On the surface,Labor’s first momentous task looks to be a battle between workers and trade unions. But that is not why Labor’s campaign strategy on wages was successful. Labor won government amid a cry for help over the spiralling cost of living,felt acutely in outer Sydney.

When looking at the state electoral map,many of the seats that turned from blue to red in this election were,part of a natural recalibration after 12 years. East Hills is the perfect example of that. The south-west Sydney seat was first contested at the 1953 election and was a Labor seat until Labor’s 2011 rout. Riverstone was another. It was a safe Labor seat for 30 years until the Coalition whitewash. Parramatta,which has the highest proportion of renters after the inner-city seat of Sydney,also returned to Labor this election.

But these election results are not simply a case of restoring natural order. Labor has won back many of its once heartland electorates because those seats are where cost of living is biting hard.

State governments have few levers to pull when it comes to combatting rising living costs,but increasing wages for their employees is one. As Minns himself pointed out,he was able to grow up comfortably in metropolitan Sydney in the 1980s as a child of a public school teacher. That would be close to impossible now.

The Coalition campaigned hard on the risk to the state’s budget if its wages cap,introduced after Barry O’Farrell swept to power,was axed. There is no doubt that if Labor cannot offset pay increases with productivity savings,the budget will come under immense pressure. But the Coalition could not convince voters to worry more about the state’s finances than their household budgets.

The unions may have backed Labor’s campaign to return them to Macquarie Street,but they are ready for battle. Health Services Union boss Gerard Hayes,who is also demanding a royal commission into the way health funding is spent in NSW,says he will “go to war” with the new government if it breaks its promise for a judicial inquiry into the health system. “People ask me if it is going to be easier working with Labor. But what I say is it can be like hanging out with your family. Sometimes it is easy,but sometimes it is not.”

The Minns government may have had the support of the unions to get them over the line and back into government. But that marriage of convenience is,at least for now,over. Minns faces a very clear challenge. Anything other than a pay rise above the current 3 per cent for the state’s frontline workers will not be tolerated by unions,or the voters who backed Labor to improve wages amid a worsening cost of living crisis.

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