As we commence the NSW state election campaign, there’s a bit of confusion about how many seats we should credit to each party as a starting point. This is understandable considering that we’ve had a redistribution, a seat changing hands at a by-election, and numerous MPs leaving their party to sit as independents or with another party. So for this post, I’m just running through those numbers to hopefully come to an agreed set of numbers.
I’ve put all the numbers into this chart, but I’ll explain where they come from:
First let's start with the result of the last election. The Coalition won a slim majority with 48 seats (35 Liberals and 13 Nationals) - the smallest number that allows a government to hold a clear majority while providing a speaker. Labor won 36 seats, with three other blocs each winning three seats: the Greens, the Shooters, Fishers and Farmers, and the independents. Those three independents are Alex Greenwich, Greg Piper and Joe McGirr - worth knowing because other independents have since popped up.
We've had a redistribution since the 2019 election. The Labor seats of Bankstown and Lakemba were merged into one seat, with the new marginal Labor seat of Leppington created in the outer south-west of Sydney. These two changes have a net neutral impact on the seat count, but one other seat was redrawn from a Liberal seat into a Labor seat. Heathcote shifted south, losing parts of Sutherland and gaining strongly left-leaning areas in northern Wollongong, changing the margin from 5% to the Liberal Party to 2.1% for Labor.
So if you look at the seat count on the new boundaries but using 2019 election results, the Coalition has 47 seats, Labor has 37, and the three other groups each have three. This still leaves the Coalition with a majority, but with no room to move.
This count is based on the way people voted in 2019, but there have been numerous changes in the membership of the chamber since 2019.
One stands out, because the partisan balance was shifted by actual voters, when Labor won the seat of Bega, previously held by the Liberal Party, at a by-election.
If you credit Bega to Labor, that leaves the seat count at Coalition 46, Labor 38, and nine for the crossbench. This is the count you get if you add up the party margins on my pendulum. If a member defects parties, I keep the seat listed as belonging to their former party, but when Labor won Bega I moved it into the Labor column.
It's also worth discussing the full list of members who have left their former parties:
- Leslie Williams (Port Macquarie) quit the Nationals and joined the Liberal Party in September 2020.
- John Sidoti (Drummoyne) resigned from the Liberal Party in March 2021.
- Gareth Ward (Kiama) resigned from the Liberal Party in May 2021. He was suspended from attending parliament until criminal proceedings against him are concluded in March 2022.
- Helen Dalton (Murray) resigned from the Shooters, Fishers and Farmers in March 2022.
- Tania Mihailuk (Bankstown) resigned from Labor in October 2022. She later joined One Nation and will run for the Legislative Council on the One Nation ticket.
- Roy Butler (Barwon) resigned from the Shooters, Fishers and Farmers in December 2022.
- Philip Donato (Orange) resigned from the Shooters, Fishers and Farmers in December 2022.
So the Liberal Party lost two seats and gained one, Labor lost one, the Nationals lost one, and the Shooters, Fishers and Farmers lost three. One Nation gained one seat, with a net increase of five independents.
It's worth noting that there's a difference between the cases of Sidoti and Ward and the other defections. Those two members resigned from their party due to investigations against them, not due to political disagreements. Both members have generally continued to support their former party in parliament.
This leaves the current chamber with 45 Coalition, 36 Labor, 3 Greens, 1 One Nation and eight independents. This leaves the government in minority, although it has been generally able to function with plenty of options to gain support.
There's one final set of numbers that I think is probably the most useful. In this case, we start with the post-redistribution results with Labor holding Bega, but in the case of defecting MPs, I count the defection if that MP is running for re-election.
John Sidoti is not running in Drummoyne, so I count that as a Liberal seat, and Tania Mihailuk's seat of Bankstown has effectively been abolished and she is running for the upper house, so she doesn't get included.
Gareth Ward is running for re-election in Kiama, and reports have suggested that he maintains strong support, and the Liberal Party is not running to win, despite the seat being notionally Liberal. So I count that as an independent seat.
And the three MPs elected in 2019 for the Shooters, Fishers and Farmers party are all running as independents, and I suspect those seats are far more likely to be Independent vs Nationals contests than SFF vs Nationals.
So if you use that method, you end up with 45 Coalition, 38 Labor, seven independents and three Greens.
Now that we have this starting point, we can calculate how many seats would need to change hands to produce certain outcomes.
The Coalition needs to gain two seats to win a majority, assuming they don't win Kiama. In practice, if they win one seat and Ward holds Kiama, they would be effectively a majority government, but would be vulnerable if Ward is forced to vacate his seat.
Labor needs to gain nine seats for a majority. If there was a uniform two-party-preferred swing, the ninth Labor gain from the Coalition would be Parramatta, with a 6.3% swing.
I think a change of about four seats would produce a tipping point result. In this scenario, Labor would hold 42 seats to the Coalition 41, with a crossbench of ten. In that scenario, Labor would be able to form a slim majority with the support of three Greens and independents Alex Greenwich and Greg Piper, although I suspect Labor could also work with the three ex-Shooters independents.
Any less than four gains, and the Coalition would likely be in a stronger position, since it would be complex for Labor to rely on both Greens and ex-Shooters for their majority.
All of this assumes that there are no further additions to the crossbench. There are a number of intriguing challenges to Liberal members in seats like Wakehurst, Pittwater, North Shore and Wollondilly. There is also an interesting challenge to Labor in Shellharbour and the potential for a strong independent to put up his hand in Fairfield or Cabramatta. If the crossbench expands, it does increase the probability of a hung parliament. Although if most of those crossbench gains fall on the Coalition side of the pendulum, it could produce a result similar to the federal election, where an enlarged crossbench is elected alongside a majority Labor government.
My spies in North Shore tells me that people there are looking to vote for anyone but the incumbent, as she is so on the nose.
Which would take another out of the Liberal Party bucket.
SFF lost 3; not “gained” 3.
The analysis above considers the possibility of an larger crossbench. But equally the election could return a smaller crossbench, as happened recently in Victoria. We simply don’t know how the three ex-Shooters will perform without their party label. I’m also very sceptical of Ward’s viability as an independent.
The crossbench could be interesting. On the one hand, there’ll be questions about whether incumbent crossbenchers will keep their seats – all of the SFF MPs for starters, Gareth Ward for seconds, and even the Greens will be hoping to hang on to Balmain with Jamie Parker retiring. On the flipside, there are new teal seat opportunities on the Northern beaches and in the Eastern suburbs again, and a few hoping to repeat the Dai Le experience in western Sydney. Could be quite the election.
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