One thing is for certain coming out of the New South Wales election last Saturday. Just as the mainstream media, universally, got it wrong prior to the election, you can bet your life that in the post-mortems they have it wrong again.

Every major media outlet virtually told the voter to back the Perrottet government.

But, as if having a bet each way, then they told the voting public it would be a tight contest.

I argued all along that the Perrottet government couldn’t win.

Yet it seems that media outlets suffered a profound failure to accurately inform the public; and, remember, these outlets employ journalists whose full-time job is to write about the lay of the land, where the game stands, who is in front and who isn’t.

I argued all along that Perrottet couldn’t win and I sought to explain why he couldn’t win.

But mainstream media, having got it so appallingly wrong with their pronouncements like: ‘We think the Perrottet government should be re-elected!’ ‘We think they have done a superb job with the economy!’ ‘We think that Perrottet has handled the role of Premier very well!’

Another talked about Perrottet ‘leaving a great legacy’. The legacy is simple – catastrophic defeat.

All these laudatory comments went on, almost for the entirety of the campaign. What’s more, at every turn, the same pro-Perrottet media sought to pick the eyes out of anything that Chris Minns might have said, the most ludicrous being his policy to remove the public sector wages cap.

I have voted Liberal all of my life; I did not vote for the Liberal Party on Saturday.

I have had long bouts in hospital. Nurses are completely overworked and short-staffed. It is the same with police and teachers. Gilgandra High School stands as a metaphor for the mess the Perrottet government has made of education, to say nothing of the indoctrination within the classroom. Gilgandra High has 21 teaching positions, and 10 are vacant.

That is, if the kids were being taught in a classroom.

Fancy 5,093 demountable classrooms in NSW. Interestingly, at Castle Hill High and Carlingford West. Do you think they voted for Perrottet? They didn’t.

They took no notice of editorials arguing, at the 11th hour, that the Perrottet government should be re-elected, when, in fact, it was thrashed. Yet in an act of virtual arrogance, Perrottet, and others were saying ‘vote for us’.

In health, I mentioned the brand new hospital at Maitland. $470 million, opened in January last year. Doctors are saying they have no choice but to provide sub-optimal care due to a lack of funding. Yet mainstream media said vote for Perrottet, they have done a good job.

Would the 60,000 people who left emergency departments before receiving treatment between July and September last year, according to the Bureau of Health Information, have voted for Perrottet?

That same hospital, Maitland, had the most emergency department walkouts – 2,481 between July and September. Do you think the 2,465 patients at Campbelltown Hospital, who walked out because they couldn’t get treated in under four hours, do you think they voted for Perrottet? Or the Northern Beaches hospital, where walkouts were up 139 per cent…?

Those seats were lost.

How the hell could any responsible media commentator argue that the government should be retained, let alone that the same government had done a good job? One commentator actually said that Perrottet’s legacy will be judged ‘one of the greatest in NSW history’. What was the famous quote from the movie, The Castle? ‘Tell him he’s dreaming.’

At the 11th hour, Perrottet was promising to boost the number of nurses and doctors. Why hadn’t that already been done? Western Sydney was supposed to be the battleground. This was the same Western Sydney where the Premier launched his campaign. It is a wonder he wasn’t run out of the joint.

The same Western Sydney where children weren’t allowed to go to school because of a flawed response to Coronavirus. Here were kids not even free to go to school, parents not free to go to work.

The same Western Sydney, in desperate need of more police, while Perrottet ridiculed Minns for wanting to remove the wages cap to try to attract police and teachers and nurses to stay on the job. In Western Sydney, where Perrottet was saying vote for us, the Police Association were saying that staffing levels are a recipe for disaster.

The Premier was talking about cashless gaming cards, which won’t come into being until 2028. Minns was saying deal with the here and now and the toll burden faced by people in Western Sydney.

Dominic Perrottet launched his campaign, ‘Think of your kids, vote Liberal.’ But a city the size of Sydney doesn’t offer heart transplant surgery to children. Patients and their families have to travel to Melbourne where such a journey poses health risks and increases the trauma of an already frightening situation for these children and their families. Doctors at Westmead have the skill and experience, but no money.

