(Image: Mitchell Squire/Private Media)

If North Sydney MP Trent Zimmerman is lucky, a large proportion of the voters in the NSW state seat of Willoughby will have made up their minds before last week’s shambolic events in Parliament over religious discrimination, in which Zimmerman was one of several “moderate” Liberals to cross the floor and defeat an effort to enshrine discrimination against trans kids.

If not, it’s no wonder the Liberals are polling his seat frenetically. Willoughby delivered an 18% swing against the Liberals, almost all of it to independent Larissa Penn.

Some specific factors are relevant: the loss of Gladys Berejiklian’s personal vote would have been significant. And in Tim James, the Liberals — or more accurately the preselectors of Willoughby — put up a wholly inappropriate figure: a doctrinaire right-wing male factional operator straight from the business-as-usual playbook that has seen the Liberals’ north shore heartland increasingly look at small-l liberal independents.

Penn didn’t have a high-profile campaign, but Zimmerman is up against Kylea Tink, who has been campaigning hard for months. Zimmerman and Prime Minister Scott Morrison will be hoping North Sydney voters noticed Zimmerman leading the way against the attack on trans kids last week. Zimmerman held North Sydney in 2019 by 13.6% against Labor.

As Michael Yabsley wrote yesterday, it’s Willoughby that points to real trouble for the Liberals in what is now a serious battle against independents who offer voters similar social and economic values to self-described moderate Liberals but who have the freedom to push for real action on issues like climate and integrity.

The loss in Bega — after another great moment of judgment for Andrew Constance — is squarely on the NSW and federal Liberals for failing to deliver much-promised bushfire recovery assistance. Running Fiona Kotvojs, a well-known climate denialist who has dismissed the link between climate change and bushfires, in a region still rebuilding after being immolated in 2019-20, wasn’t a smart move either.

The Liberals picked up a small swing — 0.6% — against Labor’s Jason Yat-Sen Li in inner-west Strathfield. Labor should have done better given the performance of the NSW government in the face of Omicron, suggesting the NSW Labor brand still has some way to recover after a decade of being in a richly deserved opposition, but nor does the result point to some seething groundswell of discontent that might deliver Morrison some Sydney seats.

Indeed, for a state that for much of the past two years has been held up as potential rich pickings for Morrison to stave off losses in other states, Saturday delivered a sobering message: he’ll need a lot of resources to hold off independents in wealthier areas of Sydney, and he can’t count on Constance winning Gilmore.

The most recent Morgan poll showed NSW continuing to be a real problem for Morrison, with Labor polling a 10-point swing on the 2019 result.

The byelections demonstrate how there’ll be no uniform statewide swing, but at the moment NSW looks a defensive operation, not the offensive one the government had hoped. Still, 12 whole weeks to go.

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