Eight years after the Bob Carr-Morris Iemma-Nathan Rees-Kristina Keneally NSW Labor government was finally put out of its misery in a Coalition landslide, Labor thinks that tight polling gives it the chance to force Premier Gladys Berejiklian into minority government in the March 23 state election. Yet the party is back with the same story that drove its predecessors into unpopularity and then humiliation: no plan – just short-term anti-growth policies that scare away jobs and create new economic bottlenecks.

Labor leader Michael Daley was catapulted into the job in November after the party's attempts to cover for former leader Luke Foley's personal behaviour problems finally fell apart. The party has failed to build an alternative path to growth for the state in all the years it has been in opposition, and Mr Daley was not about to start doing so just five months from a poll. Instead he's grabbed for the list of attention-seeking gimmicks – targeting populist villains like landlords, gas developers, and luxury car owners, where there will be some quick traction. It is quite likely that independent and minor party voters will eventually dictate the outcome, so that spouting a similar grab-bag of promises rather than offering a coherent plan is even more tactically appealing for Labor.

The most egregious is gas. Mr Foley says that Labor will sideline the non-partisan planning process, and halt the $3 billion Santos gas project in Narrabri. Such is the thrall of Labor to urban greens that Mr Foley is happy to risk an Adani-style clash between greenies and unions hopeful of new manufacturing jobs based on the gas. NSW is a state rich in gas resources but in a crisis of supply and energy cost, because the careful judgment of the state's chief scientist that gas can be developed safely is ignored in favour of activists who pick and choose their science.

Michael Daley: catapulted into the job. DEAN LEWINS

Mr Daley also wants to pile onto landlords, by restricting further the grounds on which property owners can get accommodation back. That is just one more hazard for property investors already worried about the impact of federal Labor's changes to negative gearing and capital gains tax. And just as with gas, it is grandstanding that just exacerbates shortages and hardships elsewhere.

But the most transparent ploy is to promise to fund mandated levels of nurse-to-patient ratios by an extra tax on luxury cars and yachts, playing nurses against the silvertails. It is pure Robin Hood politics rather than efficient raising of revenue. But just like federal Labor's swipe at those it imagines are the rich, it may not work. The car parks of western Sydney show that interest in expensive cars does not stop at the affluent suburbs, many of them driven by tradie aspirationals doing well on Sydney's booming projects. It's more likely they just won't buy and the tax does not raise the revenue Labor is expecting.

NSW is a state still in the throes of catch-up after Bob Carr's disastrous edict in 2000 that Sydney was full. A decade was then lost as Labor, in between scandals, stumbled around dealing with population that came any way. At the last election, Mr Daley's predecessor did his best on behalf of the unions to sabotage the electricity privatisations that have allowed roads, railways and a second airport to finally take shape in an $80 billion, four-year pipeline – with no debt.

Ms Berejiklian has her problems. She is an incremental, un-telegenic technocrat, implementing the cut-through gains of Mike Baird. A disastrous new plan to pull down and rebuild two sport stadiums, one the Olympic stadium less than 20 years old, looked like a government too flush with cash to spend wisely – and now unable to argue for prudence in other areas. Despite eight years in office, there is only disruptive construction rather than gleaming new trains or motorways yet to show. Her weakest electoral flanks are in the regions, exposed to independents and One Nation led by Mark Latham. But Ms Berejiklian is at least seeking the high road of growth back to office, just as Daniel Andrews to his credit did in Victoria. NSW Labor on the other hand sticks with the low road that it knows too well.