Well, NSW have voted and it’s another four years of the Labor Party running the state. If ever there was a winnable election for the Coalition, it should have been this one.

WEE were struck, watching the election coverage last night, that it’s inexplicable in any logical world why the Liberal Party did not select Barry O’Farrell as its leader when they had the chance. WEE hope they get the message coming out of this election that people just don’t like Peter Debnam. They don’t relate to him. The Liberals can bang on all they like about the negative campaign of the Labor party and it’s attacks on Debnam, but in the end those ads only resonated with people because they really don’t like him.

Why didn’t the Liberal Party mount a negative personal attack on Iemma? Because people like him. They certainly mounted negative personal attacks on Costa, Sartor and Tripodi (who WEE have it on pretty good authority people don’t like!). Why did the Liberal Party attack Latham with such gusto at the last Federal election? Because they suspected that people didn’t like him much and eventually that was the case. Sure the negative campaigns can be powerful, but there has to be a grain of reality in people’s perception for negative campaigns to work.

Look at Kevin Rudd. The federal Liberal Party’s attempts to hone in negatively on him have backfired spectacularly. That’s because no matter what he has or hasn’t done, people like him and reckon he’s okay. If the federal Liberal Party had handled Rudd in the way the NSW Liberals have handled Iemma, they may have avoided the embarrassment of the last few weeks of ministerial losses. Not attacking Iemma probably helped the NSW Libs in making the state election a positive result for them (even if they didn’t win office).

All they have to do now is realise that Debnam comes across as a bit of a spiv and so people don’t really like him or relate to him. They need to get rid of him as quickly as they can and install someone that people do relate to – WEE happen to think that’s O’ Farrell.

The NSW right obviously has much to answer for on this front, it was the dirty campaign to get rid of Brogden that installed Debnam in the first place (after O’Farrell withdrew from the leadership contest because he knew the right would wreck his chances by undermining him, even if he won).

Ironically, if they had all left Brodgen to it, he probably would have been Premier this weekend. Instead their meddling has delivered another four years of government to the ALP in NSW.

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