But the Treasurer, Matthew Kean, can offer $3,000 rebates for the first 25,000 electric vehicles that are bought…

The Perrottet-Kean government produced a Budget, last year, which went on a $27 billion spending spree, but there was no money for heart transplant facilities for children at Westmead Hospital.

But $10 billion on so-called green energy programs.

A $6 billion blowout on the Chatswood to Bankstown Metro.

A $475 million blowout on the first stage of the Parramatta Light Rail.

Yet this same government was being endorsed by media outlets everywhere as economic managers. TAFE colleges look like industry archaeology of the 1970s. It is an education system where, in maths, 15-year-old students are four years behind those in China.

Perrottet had no money for where it was needed, but $1.5 billion to subsidise electric vehicles when most of the voters can’t afford them. And yet the Perrottet government kept saying, ‘Vote for us, we have a plan.’ Where did that come from?

Green policies will drive living standards into the ground: Alan Moran | Alan Jones

‘Their ‘solution’ is to stop burning coal, stop burning oil and gas and reduce everyone’s living standards.’

Economist Dr. Alan Moran joins @AlanJonesAO.#AlanMoran #Auspol2023 #auspol pic.twitter.com/n0tidxKAA9

— ADH TV (@adhtvaus) March 24, 2023

Perrottet brought in Yaron Finkelstein, who presided over the Morrison catastrophe. Remember, Morrison kept saying he had a plan! Just as Perrottet had ‘a plan’. It came to nothing.

It is inconceivable that these issues were never addressed and analysed as I sought to do. We must say things as they are, not as we might like them to be. When you have a Liberal government bringing down a Budget with a 26.5 per cent increase in expenditure, greater than anything Gough Whitlam attempted in 1974, when Whitlam was called an economic vandal, then you have to say there is no such thing as a Liberal government, other than in name.

Economic management! When the half-yearly Budget review showed Budget debt going from $2.8 billion to $6.5 billion. Accumulated net debt in NSW, $115 billion in two years.

Aimless Government spending is out of control: Tania Mihailuk | Alan Jones

One Nation candidate @TaniaMihailukMP joins @AlanJonesAO.

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Remember James Griffin, with a 7 per cent swing against him in Manly? He is the bloke who said, two weeks ago, that ‘everybody’, and I don’t know who everybody is, can’t wait to get rid of coal and gas. Standing beside him was Premier Perrottet, nodding in agreement.

Coal royalties this year, alone, are over $11 billion. Where does that money come from without coal?

On top of the spending spree, in last year’s Budget, $27 billion, Premier Perrottet promised during the election campaign spending of over $40 billion to try to buy an election victory. Yet, there were media outlets talking about excellent economic management. I would argue that the Perrottet government knew virtually nothing about economic management.

Transport! Ferries breaking down and bus services, on which voters rely, plagued with delays and cancellations. Recently, every third bus scheduled to arrive at the Lane Cove interchange, heading to the city, was cancelled. School children were routinely left stranded when the Premier was saying think of your kids.

Have a look at the massive swing in Northern Beaches seats. Wakehurst, held by the Liberals, seemingly forever, with a margin of 22 per cent, has now gone to an independent. But the government couldn’t even deliver adequate transport to the Northern Beaches. 11 per cent of planned buses bound for the city from the Northern Beaches never made it onto the road during the morning rush.

You almost have to ask yourself how on earth the Perrottet government actually won 32 seats…

Labor set to sweep up seats like wildfire | Alan Jones @AlanJonesAO forecasts the 2023 NSW State Election.

