NSW Liberals expect turquoise Jacqui Scrooby to win

On the island peninsula of Sydney, which has always voted Blue except for a flirtation with an independent candidate in 2005, the NSW Liberals were not prepared to accept that an opponent very similar to their own – albeit with a tinge of green – would claim the seat. their valuable place in parliament. Pittwater.

Surely, liberals told themselves, the turquoise wave that helped oust their federal counterparts from power in 2022 was a short-lived experiment? After all, the party held back the storm of emotion in the last state elections. The turquoise tide was over, or so they hoped.

But a sense of entitlement to the state’s once-safe seat has significantly complicated the Coalition’s chances of returning government in 2027. The Liberals lost to Pittwater at the weekend to turquoise Jacqui Scrooby in her second attempt to win the seat. This is the first time a turquoise MP has appeared on Macquarie Street.

By-elections rarely favor the government, but in Pittwater’s case they did not favor the Liberals either. The last time the opposition lost a seat was in a by-election in 2005. It was Pittwater when the Liberals lost it to independent Alex McTaggart following the resignation of then leader John Brogden.

The Labor Party did not contest Pittwater in this by-election; it also failed in Epping and Hornsby, which also held elections on Saturday. The Liberals held on to Epping and Hornsby, but even that was not good news for the party. A government missing a by-election is not uncommon, given that voters tend to take out the bricks. Since 2011, the average swing towards the opposition in by-elections where the government did not contest the election has been 11.6 percent.

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This did not happen in this by-election. In Epping the swing to the Liberals was just 7.8 per cent. In Hornsby the figure was 6.7 per cent. In Pittwater, the Liberals lost 3.1 per cent.

Former Pittwater mayor McTaggart was an MP for just two years before the Liberals took the seat. Now he is gone again, but the flirtation with the independent MP is unlikely to be so brief. And as much as the Liberals would like the turquoise vote to be nothing more than a protest vote against unpopular Prime Minister Scott Morrison, Pittwater’s result should give the federal coalition cause for concern ahead of next year’s election.

In Pittwater, the Liberals were initially outsiders. They went to the by-election under the worst possible circumstances; the party lost an MP after he was charged with child sex crimes, which he denies. Rory Amon, who beat Scruby by just 606 votes just 18 months ago, resigned hours after his arrest.