Opinion by Greg Ray
Some sections of the Labor Party in Newcastle claim to be surprised at the party’s crushing defeat in the recent Lord Mayoral by-election. I can accept that they may be disappointed, but surprised? If that’s true then their disconnection from reality is more profound than I had imagined. And, frankly, given the way NSW Labor is behaving with regard to a range of issues in Newcastle and the surrounding Hunter Region, I suggest the party may be setting itself up at the State level for some more disappointment and faux surprise.
The by-election was won by an Independent, TV weather man Gavin Morris, in a landslide. Morris was publicly endorsed by the previous Independent Lord Mayor, Ross Kerridge, who had stepped down because of ill health, triggering the by-election. Labor’s candidate was Declan Clausen, a leading figure in the faction associated with former Labor Lord Mayor Nuatali Nelmes. The result? Morris polled 50.64 per cent of first-preference votes (67.69 per cent after preferences) while Clausen was far behind with just 16.07 per cent, trailing the Greens candidate, Charlotte McCabe, who took 19.01 per cent of the vote (32.31 per cent after preferences).
How did Labor lose, first to Kerridge and then to Morris? Ask Newcastle people and a common answer will be “arrogance”.
Some commentators attributed the result to a powerful backlash against the style of politics that Labor had adopted during Nelmes’s reign as Lord Mayor. There is possibly some truth in this, but if this effect existed then Labor councillors could probably have reversed it by behaving differently when Kerridge took Nelmes’s place as Lord Mayor. Even though Nelmes had departed from the council following her defeat – initially moving on to a role with real estate lobby group the Property Council – the bloc of remaining Labor councillors was perceived as being still part of the “clique” and its behaviour was widely characterised as that of spiteful “sore losers”. This was particularly so in the case of Clausen, who had the highest profile of the remaining Labor councillors. Many observers I spoke to believed that, instead of gracefully accepting that they had lost the figurehead position, the Labor bloc was allowing itself to be seen as belligerent, hostile and obstructive .
Some will contend that this perception is incorrect, but clearly Labor is searching its soul to explain the depth of its fall from grace over the years since Nuatali Nelmes took on the Lord Mayoral role. Nelmes had gotten off to a good start in local politics, winning a council seat in 2008 following the retirement from the council of her highly regarded father, Paul Scobie, who had served on the council since 1999. In 2014 she won the Lord Mayoral position in a by-election, becoming the city’s youngest-ever Lord Mayor. Newcastle was highly receptive to the idea of a female Lord Mayor, having previously elected Joy Cummings to the role in the 1980s. As the apparent inheritor of the revered Cummings mantle, Nelmes had a deep reservoir of goodwill to tap. The Wikipedia page devoted to her summarises some of the issues that may have helped to steadily drain that reservoir.
I believe the Supercars event saga had a major impact on Nelmes’s (and Labor’s) standing in the Newcastle community. Bringing the race to the city was disruptive to residents and catastrophic for many city small businesses, but was admittedly a popular move among many people from outer areas of Newcastle who did not feel its negative effects. It was also strongly supported by the NSW Labor right, which controls the State Government in Sydney. Ultimately, I suspect the electoral negatives of the race outweighed the positives, and this can’t have been good for Nelmes and her loyal faction on the council.
Another issue which I believe probably weighed heavily on Labor was the scandal that erupted over a string of letters to the editor of The Newcastle Herald. These letters, which appeared under the names of Scott Neylon and Jason Sivo, heaped praise on the council’s general manager, Jeremy Bath, and poured scorn on his critics, including non-Labor councillors. Newcastle City Council’s website summarises Bath’s career as follows:
Jeremy Bath has been the Chief Executive Officer of City of Newcastle since 2017. After starting his local government career in 2002 at Fairfield City Council, he worked in executive roles with ClubsNSW and Clubs Australia before being appointed by the NSW Government in 2015 as the interim Chief Executive Officer at Hunter Water Corporation.
It emerged that, over the years, letters from “Neylon”, “Sivo” and others had appeared in various media, always praising the policies of the organisation for which Bath happened to be working. Strangely it seemed that Neylon and Sivo shared a common phone number. Neylon, it emerged, is a real person and an apparent close friend of Bath, living during the period in question in Japan. In the letters attributed to him he made various conflicting claims about himself and his alleged involvement in Newcastle affairs. When tracked down for comment about the letters, the “real” Neylon took responsibility for the ones that bore his name, but was seemingly unable to explain their many misleading and contradictory elements.
When allegations emerged in NSW Parliament that Bath may have penned the “Neylon” and “Sivo” letters himself, it was noted that former NSW Premier Bob Carr had in the past also received online comments on his personal blog, promoting the interests of the Clubs industry, from people using the same names. Despite some suggestive evidence, the council under Nelmes managed only a tepid and inconclusive inquiry which allegedly failed to examine much of the key evidence. Indeed, the Labor bloc on the council was fierce in its defence of Bath and its dismissal of allegations that the letters may have been an amateurish “astroturfing” campaign.
The apparent aggressive refusal to countenance transparency in this matter cost the council credibility and diminished the standing with voters of both Nelmes (and by extension, her bloc of councillors) and Bath himself. Bath and the Labor bloc of councillors also involved themselves in a war of words with popular longtime Labor-left Wallsend MLA Sonia Hornery. I suggest this was an ill-advised exchange that served to contrast Hornery’s credibility in her electorate and beyond with that of what might be termed the Bath-Labor-right network. Hornery’s speech in Parliament on the subject produced no notable response from the Labor-right government, but neatly summarised the issues as they had been reported in The Newcastle Herald and other local media.
I suspect that this issue harmed Labor far more than is generally conceded. I believe that had a similar issue arisen in a Sydney council, the furore might perhaps have ended or redirected some careers. Indeed, I suspect it did contribute to the fall of Nuatali Nelmes and Declan Clausen – although I suggest it was the perceived attitude of the Clausen-led Labor councillors towards Lord Mayor Ross Kerridge that was most fatal to Clausen’s electoral prospect.
Now ratepayers will be watching to see whether anything will change with Gavin Morris as Lord Mayor. Will Labor mend its ways (assuming you believe they need mending)? Will the unfinished business of the letters controversy finally be faced or is it destined to remain an officially unsolved mystery? I’m afraid that if that’s the case, the council as an entity will continue to labour under the handicap of somewhat dented credibility.
NB: It’s clear that the current councillors are more than satisfied with the performance of Jeremy Bath, since they voted recently to grant him a three per cent pay rise, bringing his annual salary to $544,217, considerably more than is earned by the Premier of NSW. He receives another $80,000 a year as council representative on the Newcastle Airport Board, according to this report in The Newcastle Herald.
