The New South Wales premier, Gladys Berejiklian, has suggested the prime minister, Scott Morrison, will be surplus to campaign requirements when the state goes to the polls in March next year, saying her government will stand “on its own two feet”.

After the Liberal party’s drubbing in Victoria on Saturday, Berejiklian was asked by reporters whether Morrison would be called on during the NSW election campaign.

The premier replied: “I have never relied on anybody outside NSW and I don’t intend to start now.” Her government would stand “on its own two feet”, she said.

Berejiklian was speaking after the Liberal party was trounced in the Victorian election which saw Labor returned to government with a majority of as many as 16 in the 88-seat parliament.

Morrison’s most notable foray into the Victorian election came following the Bourke Street terror attack, when he appeared alongside the state opposition leader, Matthew Guy, at popular Melbourne Italian cafe Pellegrini’s whose co-owner, Sisto Malaspina, was killed in the attack.

The prime minister was forced to deny he was politicising a tragedy by campaigning for the state election at the site of the attack.

On Sunday Berejiklian declined to say whether she believed the ousting of the former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull contributed to the result in Victoria, but said “instability” may have hurt Guy.

“But I’ll say this: People don’t like to see instability. People don’t like to see politicians focused on themselves, we know that,” she told reporters in Sydney.

The NSW government has been in power since 2011, and polling done before the former Labor opposition leader Luke Foley was forced to resign showed the margin between the two parties was tightening.

On Sunday both Berejiklian and the new NSW Labor leader, Michael Daley, sought to position themselves as the underdog in next year’s election.

Daley congratulated the Victorian premier, Daniel Andrews, and said he was “encouraged” by the result, but insisted Labor had “a mountain to climb” to win government and said he would not seek to “replicate” the Andrews government.

“Look there are different factors there [in Victoria],” he said.

“It was one hell of a win though … but the Victorian election just shows what happens when you’ve got a government that actually cares about people.

“In NSW the Berejiklian government is not really a government, it’s a corporation. They’re governing for stadium builders, developers and consultants and they’re not looking after the ordinary people in Sydney and the regions.”

Pointing to Berejiklian’s comments about Morrison, Daley said NSW was “the eye of the storm” for divisions within the Liberal party.

“We’ve got a Liberal premier who doesn’t want a bar of the Liberal prime minister and the feeling’s mutual,” he said. “I mean that says everything, doesn’t it?

“They don’t like each other, they don’t want to go near each other.”

Daley called it a “debacle”, and said he would be campaigning with the federal Labor leader, Bill Shorten.