Kellie Sloane elected unopposed as leader of the NSW Liberal Party

New South Wales Liberal MP Kellie Sloane is the state's new opposition leader after the resignation of Mark Speakman late yesterday.

Transcript

00:00It's really interesting to see what the ramifications of these changes will be and whether or not

00:07what we're seeing at the moment, which is the shift in leaders at a state level, whether

00:12that helps ameliorate some of the brand damage caused by the federal Liberal Party, or if

00:18this is just a symptom of a broader issue that we'll have to see continue on.

00:22I think we are seeing state governments to some extent, or sorry, state Liberal parties

00:27to some extent feel some of the brush of issues with the federal Liberal Party reflect on

00:34them.

00:35Voters are very savvy and can tell the difference between state and federal issues, but when

00:39the impression is created that a party isn't in tune with where the electorate is, that can

00:45be damaging for the party as a whole, because let's face it, in many cases people vote for

00:51a party, not necessarily for the individual representing the party when it comes to a ballot

00:56box.

00:58But that doesn't deny that there are issues at a state level that oppositions need to counter.

01:03And the situations in New South Wales that we're seeing, where there is a strong and still

01:08relatively popular Labor government, is quite different from the situation we see in Victoria,

01:12where the Labor government is quite unpopular.

01:15So there's some threads we can draw here about the issues the party has, but the electoral

01:21circumstances are slightly different.

01:23I think if we just take a bit of a step back, we have to realise that as the Liberal Party

01:27is trying to grapple with where it wants to position, it has to deal with where it sits

01:32electorally and how it might be able to appeal to the broadest number of people, but at the

01:36same time recognise that it has a narrower and shrinking membership base.

01:42And often that is where you generate, well, where your candidates come from, where the

01:46party tries to put effort into policy development that can often then be different from the

01:51objective of trying to reach as broad an audience as possible.

01:55So these are the issues the Liberal Party has to counter, whether it's at a state level

01:59or whether it's at the federal level, like here in Canberra.