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THE POLL BLUDGER MACQUARIE
Macquarie has been significantly redrawn by the redistribution, losing Hawkesbury on the Sydney side of the Blue Mountains to Greenway. On the inland side, it recovers its long-lost base of Bathurst and Lithgow, which was included in the electorate from 1901 until it shifted into Sydney in 1977. Due to the Liberals' strength in Hawkesbury, the effect has been to turn Greenway into a safe Liberal seat while making a marginal Labor seat of Macquarie, which the Liberals won by 8.9 per cent in 2004. Sitting Liberal member Kerry Bartlett thus emerges as the redistribution's single biggest loser. Bartlett came to the seat in 1996 when he picked up a 6.5 per cent swing, more than enough to see off the 164-vote margin that Labor's Maggie Deahm secured when she unseated Liberal member Alasdair Webster in 1993. Webster came to the seat in 1984 when the Sydney areas of Penrith and St Marys were hived off to the new seat of Lindsay, which put an end to Labor's traditional dominance of the seat. Lindsay was contested for Labor by Ross Free, who gained Macquarie for Labor in 1980 and consolidated his hold in 1983 with a 9.0 per cent swing, and Macquarie fell to Liberal candidate Andrew Webster after a small but decisive swing. Prior to 1975, the only interruption to Labor's control after 1928 came between 1931 and 1940, between Ben Chifley's defeat with the fall of the Scullin government and his return in 1940. | |