Why is NSW politics so deeply, deeply broken?

If you doubt that Australian politics is completely cooked, consider this:

In NSW, both the Liberal party and the Labor party support Mike Baird’s lockout laws. In Queensland, the Labor party supports lockout laws but the Liberal party doesn’t. In Victoria, neither Labor nor the Liberals support lockout laws.

In NSW, the Liberal party supports banning greyhound racing and the Labor party opposes it, but in the ACT, the Labor government supports banning greyhound racing. In rest of the country both the Liberal Party and Labor oppose a ban on greyhound racing.

Got it?

The lack of consistency from Australia’s major political parties on a range of key policy issues is fairly absurd. But nowhere is it more obvious and cynical than in the great state of NSW. Mike Baird was showered with praise from animal lovers everywhere (including me) when he announced earlier this week that NSW would become the first state in the country to ban greyhound racing. But at the same time as Baird is saving the greyhounds, he’s pursuing changes to native vegetation laws that could see koalas become extinct across much of the state. What’s the deal, Mike? Is it some sort of trade-off where only one cute animal species gets rescued and another one gets condemned?

To be fair to the NSW Liberals, they do have a broad, ideological consistency on most policy issues: ban stuff you don’t like. While that’s an appropriate approach on something like dog racing, an industry rife with animal abuse and mass slaughter, it’s a stupid way to deal with something as complex as Australia’s relationship to alcohol. Despite strong criticism of NSW’s lockout laws, and the fact that alcohol related violence was already trending downwards, both the NSW Liberal and Labor parties have committed to retaining them.

And to be fair to NSW Labor, they have absolutely no consistency at all on what they want to ban. Stopping people from buying a takeaway beer from the bottle shop after 10pm? Yep, according to Labor that’s the new “minimum standard” when it comes to alcohol regulation. Outlawing a cruel industry responsible for the deaths of up to 70,000 greyhounds? How dare you! Outrageous! Criminal! Elitist!

Yes that’s right. Labor has decided to oppose the ban on greyhound racing. Luke Foley, the state Opposition Leader, AKA the man no one has ever heard of, has been slammed by former NSW Premier Kristina Keneally for opposing Mike Baird’s greyhound racing ban. Baird himself has wasted no time in calling out Labor’s hypocrisy:

Once upon a time… pic.twitter.com/jcGLoS60Nm — Mike Baird (@mikebairdMP) July 13, 2016

It’s not only that NSW Labor’s newfound “pro-animal cruelty” platform is incredibly confusing, it’s also just deeply, deeply weird that this is the issue they’ve decided to grow a political spine over. When the lockout laws were first proposed NSW Labor couldn’t endorse them quickly enough. When Mike Baird introduced new anti-terror laws that gave police the power to detain 14-year-olds without charge, Foley rolled over and supported them almost immediately. When it was announced that the Powerhouse Museum would be shut down and relocated to Parramatta, at a cost of hundreds of millions of dollars, Labor supported the move. When the Greens introduced a bill to decriminalise abortion, NSW Labor voted with the Liberal Party to stop it from even being debated.

On all these issues, Labor and Luke Foley felt like they needed to back the Liberals, for some reason. But when the government does something decent and proposes an end to greyhound racing, all of a sudden they summon up the political will to come in to bat for an industry predicated on cruelly racing dogs? It doesn’t make any sense.

The problem is, even if you hate NSW Labor and Luke Foley, the state needs an effective Opposition to hold the government to account. Without a strong Opposition actually opposing all the terrible stuff Mike Baird is doing, and presenting an alternate vision for the state, it makes it way easier for the government to prosecute its own retrograde agenda, including the steady destruction of TAFE. It’s a sad, sad situation that the one time NSW Labor actually decide to stick its neck out and mount a vigorous opposition to something, it was on one of the few good things Mike Baird has actually proposed.

What’s the strategy here? Support the Liberal agenda and ask voters at the next election to vote Labor because they will restart the greyhound racing industry? It’s madness. If it turned out Luke Foley was some sort secret Liberal party double agent designed to ensure Labor never won another election, it wouldn’t really surprise me.

When Mike Baird took over the Premiership he was the most popular politician in the country. If Luke Foley’s plan is to sit around, pipe up every now and then to defend animal cruelty and hope for some scandal to bring Baird down, he’s living on another planet. The greyhound racing ban is a classic example of a policy that’s been implemented due to a popular campaign. It shows that even if progressive political parties aren’t running the show, it’s still possible to get positive outcomes by running strong campaigns and building public support.

If NSW Labor grew a spine on issues other than bloody greyhound racing the state might not be as much of a joke. The campaign against the lockouts has been slowly building up for a couple of years. Imagine if the largest progressive political party in NSW got on board and help build the campaign further and took it into Parliament? Even if the next state election is still three years away, a stronger, more vocal Opposition can only be a good thing for NSW.

Come on Luke. Sort your shit out for the sake of the state. Now we’ve lost Origin for another year it’s the least you can do.

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The author’s mum is a NSW MP who has been campaigning to end greyhound racing.