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Last-minute SMS from Nationals candidate Tony Mileto, but Phil Donato will still be our MP on Sunday
March 24, 2023
OPINION
By Peter Holmes
On Sunday morning Phil Donato will still be the MP for Orange.
The posters will come down, and the people of the city - who have expressed almost no interest whatsoever in this state election - will move on. The next poll won't be until 2027.
The bookmakers say Donato - who poached the seat from the Nationals in 2016 - is home.
One major agency had Donato at the odds of $1.10 on Friday night. This meant that if you wagered $1 on Donato to win and he did, you would receive a miserly $1.10 in return.
There are a couple of odds that are curious. The candidate next most likely to take the seat, according to the betting firm, is Aaron Kelly, who is representing Donato's old party, the Shooters, Fishers & Farmers (SFF).
Kelly told The Orange News Examiner in February that he backed the concealed carrying of weapons in NSW. After our story about his extraordinary position was published - resulting in a brutal backlash from our readers - Kelly appeared to go to ground in Orange during the campaign.
While TV ads have appeared for SFF candidates in Bathurst and Dubbo, we have not seen advertisements for Kelly. The betting agency had him at $11 to win the seat, which must surely be due to confusion in the electorate about Donato's decision to quit the party.
The bookmakers are saying the SFF have a better chance of winning Orange than National Party candidate Tony Mileto ($14), who has a far greater profile in Orange. Mileto has also been the beneficiary of many posters around town and TV advertisements.
On Friday afternoon he sent an automated text message to people in Orange urging them to vote for him.
This type of spend suggests the Nationals think Mileto is in with a chance. Maybe a chance of winning. Or - more likely - a chance of shaving enough off Donato's big lead to give them a shot in 2027.
Donato won the 2019 election with 65.2 percent of the two-party vote. That is the kind of majority freely-elected politicians the world over dream of.
You don't easily lose seats like that - it takes some serious blunders, and Donato has simply not made such blunders. There is a chance, however, that some loyal SFF voters will punish him for jumping ship.
Over time, the sheen inevitably wears off all politicians. That process doesn't appear to have begun yet for Donato, although Saturday will provide the first evidence either way since 2019.
He may increase his majority. He may not. We will see. But lose his seat?
The Liberal-Nationals have tipped money into the electorate of late in an attempt to win it back, but such largesse is a double-edged sword.
The Nationals can argue that Orange would get a better deal if it had a National MP walking the halls of NSW Parliament instead of an independent, but it's a fine line when at the same time you're boasting of all your government has done for the people of Orange.
At a candidates' forum we attended, Mileto got a bit snippy with Donato, saying Donato hadn't had the kind of access to state government ministers that a National would have had. The subtext was that we the people had missed out because of this.
We will never know if this is correct, but it makes sense on a surface level - of course a Liberal-National government is more likely to listen to one of its own. But that doesn't mean they get anything other than a friendly ear.
If Labor wins an outright majority in NSW, it won't matter if the seat of Orange is held by Donato or Mileto - the new government will have no need for them. But it's more likely Labor would listen to and assist Donato ahead of a National, right?
And if Labor forms a minority government, it is possible Donato could hold a pivotal role.
We won't know any of this until Saturday night, maybe later.
What we do know, though, that there is no movement for change in Orange, unless those doing the moving have kept it very, very quiet.
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