots of lawyers, private detectives and debt collectors to do all the legwork required to enforce the terms of leases and ensure the payment of rents. And the processes for screening prospective tenants will become ever more rigorous. These developments will lead to a whole swag of unintended and undesirable consequences for the lowest income groups currently accommodated in private rental market. The state governments that have enacted these laws will therefore need to put the pedal to the floor in building lots of public housing.
ag0044, so far I’ve seen no indication that the Headless Chooks were even preparing to lodge the forms by the 7th day after the web notification. Unless they can show that they can’t argue that the NSWEC’s mistake caused them any loss, which you might think would be a necessary part of any plea for relief. “Oh the notification was invalid so we just didn’t bother nominating” will hardly cut it. A bloke I know says he might know someone who knows someone who knows more about that – I will pass on further info, if any.
Thanks Meher Baba for your post, very interesting info. If a ban on no-fault evictions also means an automatic roll-over into a new lease at the previous rental rate, and that bad tenants who don’t pay rent or damage the property are very difficult to evict, there would be fury amongst property investors, who number well over 2 million people in Australia. In effect, the owner would have lost control over their own property. It would surely be political suicide for any party to go down that road. We do own property in Qld, and have had no issues with the new regulations there to date, so if Minns just copies what was done there, no problem. I’ll be watching closely!
@ Moderate….. the polls don’t seem to coincide with reality.. so I looked for possible reasons . See what happens in 2027
Once again, the Liberals’ bluster and bombast turns out to be bullshit:
‘The NSW Liberals will not be taking legal action against the state’s electoral commission after speaking to a lawyer …
… but could face a battle with some in their own party.”
Same as it ever was …
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/article/2024/aug/20/nsw-liberals-decide-against-suing-electoral-commission-over-election-bungle
‘Some affected candidates were in contact with lawyer and former Waverley mayor George Newhouse about a possible class action.
‘“The candidates have lost their application fees and the chance of earning their councillor fees for four years,” Newhouse said on Tuesday.’
Hey, guys, the Age of Entitlement is over! Didn’t you get the memo from Joe Hockey?
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/article/2024/aug/20/nsw-liberals-decide-against-suing-electoral-commission-over-election-bungle
I don’t think that Minns would care about these poor poll numbers. I would not go as far as to accuse someone of attempting to throw an election but Minns gives me the impression that for him the Premier gig is just an audition/job interview for a post-politics corporate career.
“NSW Liberal council election debacle descends into accusations of factional warfare
“Broadcaster Ray Hadley challenges ‘cowardly’ conservatives to ‘have a bit of courage for the sake of NSW politics’”
🙂
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/article/2024/aug/21/nsw-liberal-party-council-election-nominations-latest-ntwnfb
Mark Speakman being white-anted… and outed by Radio Liberal of all places
Two of the most senior NSW Liberal MPs have denied white-anting Mark Speakman after a radio shock jock alleged they were leaking against both the state opposition leader and division president Don Harwin.
Veteran 2GB radio host Ray Hadley on Wednesday claimed senior Liberals Anthony Roberts and Alister Henskens were leaking to undermine the moderate leaders and capitalise on the party’s council election bungle.
Their denials follow a disastrous week in which state director Richard Shields was sacked over Liberal headquarters’ failure to submit the nomination forms for 140 council candidates across 16 local government areas. Former federal director Brian Loughnane will undertake a two-week review of the fiasco.
The failure sparked an internecine assault on Harwin and Speakman, with conservatives accusing the pair of being culpable in the historic bungle. Hadley took umbrage with two “cowardly” senior MPs who he said were leaking as a vehicle to undermine the moderate leaders.
“Look, I’ve got leaks from the left, right and centre from the right wing. One of you people get the balls to actually come on this program and say what you’re saying to me privately … Stop sending me text messages. Cowardly. Letting me be your mouthpiece,” he said live on his program.
“Get on the air now and tell the left of your party you’ve had a gutful of them. You know who you are from the right: Anthony Roberts, Alister Henskens. Come on. Get on here and challenge them. Have a bit of courage for the sake of NSW politics.”
https://www.smh.com.au/politics/nsw/two-nsw-liberal-mps-deny-leaking-against-leader-as-fallout-from-council-bungle-grows-20240821-p5k44n.html
Not much changing from the 2022 federal election
Opinion polling still shows federal Lib/nats not getting non lib/nats voters, they will definitely be in opposition after 2025 federal election
not much going on in politics at the moment , filling in time
the greens primary vote 13-15%
probably around 10%-12%
at the 2025 federal election
Labor primary vote 32.5%-34%
Lib/nats combined primary vote 35-37%
Labor 2nd term increased majority from 78 seats -80+ seats