Asked if Prime Minister Scott Morrison or his federal colleagues would play prominent roles campaigning in the NSW election, due to be held on March 23, Ms Berejiklian said: “We stand on our own two feet in NSW. “I've never relied on anybody outside NSW and I don’t intend to start now.” Asked if she would now be the underdog heading into the March election, following large swings against conservative forces in recent by-elections and in the Victorian result, Ms Berejiklian said the next few months would be “incredibly tough”. “I'm used to being the underdog. That's me. But what I'm also used to is staying focused.” Speaking anonymously, senior Liberals offered mixed views about what the Victorian election result might mean for Ms Berejiklian’s government.

"Clearly the brand is on the nose federally so that makes us nervous," one source said. "This is worrying news for Gladys, especially if Morrison sticks to his plan of going in May,” the source said, referring to the prospect of a federal election. “He will want people using their bats on the state rather than him. Gladys will take a hit. " 'Clearly the brand is on the nose federally so that makes us nervous': Senior Liberals are concerned about the impact Scott Morrison's government is having on state politics. Credit:AAP But a separate senior party source said the Victorian campaign could not be compared to NSW. "Michael Kroger [Victorian Liberal state president] ran a very old-school Tory campaign. We won't run a campaign like that, and we also won't run a campaign based on being racists."

The Premier offered congratulations to her Victorian counterpart, Labor leader Daniel Andrews. She said while she could not comment on the factors that determined the swing towards Labor in the Victorian poll, “you need more than one reason to return a government so strongly”. Ms Berejiklian said her government was focused on doing the job it was elected to do. “There's no doubt that I don't want to get distracted. I don't want to have outside influences impact on NSW,” she said. In a sign of the balancing act the Premier will have to maintain in the lead-up to the NSW election on March 23, Ms Berejiklian emphasised her government’s work building large-scale infrastructure projects, but also sought to empathise with those inconvenienced by those initiatives. “We're not without our mistakes, we're not without our challenges,” said the Premier, while also announcing that another 91 extra police would be assigned to anti-drug, gun and organised gang initiatives. “And I want to apologise to everybody who feels that they're disrupted by a major infrastructure project, who feels that they're not getting the benefit immediately. When you're building projects for the future it does have short-term pain.”

The NSW Labor leader, Michael Daley, said he did not want to “get into a bidding war” about who would be the underdog in the state election. Mr Daley said he would “focus on people in the suburbs, people in the regions, ordinary citizens, that this government has just forgotten about”. Also on Sunday, Natasha Maclaren-Jones won Liberal Party preselection for an "art large" position on the party's upper house ticket for the March election, besting another current MLC, Peter Phelps.