NSW election: Labor completes mainland sweep with election win

Labor has stormed back into power in NSW, ending 12 years in the wilderness with an election victory that means mainland Australia is now completely red.

Swings to the ALP across the board that became clear almost as soon as counting began swept Dominic Perrottet’s Liberals from power and ensured one-time firefighter Chris Minns would become the 47th Premier of the nation’s most populous state.

Election analysts on Sky News and the ABC called the result at 8pm, just two hours after the polls closed after a 7.5 per cent two-party preferred swing to Labor.

The result gives the party a clean sweep of Federal, State and Territory governments on the mainland with the Liberals only remaining in power in Tasmania.

Mr Perrottet said. the election had been fought in good spirits in a “race to the top”.

“A genuine battle of ideas and that is when politics is at its best,” he said.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese introduced Mr Minns as a “great” leader who had “vision, compassion and integrity”.

Mr Minns said the campaign was fought with integrity. “Neither party took the low road, neither political party took the low blow,” he said.

Respected WA political commentator Harry Phillips said Mr Perrottet had been a thorn in the side of WA, when it came to keeping the current GST deal as is.

“Mark McGowan would welcome a Labor victory, because the Liberal NSW Premier has been completely attacking the distribution of the GST funds – continually,” Dr Phillips said.

“His (Perrottet’s) loss takes out a very strong opponent of our GST distribution. It makes that argument for a change to the present formula a little more difficult to achieve.”

Labor Deputy Leader Prue Carr said the party’s policies “struck a chord” with the people of NSW.

“The campaign, thus far, is showing that we really were listening to people, and talking about the bread-and-butter issues that people are concerned about,” she told the ABC.

Labor, which last won a NSW election in 2007, ran under the slogan promising the state a “fresh start”.

Some of the key campaign promises included scrapping the public service wages cap, ending privatisation, and fortifying the state’s hospital and schools.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese spent Saturday doing his best to help turn the Liberal seat of Ryde.

He pointed to the exodus of key ministers who announced their retirement before the poll as proof the government was at the end of its life.

“It’s time for a change of government,” he said.

It is unclear if Mr Perrottet, who took over in 2021 after the shock resignation of Gladys Berejiklian when she was caught up in an ICAC scandal, will remain as Liberal leader.

His main rival is his ambitious Treasurer Matt Kean who said the Coalition had been “fighting the tide of history”.

“It’s the 12 year factor. No Coalition government has ever won a fourth term in NSW. You accumulate barnacles,” Mr Kean said.

“The challenge for us was to present ourselves as a new government, not the reiteration of a 12-year-old government. We really tried to demonstrate that we had fresh ideas.”

The son of a teacher Mr Minns has promised to make teacher recruitment and retention his first priority in government.

“First thing we’ll change is the focus on teaching in NSW and building up the teaching profession,” he said during the campaign.