THE POLL BLUDGER
House of Representatives Election 2007

MACARTHUR
Liberal 11.1%

Macarthur has an even better record as a bellwether electorate than Eden-Monaro, being carried by the election-winning party on each occasion since its creation in 1949. The much-redistributed seat has again been rearranged for the coming election, drifting beyond Sydney's outskirts and into rural territory beyond. Closer to the city, parts of Campbelltown and Camden go to Werriwa, while the Badgerys Creek area goes to Fowler. At the opposite end, the electorate gains The Oaks, Appin and Wilton from Hume. This amounts to a partial reversal of the 2001 redistribution that made the seat notionally Labor by adding Campbelltown at the expense of rural Mittagong and Picton (the latter of which now returns), adding 1.6 per cent to the Liberal margin. The seat has been held for the Liberals since 2001 by ultra-marathon runner Pat Farmer, who came to attention after completing a 15,000 kilometre charity run round Australia after his wife died of heart failure (prompting uncharitable political foes to brand him “Forrest Gump”. Farmer did outstandingly well to hold the seat with an 8.7 per cent swing on his debut, after his predecessor John Fahey was casting around for another seat following the redistribution (he ended up retiring on health grounds). Fahey had won the seat for the Liberals in fine style in 1996, a year after the defeat of his New South Wales state government, when he picked up a 12.0 per cent swing upon the retiremment of Labor's Chris Haviland after one term.

In the third week of the campaign, reports emerged that Labor had abandoned an idea to help shore up its budget bottom line through the sale of the Badgerys Creek site, earmarked as the possible location of a second Sydney international airport. The site is in Fowler, but its sale would also have been popular in its more electorally significant neighbouring seats of Lindsay and Macarthur.

Labor's high hopes of overcoming the formidable margin in this seat were indicated by two separate visits from Kevin Rudd in the early part of the campaign. In the third week of the campaign, Simon Benson of the Daily Telegraph reported that Labor pollling pointed to a swing of “up to 14 per cent”. The following week, Joe Hildebrand of the Daily Telegraph named it with Hughes and Paterson among seats Labor was targeting “in a strategy to spook the Government and draw precious resources away from a handful of must-win seats” – namely Lindsay, Dobell, Macquarie and Eden-Monaro.