Newspapers from all over the country have analysed the result, but few in my view have grasped the wider political messages.

Firstly, think of this. We have a hard-working, successful female Premier.

The Wagga Liberal branch selects a female candidate. We are told that we need more women in parliament. 

Female Premier, female candidate. The only female on the ballot paper. Liberal Party votes plummet. Is there a message in that for all of us?

The Liberal Party was unprepared, presenting a candidate completely unknown to most of us.

She was a very much better choice than the “Liberal staffer from Sydney”, whoever that was. That a staffer from the city could even nominate perhaps reveals the incestuous rot at the core of today’s Liberal Party.

Where were the high-profile candidates from the local area?

Isn’t being member for Wagga Wagga seen as a high prize any more? Why didn’t well-known business managers with proven track records line up for the honour?

Council amalgamations cost the Coalition the seat of Orange, but were any lessons learnt? Our Liberal candidate is an elected member of Snowy Valleys Council, the shotgun marriage of Tumut and Tumbarumba. 

Tumbarumba voters are in the Albury electorate, so didn’t have a voice in this poll, other than to volunteer to campaign against the Liberals!

There are enough disgruntled Liberal and National voters at the Tumut end of this mismatch to have cost vital votes there.

The Wagga Wagga electorate includes Lockhart, a council that will disappear with the next round of Liberal amalgamations.

And the Liberals chose a candidate that was part of an amalgamated council?

The strong showing for McGirr and the Shooters in this Coalition stronghold surely sends a message as loud as Orange. Then there is the question of inappropriate priorities. City media reports didn’t note public derision of big money for things such as bike tracks that serve few, versus WWCC desperately needing funds for roads that serve everybody.

Gladys Berejiklian should have counted the number of bike riders while she was here, and compared that count to the number of potholes!

Wagga residents hide behind security bars while drug dealers roam free. Houses are burgled, cars burned. Where is government action where it matters most?

Nationals leader John Barilaro perhaps cost the most votes. Berejiklian bluffed that Wagga was a “Liberal seat”. The weak Barilaro declared there would be no Nationals candidate.

Most Wagga voters don’t care whether the local member is Liberal or National, just so long as Labor doesn’t win. This time, the Labor vote dropped from 28 to 23 per cent of first preferences. So if we’re going to blame anyone for losing the seat for the Coalition, blame Nationals leader John Barilaro!

Wagga became a Liberal seat courtesy of charismatic 28-year-old Wal Fife wresting the seat from Labor after Eddie Graham’s death. The Liberals chose successful Wagga businessman and sportsman Joe Schipp to retain the seat for the Liberals when Wal Fife became our federal member. But this seat is now National at the federal level.

The whispering campaign that Joe McGirr is a closet National would have increased his appeal, particularly when several high-profile Nationals quite openly backed McGirr.       

With voters disenchanted with the Liberal Party over Daryl Maguire and federal issues, Coalition voters had nowhere to direct their protest other than to independents.

These votes would solidly have supported a high-profile National candidate, and the government would have retained the seat.

If closet National rumours are true, I perhaps owe Dr McGirr an apology. I had always suspected that he was from a Labor dynasty. Former Labor Premier Jim McGirr was local member for Liverpool when I was a kid. But then again, I thought my father was a Labor supporter in those days. I grew up admiring Liberals like Bob Menzies, and the Country Party’s John McEwen.

Congratulations to Dr McGirr. Perhaps Joe is the wake-up call the Coalition needs.