'Teflon Mike' expected to duck trend and retain premiership

Mike Baird has a healthy lead in the polls. Photo / Getty Imag

Mobbed by shrieking schoolchildren on the campaign trail, Mike Baird was dubbed the "Justin Bieber of Australian politics" by a Fairfax journalist this week.

Others call the NSW Liberal Premier "Teflon Mike", marvelling at the way dirt thrown by a resurgent Labor opposition fails to stick. Even self-inflicted wounds - such as the revelation that he instigated the doctoring of a report on his signature policy, electricity privatisation - appear to heal overnight.

With latest polls giving Baird 54 per cent of the vote in today's state election, compared with 46 per cent for Labor, he seems poised to duck the recent trend of one-term Coalition governments - seen in Victoria and Queensland, and still predicted federally, despite Prime Minister Tony Abbott inching up in one poll this week.

While the eight-point lead would significantly reduce Baird's majority, the result would still represent a triumph for him - particularly given that voters are distinctly cool about his plan to lease 49 per cent of the state's "poles and wires" to raise A$20 billion ($20.6 billion) for new roads and infrastructure.

A similar plan was blamed for Campbell Newman's shock defeat in Queensland eight weeks ago. However, Newman and his style of government were detested by voters. Baird is a very different character.

As one News Corp columnist wrote yesterday, quoting an unnamed Liberal: "If Newman were driving along and saw a stray dog on the road he would get out and kick it. If Baird were driving along and saw a stray dog he would get out and give it a pat and a hug."

The "accidental Premier" - thrust into the job only a year ago, after Barry O'Farrell's fit of absent-mindedness about a A$3000 bottle of red wine - is an all-round good bloke: decent, honest, community-minded, and with not a whiff of corruption about him, which is handy in Australia's biggest state these days.

Baird, though, has another challenge in common with Newman: the "Abbott factor". Liberal candidates door-knocking in NSW report that the thing uppermost in voters' minds is how much they dislike the Liberal Prime Minister.

Newman lost the election despite Abbott staying away from the Queensland campaign. Last weekend, the Prime Minister joined other Liberal luminaries - including former Prime Minister John Howard and former NSW premiers Nick Greiner and John Fahey - at Baird's official campaign launch in Sydney.

Although Abbott was not given a speaking role at the event, observers wondered if it was crazy-brave of Baird to have him there, and to declare "what a pleasure it is to stand here in front of a friend of mine - the Prime Minister, Tony Abbott".

At least everyone knows who Baird is. The same can't be said for his Labor challenger, Luke Foley, who became opposition leader only three months ago, after it emerged that his predecessor, John Robertson, signed a letter in 2011 on behalf of the Martin Place gunman, Man Haron Monis. Robertson was Monis' local MP.

Even in the western Sydney seat of Auburn, which Foley - previously a member of the state's upper house - needs to win just to stay in Parliament, only one in five voters surveyed this week was able to recognise him from a photograph, according to the Daily Telegraph.

That aside, even his political foes agree he is an impressive politician who has made considerable inroads in a few short months, transforming Labor's image and bringing the party within striking distance of victory.

Foley's main battleground has been electricity privatisation, which he claims will lead to household bills rocketing. Most economists disagree. But Baird looked foolish when it emerged that he had leant on the investment bank UBS to delete the first four words of the headline on its privatisation report: "Bad for the budget, good for the state".

The opposition has also made much of revelations that a Chinese Government-owned company, State Grid Corporation, which has been implicated in corruption allegations, is interested in leasing the electricity assets.

Baird has denied holding a "secret meeting" with State Grid's president, Liu Zhenya, in Beijing last year. However, he addressed an "investor roundtable event" hosted by the Australian Ambassador and attended by a company executive, his office said this week.