Liberal member for North Sydney Trent Zimmerman (Image: AAP/Lukas Coch)

While Scott Morrison and Peter Dutton want voters to think geopolitically and believe Anthony Albanese and Richard Marles are robots controlled by the Chinese Communist Party from Beijing — the reds, it seems, are no longer under the bed but out in the open — the NSW Liberal Party is serving up a lesson in how all politics is local.

Demonstrating that one should no longer prognosticate on election outcomes until all the votes are counted, a different picture of Saturday’s NSW byelections is now emerging. Instead of a small swing against Labor in Strathfield, there appears to have been a small swing in two-party-preferred terms to Labor’s Jason Yat-Sen Li, with both major parties losing votes to walking inner-west cliché Elizabeth Farrelly running as an independent.

And Willoughby has become lineball after prepolls swung much more strongly in favour of independent Larissa Penn than expected, leaving another walking cliché, right-wing white male Liberal Tim James, on tenterhooks.

There are more than a few members of the NSW party thinking “I told you so” right now about James.

If you’re in Sydney you’ve probably read of the David-versus-Goliath effort run by Penn, who seems to have put together a campaign with string and textas. But the real story of her campaign was the way she tapped into deep angst within the seat — which is slap-bang in the middle of Trent Zimmerman’s North Sydney electorate — about the NSW government’s latest major road project, a tunnel under the western harbour that will emerge near Gore Hill and connect up to a tunnel to Sydney’s northern beaches, in the electorate of Jason “death taxes” Falinski.

While no one loves the trip up Military Road and across the Spit Bridge to get to the peninsula, there’s little enthusiasm for either project among residents of the affected areas — who in any event will see no benefit until the late 2020s at best, and until then will endure congestion and dislocation, unfiltered exhaust stacks when the tunnel opens, and the loss of green space. Just how little enthusiasm can be observed in the 19% swing to Penn.

Usually that wouldn’t matter a great deal in a federal election. Voters are perfectly capable of distinguishing who’s in charge of what, and the western harbour tunnel/beaches link project is all the NSW government’s.

But that project began life as an unsolicited proposal from toll roads giant Transurban. Unsolicited proposals are a big thing in NSW: that’s how the wretched Crown Barangaroo project began, with the resulting giant black phallus now stuck on the skyline next to Darling Harbour.

In fact there’s actually a senior Transport public servant whose job it is to handle unsolicited proposals, and there’s an unsolicited proposal “framework” through which a company that makes vast profits out of toll roads can approach the government and suggest more toll roads.

Not that the western harbour tunnel/beaches link project could be paid for with just a toll. As we learnt today from The Sydney Morning Herald’s Matt O’Sullivan and Tom Rabe, tolls on the existing harbour tunnel and bridge would have to be jacked up, or Transurban handed a slab of the recently completed WestConnex project.

Tolls, and particularly their indexation, are a simmering issue in Sydney, with motorists mystified about why a gouging monopolist like Transurban can hike tolls every year when their real wages are stagnant or declining. A NSW parliamentary inquiry has been running into toll roads for nearly a year.

In case you’re wondering, Transurban’s tentacles extend way beyond the NSW government. Transurban is a major political donor: in the past five years it has dramatically increased its political contributions, handing $375,000 to both sides, usually the federal parties. In 2020-21 it gave more than $100,000 to the major parties. You can see why it has no trouble getting meetings with decision-makers.

Independent Kylea Tink, the major threat to Zimmerman, has been campaigning on the tunnel as well.

Zimmerman’s problem, other than a 20% swing inside his own seat, is that, ahem, he isn’t actually the official candidate in North Sydney yet.

The NSW Liberal Party’s organisation remains hopelessly paralysed in a factional quarrel involving Alex Hawke and his political master, Scott Morrison, which means candidates for some of the most important federal seats are yet to be preselected. That fight has reached the “lawyers at 10 paces” stage.

All politics is local — and within the NSW branches it’s particularly toxic.

Some readers will be old enough to remember when NSW was going to be the state that saved Morrison. No wonder the prime minister wants voters to lie back and think of China.