Chris Minn’s focus on triumph needn’t fail slot victims

Most nights in the state’s coveted seats, NSW Labor holds focus groups to take voters’ temperatures. And they always show exactly what you expect.

The cost of living is biting. Anyone who buys groceries – everyone – is all too aware that food prices are skyrocketing. Recent research by this imprint’s pollster Jim Reed for NSW Farmers found that 93 per cent of voters cited rising prices – particularly for fresh food and groceries – as their top concern ahead of the March 25 election.

Likewise, everyone with a mortgage is suffering after nine straight rate hikes since May. It must be a costly exercise for Labor to spot the obvious bleeding. And, of course, there’s not much a state government of any kind can do to address these concerns. Nonetheless, Labor relies almost exclusively on its research to drive its policies, which explains why and how the party gets where it does on many issues. The most glaring example is Labor’s lukewarm response to the Perrottet government’s proposal for gambling reform.

Labor strategists are quick to point out that voters are not bringing up poker machine reforms as an issue in their nightly focus groups. Maybe not. But they don’t resist it either.

Still, slots are not the top priority for voters and this explains why Labor leader Chris Minns has been so adamant about backing NSW’s biggest welfare reform in a generation. Anything that is not a clear driver of votes in a critical seat is not a priority for Labor. If gambling reform doesn’t give them choice, why invest energy in it?

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Labor needs to win nine seats to secure a majority government. Most of the contested seats are in western Sydney. Penrith and East Hills must go the Labor route if the party is to win government, but it must also win the new Leppington constituency and seats like Parramatta. On paper, that’s possible given the margins, demographic trends and the federal result last year.

The ALP is also ahead in the most recently published surveys by various research groups. But the closer Labor gets to a long-awaited victory, the more nervous it becomes to make a mistake. She is unwilling to be too bold for fear of scaring off voters. The party still has PTSD from the 2019 federal defeat under Bill Shorten.

To its credit, the NSW Labor team is far more disciplined than the Coalition, which more regularly shows its ragged edges. However, it’s hard to believe that the most socially progressive members of Minns’ team — like longtime left-wing warrior Penny Sharpe or rising star Rose Jackson (the homelessness spokeswoman) and her fellow front bencher Jo Haylen — would be on board with the low-key approach the party to revamp gambling, an addiction that hurts the most vulnerable in society.