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Article on why state Labor lost the elections in New South Wales?

Labor Party Gets a Shellacking
By Harish Velji

{Harish Velji hails from Fiji. Having studied in New Zealand he calls Australia home. Harish Velji became the Chairperson of the Sub Continent Friends of Labor which he founded and established last year. He has served Labor Party in various capacity and writes regularly for The Indian. Harish Velji is a strong believer in social justice and condemns those people who use religion as form of division.}

Over the last week or so many people have given their opinions,  why the state Labor Party lost the recent New South Wales elections.

Also there have comments by the Liberal Party which is self serving and likewise, any comments by the Indian supporters of the Liberal Party.  Any comments from them should be totally disregarded as nothing but self indulgent.

Like Prime Minister, Julia Gillard , I feel all of these reasons recently articulated are correct.

However I also feel that the each of the candidates from the Labor Party that lost, were for two reasons.

One that they lost for the global reasons, meaning that there was a general mood in the community that the Labor Party had been in the government too long and had not delivered. The Liberal Party were quite effective in conveying this message to the public of non delivery for sixteen years.

These comments are highly foolish and insulting to the voters as they are the ones who put the Labor Party, back four times during these period. They had rejected the Liberal Party ideology during this period. There must have been something that the Labor in the Government doing right to be put back four times. There was many.

Over the last three years or so the Labor Party had made a great art form of destroying itself. First there was a debate on the privatisation of the electricity assets. At that time this was totally rejected by the community and those raising this issue now with likes of former Prime Minister Paul Keating, former Premier Morris Immema and former treasurer Michael Costa is nothing but sour grapes and  an attempt to rewrite history.

Federal Member for the seat of Chiefly said that if Mr Keating ''wants to continue the way he does, and get his jollies chortling into his Twinings in whatever Labor heartland seat he is in these days, all well and good. But I don't think it actually helps us''.

Mr Husic questioned Mr Keating's intervention, given that he did not get out campaigning with Labor candidates.

''I never see him with shoe leather on the ground like others,'' he said. ''If it was Hawke, for example, who is out there with candidates all the time trying to help out, well, I'd accept that.''

The other global reason was that during the same period there have been many number of acts by the seating member of parliaments that would have warranted a good spanking.

First it was the Iguana Gate. By the time this issue shifted from the front pages the damage had been done. The then federal member who was part of this saga was not pre selected and issue came to close.

However at the state level there was one saga almost on a monthly cycle over the last fifteen months. This made people gutful of the Labor Party and gave appearance of a moral and intellectual decay.

The Labor candidates were selected too late and gave them very little time to campaign. For many of the candidates their campaign did not kick off till February.

The final nail in the coffin was prolongation of the parliament and the selling of some of the electricity generators. This gave an appearance of too clever by half. No one explained that this proposal to sell the electricity assets was different to the one that was rejected by the community earlier.

As said earlier that there were two major reasons for the loss. The global reasons that I have articulated earlier but the other one no one wants to admit is that of a poor campaign by some of the candidates.

Some of these candidates did very little or nothing till January end or the beginning of the February. For unknown reason there is a substantial belief that one should not campaign from the Christmas time till at least the Australian Day and this is bunkum.

The Labor Party gave free run during this period to the Liberal Party, who got free the coverage uncontested.

There were some candidates who were simply  too "lazy". They did not put enough effort to give a contest and change people's mind which was already made up.

Hon Nathan Rees is a fine example, who won the elections and made a contest out of it. He was out at 5.00am and did not finish till 10.00pm every day without fail. He door knocked even during the 42 degrees heat. He spoke to the people why he should  be re elected. This conversation included what he had done for his electorate. This conversation changed the minds of many voters. Her trusted the advice given to him and the people around him.

A orchestrated campaign by some of the Indian people failed to stick particularly in the community who have very high regard for the Nathan Rees. Their plans badly back fired. This I will write in Sada-e-Watan full details on a later date.