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— ADH TV (@adhtvaus) March 24, 2023

Pittwater and Oatley have been declared Liberal wins, against a shocking loss in Wollondilly where the Liberal Member, Nathaniel Smith, gained only 32.6 per cent of the primary. As a measure of the Liberal wipe-out, when Gladys Berejiklian last won the seat of Willoughby, the margin was 21 per cent. Tim James has held it, but the swing is almost 14 per cent. How could dyed in the wool Liberal supporters vote Liberal in that electorate when a bloke was so fed up with public transport inefficiencies that he started what the media dubbed a pirate bus service to ferry commuters on the 12-minute journey into the city?

No wonder Minns went on about anti-privatisation. The government’s own inquiry last year found that Perrottet’s obsession with privatisation had led to a worsening of the bus service. As I reported, even a Willoughby Councillor was catching the pirate bus.

Robert-Samuel said, ‘I am going to Bondi, but not on the 340, as I should, because it is cancelled.’

In my final observations, prior to voting day, I expressed, bluntly, that the Coalition couldn’t win and that that was an odds on certainty. In fact, I said, ‘Political pundits say no major party will win a majority. What the pundits should be saying is the Coalition can’t win – that is an odds-on certainty.’ How stupid do some of these pundits now look?

I had repeatedly argued that the Perrottet government couldn’t win and I told my viewers why it couldn’t win. I told viewers, in my last broadcast on the Wednesday before voting day, that Parramatta, Penrith, East Hills, and Monaro would go. I indicated that Leppington and Heathcote would be Labor wins, but in the redistribution, as I said, they were notionally Labor. On Wakehurst, I spoke of carnage. Carnage indeed. The Liberals were smashed. I made the point about Ryde, vacated by the tech geek, Victor Dominello, with a margin of 8.9 per cent and I said, ‘This seat is in play for Labor.’

I made the further point, in Hornsby, Matthew Kean’s seat, that he was on the nose. Even though he had a margin of 16.9 per cent, he has suffered a 12 per cent swing. His primary vote is a humiliating 42 per cent. 58 per cent of the electorate don’t want him in a blue-ribbon Liberal seat. Now, he won’t stand for the leadership of the Opposition; he is lining up the Federal Seat of Bradfield where he has the numbers to knock off Paul Fletcher who, I might add, is not much chop either.

The Liberal Party is in a stack of trouble.

I have made the point, many times, that the Central Coast is almost entirely forgotten by government. Taken for granted. Well, the public are not stupid. The Liberals almost lost the safe seat of Terrigal, which is now hopelessly marginal – a two-party preferred swing of 12 per cent. It defies belief that people who were supposed to have their ear to the ground could be so absurdly out of touch in what they were telling their viewers or listeners or readers about the election. I argued that there was every likelihood that the Liberals would be thrashed.

And they were.

Big government, big taxes, big debt, and even bigger disappointment.

We saw the Liberal Party demolished in Western Australia, smashed in South Australia, routed in Queensland, demoralised and defeated in Victoria, lame and lamentable federally when Albanese won government with 32 per cent of the vote.

Where we stand today is with the simple truth that the Liberals have learnt nothing.

They presumably still believe in lurching to the left, and banging on about climate change, which has got them nowhere. Does anyone seriously think the voters were thinking of climate change when they went to the polling booth on Saturday?

What they were thinking is that they couldn’t vote for a Party that had Matt Kean in it.

There is a breathtaking arrogance about the Liberal Party at every level, except the grassroots. The Liberals have no hope of winning government while terms are dictated by factional leaders outside the Party. No place in the Party for David Elliott, one of the few people who makes sense and said one of the problems is that the Liberals have the wrong candidates and, then, the wrong policies.

It should have been the Liberal Party talking about tolls.

It should have been the Liberal Party solving the problem of police numbers, nursing numbers, teacher numbers, demountable classrooms, getting buses running on time, reducing debt, removing indoctrination in the classroom.

They did none of those things.

Premier Perrottet was sucked in by praise from the elites that he was the big picture man.

Well, the electorate ripped up the big picture on Saturday and the Liberal Party now faces political oblivion. The solution is simple: give Liberals something genuinely Liberal to vote for, instead of Labor lite; and the Liberal family may come back, that is, if they haven’t now been lost forever.

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