As an economist I should care who wins a state or federal election, and I do, but I never get too stressed about a new government unless they’re promising really worrying ‘stuff’. In 2019, Bill Shorten threatened retirees and it worried me that he was going to be more left of centre than he needed to be.

Maybe he was too honest, but whatever, PM Albanese learnt from the experience and came to the people as a more moderate-promising leader. Of course, he could prove to be just a touch short of the left of Bill, but he certainly was smart enough not to show it before the election.

History has shown me that controversial governments who try to take the Aussie voter too far to the right or to the left, say with John Howard’s Work Choices and Kevin Rudd with his carbon tax, are usually shown the door.

Julia Gillard’s broken promise of “no carbon tax”, in a government she led, haunted her and eventually saw her lose the top job to none other than Kevin Rudd.

The NSW election is an important one because NSW is the biggest economy in Australia at a time when the RBA is trying to shrink it via 10 interest rate rises to KO inflation. Eventually, jobs will go, unemployment will rise, inflation will fall and interest rates will be cut. And right around Australia, people will be looking for enlightened leadership to deal with the threat of a serious slowdown or even a recession.

I often use the method I employ when I’m invited to the races. Not being an expert on the four-legged lottery but being systematic when investing, I use a similar process to guess an election result. First I look to the expert tipsters, then look at the stats on the gee-gees, followed by recent form and then the jockey. Finally, I subject this all to gut feeling. I think this final one explains why I seldom win!

So here goes…

The Tipster

Malcolm Mackerras: “Chris Minns becomes Premier in a minority Labor government after he receives a guarantee of supply from the three Greens and the independent members for Barwon, Lake Macquarie, Sydney and Wagga Wagga. Therefore, he has a guarantee of supply from 50 of the 93 members, a majority.”

The Stats

The two-party preferred vote is 52-48 to Labor.

Recent form

The NSW economy has not been outperforming as the latest CommSec’s State of the States report, reveals.
“Across all the indicators, Queensland is now ahead of Tasmania which drops from first to second. South Australia has lifted from fifth to third,” the report revels. “NSW is now in joint fourth spot with Victoria, ahead of the ACT, Western Australia and the Northern Territory.”

The jockey

Dominic Perrottet has a slight lead over Chris Minns as preferred Premier, but it’s like comparing James McDonald and Damien Oliver — they’re both sellable to the public.

The gut feel

Swingers determine election results. Fifty-nine per cent of those polled think the government’s performance on energy policy is poor. That’s a hip pocket issue. And only 15 per cent think it’s good and they would be dyed-in-the-wool Lib voters.

Perrottet was a good Treasurer, especially through the lockdowns but Minns is the most electable Labor candidate they’ve put up in years.

The result

It goes down to the wire but I’m punting with the experts and tipping a minority Labor Government, which could need One Nation’s Mark Latham in the Upper House to grant them supply. Over the years, Mark Latham has seemingly lost his more moderate views, though I don’t think he had many. He’s not an economic nincompoop so if he needed to stop a Labor Government from silly economic decisions, he would be up for that. On politicians, I’ve always liked this from former US President Ronald Reagan: “Politics is supposed to be the second-oldest profession. I have come to realise that it bears a very close resemblance to the first.”