It is not just the massive majority and the coalition’s determination to carry through with its mandate for reform that distinguishes it from past governments; on several scores this is a different coalition government from those of the past.
Firstly, of course, there is a change in the nature of the relationship between the two coalition parties. After winning an extra 29 seats on top of their existing 22, O’Farrell’s Liberals have the numbers in the Legislative Assembly, 51 out of 93, to govern in their own right without needing the 18 votes of the Nationals.
Had this been South Australia or Western Australia, where the Nationals take a different view of coalition, we would have had a Liberal government. But in NSW the relationship is sufficiently strong for the Nationals to remain in coalition with their leader Andrew Stoner, as is customary, becoming Deputy Premier.
And the Nationals, who increased their seats from 13 to 18, accepted a reduction in their share of ministries from eight to seven because of the magnitude of the Liberal wins – many of them in rural areas where the Liberals now have 13 seats on top of the 14 they hold in fringe-city areas like Wollondilly.
This makes a total of 27 seats outside the Sydney telephone call sign, outnumbering the Liberal’s 24 city seats, despite their well-publicised sweep of western Sydney.
When you add the 18 Nationals seats to the Liberal’s rural and fringe-city numbers, they represent an overwhelming majority of 45-24 lower house members in the joint party room – and adding upper house members makes little difference.
So this is a parliamentary majority that is, unlike most of its predecessors, not city-centric. And the combination of Liberal and National completely rural seats at 31, by excluding the fringe-city seats, remains a powerful bloc. This is a party-room structure that will have an impact on the government’s direction.
This reality is expressed in the make-up of the ministry. Despite Premier O’Farrell having eight of his Liberal ministers (including his Liberal deputy-leader) coming from Sydney’s north shore, they make up a minority in his 22-person cabinet, with Liberals in Ryde, Miranda, Maitland, Bega and Goulburn, along with upper house non-city ministers and the Nationals together making up the remaining 14.
This represents quite a change from coalition predecessors that were dominated by North-Shore-Eastern Suburbs ministers.
These arrangements are unlikely to remain unaltered for the full four years of the O’Farrell government’s first term, as there will be pressure to give ministerial representation to areas where his spectacular wins need to be consolidated.
But while the prospect of being elevated to the ministry may encourage a level of discipline in a swollen party room, there are not enough jobs to go around; handling a lot of frustrated egos will test even Barry O’Farrell’s remarkable man/woman management skills.
While he has little to fear from a demoralised Labor opposition, in either the lower or the upper house (where the combination of 14 Labor and five Green MLCs remains a minority against the coalition's 19 plus two Fred Niles and two Shooters/Fishers), the real problems for the record-breaking 69-MP O’Farrell government will end up being the default settings – the media and the coalition’s 47-strong back bench.
The media will need little encouragement to see itself as the de-facto opposition; the opportunity to attack a “conservative” government (even one dominated by the so-called moderates of the Liberal Party) will have much of the media salivating, particularly the ABC.
O’Farrell will doubtless be hoping the Kerry O’Brien paints himself into one of his four corners and that Stateline’s Quentin Dempster goes on a course of mogadon.
But if media management will be important for O’Farrell’s long-term survival (but hopefully less transparent than the blatant spin-doctoring that helped destroy Labor), management of a backbench more than twice the size of his ministry will be a key priority.There are some very able backbenchers, particularly in the new intake, who have the potential to outperform some the old-stagers in the O’Farrell shadow ministry that has, with three exceptions, been converted into the real thing.
The reality of politics is that with so many traditionally Labor seats now occupied by Liberals (several for the first time ever), the risk of involuntary retirement in four years may well encourage rebellion against the tough measures that O’Farrell must take to fulfil his promise to make NSW Number 1 again.
However, there is a tendency for backbenchers to be loyal to the leader on whose coat-tails they entered parliament, at least in their first term, unless they sense impending doom in the absence of a leadership change.
The media will doubtless do its best to generate that sense of doom; leadership rumblings are the only stories some gallery journalists seem capable of writing. Despite this, and helped by the sorry state of the Labor opposition, the O'Farrell government looks like being with us for many years to come.
