Does the Upper Hunter result tell us anything we didn’t know? Hardly

The Nationals have held the Upper Hunter for 90 years. But their weekend byelection victory has quickly been interpreted as a disaster for Labor at a state and federal level.

The obituaries for Jodi McKay as Labor leader are being written. A triumphant Scott Morrison says Labor has lost touch with blue-collar workers, and plans to target outer suburban and regional NSW seats at the next election. Labor’s federal Hunter MP Joel Fitzgibbon wants the party to stop calling people racist.

Everyone’s got a hot take about the byelection. But did it actually tell us anything we didn’t know?

Jodi McKay is cooked

McKay’s leadership is cooked. Even before the byelection, Liberal Premier Gladys Berejiklian was preferred leader among Labor voters.

Mckay was having a year from hell. She was revealed to have provided a character reference to a man accused of indecently assaulting a child. After the Health Services Union released diabolical polling showing Labor’s vote at its lowest in a century, McKay accused it of “coward-punching” her. The union then disaffiliated with NSW Labor.

But what hammers home McKay’s cookedness is she seems to have no solutions. Shell-shocked by Saturday’s loss, she appeared to offer no answers to the party’s malaise: “I just don’t know why we are not connecting.”

NSW Labor is cooked

McKay also said the byelection came too soon for NSW Labor, still scarred by 2019. But the party has been in opposition for a decade, without coming close to government. Under McKay, it seems to be going backwards.

While Upper Hunter has always been a Nats seat, it became pretty marginal in 2019, and that was before former MP Michael Johnsen resigned over rape allegations. Labor clearly had a chance, but instead copped a 6.9% swing against it. Its primary vote fell to just over 20%.

NSW Deputy Premier John Barilaro said Labor’s problems go beyond McKay: “You can’t just replace the jockey. The horse is broken.”

Four samey-looking white men are being touted to replace McKay. One, Michael Daley, has already had his turn, before a racist gaffe getting close to two years ago upended his final week before the election. At a state level, the party continues to look lost.

PM targets ‘quiet Australians’

The byelection result excited Morrison. This morning The Australian’s front page thundered about him targeting “ALP true believers”, with the Coalition’s NSW strategy focused on flipping lower- and middle-income voters in areas like the Hunter and Sydney’s suburbs. The Sun-Herald ran a similar story yesterday on the Coalition’s 10 NSW target seats.

But none of this is particularly groundbreaking. Morrison’s narrow path to an unlikely election victory last time involved picking up votes in aspirational mortgage belts and regional mining areas. Suburbia swung to the Liberals. And to win again, he has to keep, or expand, that voter base.

Coal wars continue

The Upper Hunter byelection was all about coal. Nearly all candidates spent the campaign in high vis, falling before the altar of a dying industry that has been the backbone of the region for decades. In the aftermath, pro-coal politicians like LNP Senator Matt Canavan were gleeful about what the result meant. Meanwhile Fitzgibbon has been on a typical media blitz this morning, attacking his own party for not supporting mining enough.

It’s unclear what more they could’ve done — the party picked a former miner and CFMEU official in candidate Jeff Drayton, and McKay explicitly pledged her support for the industry. No matter what happens, Labor will continue to be wedged by the narrative, pushed from both inside and outside the party, that it can’t deliver for coal communities.

Don’t speculate too much

This was hardly a resounding win for the Nats, who picked up just 30% of the primary vote. It was a reasonable result for One Nation — a 13% primary vote — following a big swing at the 2019 federal election that spooked Fitzgibbon into abandoning the frontbench to become a mining lobbyist.

While Labor is worried about the result, it’d be foolish to make any bold predictions about the next federal election based on the weekend’s results. Labor annihilated the Coalition at state elections in Western Australia and Queensland. The Liberals lost five byelections less than a year from their 2019 win.

The Upper Hunter is but one seat, and the only poll that matters is yet to come.

Do you think this result is something for the Coalition to crow about? Let us know by writing to letters@crikey.com.au. Please include your full name to be considered for publication in Crikey’s Your Say section.