New South Wales state election, 1988

New South Wales state election, 1988

← 1984 19 March 1988 (1988-03-19) 1991 →
All 109 seats in the New South Wales Legislative Assembly and 15 (of the 45) seats in the New South Wales Legislative Council 55 Assembly seats were needed for a majority
First party Second party   Leader Nick Greiner Barrie Unsworth Party Liberal/National coalition Labor Leader since 15 March 1983 4 July 1986 Leader's seat Ku-ring-gai Rockdale Last election 37 seats 58 seats Seats won 59 seats 43 seats Seat change 22 15 Percentage 56.0% 44.0% Swing 8.4 8.4
Legislative Assembly after the election
Premier before election Barrie Unsworth Labor Elected Premier Nick Greiner Liberal/National coalition

Barrie Unsworth
Labor

Nick Greiner
Liberal/National coalition

Elections to the 49th Parliament of New South Wales were held on Saturday 19 March 1988. All seats in the Legislative Assembly and a third of the seats in the Legislative Council were up for election. The Labor government of Premier Barrie Unsworth was defeated by the Liberal-National Coalition, led by Opposition Leader Nick Greiner.

The election took place following a redistribution of seats, which resulted in the Assembly growing from 99 to 109 seats.

The Australian Labor Party, under Neville Wran and, since 1986, Barrie Unsworth, had been in office for 12 years. A number of corruption scandals had tarnished Labor's image. Among these was the jailing of Labor's Minister for Corrective Services Rex Jackson in 1987 for accepting bribes for the early release of prisoners. Signs that voters had turned against Labor were evident in two by-elections in 1986. When Unsworth, then a member of the New South Wales Legislative Council, ran for the previously safe Labor Assembly seat of Rockdale in 1986, he only won it by 54 votes after losing more than 17 percent of Labor's primary vote from 1981. Additionally, Labor suffered a 22-percent primary vote swing in Wran's old seat of Bass Hill, allowing the Liberals to take it on a 103-vote margin. However, by-elections in Heathcote and Bankstown in 1987 saw only small swings against the government.