AAP has pulled together some of the federal reaction to the NSW Upper Hunter byelection result:
The federal finance minister Simon Birmingham has cautioned against drawing too many national implications from a state byelection in the NSW seat of Upper Hunter.
Prime minister Scott Morrison says Labor has completely lost touch with blue collar workers, with the party’s primary vote plunging 7% in the coalmining seat.
But Birmingham is more circumspect on the federal fallout.
“It was a state byelection and I would treat it as such,” he told ABC radio on Monday.
“It had a range of different factors at play and certainly many of them were very much local, very much state politics.
“It is a state byelection and I wouldn’t read too much into it myself.”
The Coalition is expected to target the Labor-held seats of Hunter, Paterson and Shortland at the next federal election.
Birmingham said it was far too soon to speculate on how many Hunter Valley seats the Coalition could win.
“It’s a long way away to start making those sorts of predictions but we will put up a strong fight in those regions,” he said.
“They are regions which clearly have large numbers of working Australian families who want to know they’ve got a government that is with them and backing them.”
Joel Fitzgibbon, the federal member for the Hunter, said the result was devastating for the Labor party. Just one in five voters put Labor first on their ballot papers.
itzgibbon warned Labor was on track to lose the next federal election unless the party changed its ways. He said the party needed to be more vocal in its support of working people.
“When your supporters leave you it takes a long time and a lot of effort and you need to be very clear to win them back,” Fitzgibbon told 2GB radio.
“We have been at best whispering. We have tried to walk both sides of the fence on issues like work and on the other side, the environment. They’re suspicious and sceptical.
“Federally, if Labor can’t persuade not just mine workers but everyone in those regions whose jobs are dependent on mining, that we stand with them, you can expect a similar result whenever Scott Morrison goes to the polls.”
However, the Nationals only polled 31.4% of the primary vote in the Upper Hunter byelection, despite holding the state seat for 90 years.
One in three voters were happy to ignore both major parties, siding with independents and minor parties instead.
This could have major implications for the Senate if the trend was replicated at the next federal election and could also deliver a much more diverse crossbench in the lower house.
